RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 249, 17 July 1931, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events

LOCAL AND GENERAL

(By

Kickshaws.)

It has been suggested that money for hospital finances should be obtained from motorists. Motorists state It is bad enough being blamed for breaking up the roads without adding Innuendos of this nature.

While an Impoverished farmer was fined ten shillings for non-payment of his unemployment levy, a forgetful business man escaped with a fine of five shillings. Is this a demonstration Of agricultural bias concerning which the United Party once talked so loudly?

Foresters In British Columbia have been ordered to search the forests for a tree of great height to be made into a flagpole gift for Australia to commemorate the recent treaty enactment. While there can be little doubt that a gift of this nature affords a fitting monument, one can but wonder if it is not analogous to sending coals to Newcastle. Where flagpoles are concerned not only can Australia boast trees of perfect shape, but also of abnormal height Indeed so far as can be ascertained, Australia Is the proud, but nno flic lai, possessor of the tallest tree in the world. The giant blue gum which holds this title Is supposed to be 480 feet high. Admittedly this height is unverified, but it is considered to bo correct to a few feet or so. Moreover, stories are current to-day about trees in the Australian backblocks which are over 500 feet in height. Trees that exceed 400 feet in height appear to be so numerous that nobody takes the trouble to measure them.

As things stand at present the tallest tree in Australia to receive official verification and blessing is a blue gum 326 feet high. Measurement by a wellknown forester has given a redwood tree groijng in Bull. Creek Flat, California, a height of 863 feet. A member of an American forestry staff took the trouble to measure some of the tallest trees he came across in Australia whße he was on a visit to that country. The tallest tree he actually measured was 310 feet high. He satisfied himself, however, that the tallest tree ever measured, admittedly unofficially, wa# a eucalyptus regnans or “mountain ash” growing at Colac, Victoria. It was 346 feet high. The best we can do in this Dominion in this line Is a kauri 160 feet high. If it is indeed possible that Australia owns a blue gum taller than the tallest tree in any other part of the world, it seems a pity that somebody does not go and measure it officially. It would confirm that wellknown saying: “Blue gums for height, redwoods for girth, and kauris for quantity.”

One hears much talk about France’s huge gold reserve but little about the place in which she conceals her nestegg. Most of us, in fact, are apt to look upon these huge stores of gold as some mythical thing that occupies no space. But two hundred millions in golden sovereigns, for example, requires twenty railway trains to transport It. When concentrated in one spot it forms a block of gold 18 feet by 16 feet by nearly 10 feet high. No wonder then France has been busy digging new vaults. For the storage of her £400,000,000 she requires ample space and numerous devices to prevent thieves from entering. In order to be on the safe side France has just built herself a fortress Into which the organised forces of an invading enemy could not penetrate in three months. This consists of enormous underground vaults where rows and rows of ingots are piled one upon the other in great steel cupboards.

For the last three years workmen have been busy hewing out a vast underground chamber under the Bank of France about 2i acres in extent, in which to store her muchdiscussed gold reserves. Above this now completed fortress there are 36 feet of rock and water. The walls are made of concrete fifteen feet thick. The approaches to France’s underground hoards of gold are in keeping with the rest of the work. The entrance shafts are made of concrete and steel twenty feet thick. The first door is a sheet of steel painted white. It takes two men to open this door. It is over two feet thick and made of steel and other metals absolutely proof against the hottest blowpipe.

Safe experts declare that it would take two months to blast a way through the doors that guard the hidden gold reserves of France. The entrance door opens on to a passage a few feet long, terminating in what looks like a blank wall. This blank wall in reality is a huge cylinder of steel eighteen feet in diameter. Provided the right keys are produced an electric motor revolves this cylinder until a plug of steel and concrete is revealed. This plug alone weighs 14 tons. When its bolts have been drawn an electric trolley pushes the plug but of the way down the passage, leaving the way open to the outer walls of the vault itself. As a final precaution there are doors guarding the vault which are only shut in time of peril by the staff on duty inside. These doors are designed so that, while they may be opened from inside, they cannot be opened from the outside at all. Supplies of tinned food, refrigerators always stocked with sides of sheep and beef, special steam-heated stew-pans, and electric ranges supply food for the entire staff required in the underground vaults. Special pumps fed from bomb and gas proof shafts provide the vaults with fresh air. Water is obtained from an artesian well on tlie spot.

Assuredly there is one country that hopes that Germany will fail to find credit from the nations of the world — that country is Russia. It would seem that life is not easy for those who try to live on good terms with the Soviets. At the moment the Soviets feel that they have several grudges waiting to be paid off against Germany. As far back as 1929 the official Soviet organ "Isvestin” burst into tirades against Germany. Since then grudges have been accumulating. The Soviets accuse Germany of having taken a band in China against Russia. She is also accused of having violated the onetime Russo-German agreement by issuing industrial loans in foreign lands. For some years the Soviets have considered that this was a violation of Russo-German accords. The last offence occurred when the German Government was supposed to have given political support to the German Socialists rather than to the German Communistai,