RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 52, 25 November 1929, Page 10

RANDOM NOTES

SIDELIGHTS ON CURRENT EVENTS LOCAL AND GENERAL (By Cosmos.) “Russia Needs Money,” reads a headline in a contemporary. That’s strange; it has printed more money than any other country. • » • We do not know where the younger generation is headed, but all must admit that it seems to be enjoying the trip. » » • Clemenceau, “The Tiger,” whose death is reported at the age of eightyeight, had hoped to live another twelve years to fulfil the tasks he had set himself on behalf of his beloved father, and the country he loved with equal intensity. Just why he always displayed that bad humour in politics, which branded him as a growler, was recently revealed by Clemenceau in an interview given to a South American journalist. The explanation, which follows, affords an interesting highlight on the character of this truly remarkable man. “My father,” he said, “was a doctor, as I was many years later. One fine day he became so deeply affected by all the human suffering he saw that sadness overcame him. He shut up his office and went off to Nantes with my mother and all their children. He planned to dedicate himself to farming, and to the cultivation of Republican Ideas. You can imagine the position of a Republican in the imperialistic France of 1854, under the little Napoleon 111, who had just dissolved the Assembly, crowned himself Emperor, and was deporting all those who did not agree with his ideas.

“Tn a bookshop in Nantes a little group of intellectuals used to meet and talk together. Among them was my father. One night the police came and arrested him simply because, in private conversation, he had maintained that a Republican democracy was the only hope for France. They decided to deport him to Africa. The day that they took him away to Marseilles, standing between two murderers in the prison van, I went with my mother to say good-bye to him. I was thirteen or fourteen. I saw my mother crying. I saw father, behind' the bars of the van, chained and handcuffed, condemned without trial. None of his intimate friends was there. They had all been afraid to come and say good-bye. Cowards! From that moment, I knew the difference between true friendship and false. . . . From that day onward I began to growl, and I kept on growling. When the van was about to leave, I ran up close to the bars. I said to my father: 'I will avenge you.’ I studied. I worked to avenge him. lam eighty-eight years old. I hope to have another twelve years in which to defend my father’s faith.”

Mr. Frederick Mitchell-Hedges, who is on his way to New Zealand to sample our deep-sea fishing, has led a life of romantic adventure, most of his attention having been directed towards exploration and deep-sea research work. Most of his work has been done in the Republics of Central America, the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. Indeed, the waters of Russell will not furnish him with the thrill which comes with the first capture of a giant of the deep, for besides having contributed much to the science of Ichthyology, he holds numerous world’s records for the capture of giant fish. During 1922-23 he penetrated into the unknown recesses of the. hinterland of Panama, discovering a new race of people and forming a large collection of hitherto unrecorded specimens which afterwards went into various British museums.

In the following year he went into the interior of British Honduras with Dr. T. W. F. Gann and discovered the ruins of the vast Maya city of Labaantun. In 1925 he came back again with a fresh expedition and commenced to clear the city, discovering in the process an aboriginal stone building covering nearly 8 acres, and also a stonebuilt amphitheatre which was the first ever found on the American continent, returning with , many specimens which joined the other national treasures in the British Museum. Though he is only 47 years old, he is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, the Royal Linnean Society, the Royal Zoological Society, the Entomological Society and the Royal Anthropological Institute. Mr. Mitchell-Hedges counts all his work as being his hobbies and declares that he is perfectly happy when biggame fishing, exploring, yachting, biggame hunting, or bending over his cases of insect specimens.

“Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war.” These lines are recalled by the announcement in the House of Commons that the King’s Police Medal has been awarded to the Chief of Police at Hebron, Superintendent Raymond Oswald Cafferata, for conspicuous gallantry in keeping an armed mob at bay during the Palestine disorders. The King’s Police Medal was instituted in 1909 as a reward “only for acts of exceptional courage and skill or conspicuous devotion to duty” to officers and men of any recognised police force or organised fire brigade in the United Kingdom, India and the Dominions beyond the seas. The decoration is worn from a ribbon of five stripes of dark blue and silver. In the “London Gazette” of October 3 it was mentioned that the King had awarded the medal to the Deputy Commandant, Palestine Police, Mr. Allan Saunders. M.C., as well as to Superintendent Cafferata, but in the cable message from London no mention is made of the award to the former.

Cafferata served as an officer with the King’s Liverpool Regiment during the Great War and went to Palestine about eight years ago with the British gendarmerie. Subsequently he joined the British Palestine Police. He served with the Royal Irish Constabulary during the troubles in Ireland. The act which won Superintendent Cafferata his decoration was referred to in a message dispatched from Jerusalem on August 30. It stated that among the many acts of heroism that of Superintendent Cafferata. who was the only Englisjiman at Hebron, stood out. After stemming single-handed the savage slaughter inside the Ghetto, entering houses alone and shooting down men who were in the act of murdering children, the superintendent went out, and, armed with a revolver only, withstood a crowd of eighty strong. Such was the effect of his onslaught that he succeeded in disarming the whole mob. while another advancing mob: hearing of this feat of arms, laid down their own weapons at his approach, thus saving the lives of a number of Jews.