RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 42, 13 November 1936, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current

Events

(By

Kickshaws.)

Judging by the cabaret controversy one way of making the silent service vocal seems to have been discovered.

Well it looks as if those coloured shirts in Britain are not as fadeless as some enthusiasts imagined. * * *

The activities of sawmillers in our forests, it is claimed, should be curtailed. The idea, we understand, is that if sawmillers get too much out of the wood they will be in the wood worse than ever.

“The newspapers have got it all wrong about Eddie Guerlu escaping from Devil’s Island,” says "Interested.” “I have read his life story and have it now before me and he says this: ‘Why I want to make this clear fe because when I had succeeded in making my escape, and following in its train became the hero of two continents, it was generally-believed that I had got away from Devil’s Island. That impression still exists and probably will do so until the end of time. But it is utterly untrue.’ For three years he lias a prisoner on one of the islands, lie Royale, at French Guiana, but was never on Devil’s Island. For good conduct he was transferred to the mainland at Maroni. where the great majority of the French prisoners were kept, and it was from there he escaped in 1905 with a Belgian named Stoup. There were no prisoners at all on Devil’s Island when he was in that part of the world. He escaped from Maroni, which fe on the mainland, and was rowed over the Maroni River by an Italian. It was a friend of his in Chicago who gave the story to the press. The yellow press of America made a job of it and exaggerated his escape beyond recognition. His life story was published in London in 1928.”

Let us hope that Mr. Nash’s financial judgment is somewhat better than his judgment of ocean waves. The 80-foot waves that lashed bis cabin have set a standard for waves that appears te be unparalleled for the /Atlantic or for any other ocean. Leading authorities on oceanography declare that even in severe storms waves do not reach a height of more than 30 feet in the open sea. Storms of exceptional violence may product an occasional wave of 45 feet, but above that height they refuse to go, Experts who have studied ocean waves all their lives agree that a wave of 80 feet is the figment of imagination. It is a greater height than a wave could ever attain and remain intact even in the roughest piece of water in the world between Cape Town and Australia. A mass of water 80 feet high they contend, would not hold togethei as a wave, but would break up. This does not mean that waves of even 4C feet cannot rise to great heights when they encounter a vessel or a lighthouse and break over it.- It has been proved that water from a 40-foot wave can reach a height of 270 feet when it breaks against a vertical obstacle. It then ceases to be a wave.

Mr. Baldwin’s contention that the huge sums of money now being devoted to rearmament could be put to better use cannot be contradicted —if only the fear of war would permit it. The money put aside for Mars every year mounts up to totals that are so great very few of us ever trouble to contemplate the result. Excluding the war years Britain alone, from 1912 to 1934. has found over £3.000.006.000 for armaments, armies, and navies. In a similar period Germany has probably spent a similar sum, if not more. Her postwar expenditure was small until recently, but her pre-war expenditure was equal to Britain's if not greater, If we added together all the money spent on armaments for all the major nations of the world between those dates we arrive at a total of about £50,000,000,000. These figures do not count the money spent . between the years 1914 and 1918. The total varies, but it is the considered opinion of experts that the cost of the Great War was about £80,000,000.000 all told. The total, therefore, since 1912 is at least £1,300,000.000,000.

One has no need to point out that a sum of £1,300.000,000,000 that has been spent on war and preparations for war. on armies and navies and the like during the past quarter of a century or so might have been better spent. One can perhaps appreciate Mr. Baldwin’s contention the better by considering how the money might have been spent. Part of this money would have provided a new house for every family tn Europe. Russia, the United States of America, not to lention Australia and New Zealand. Every house could have been provided with furniture worth £3OO and four acres of land. There would have been even then enough money over to provide a million-pound library for every city in the world as well as ft hospital worth one and a half millions and a university worth three millions. There would still be a huge balance left over, more than enough, in fact, to pay the wages, at five per cent., of a quarter of a million teachers and a similar number of hospital nurses. That done the remainder of the money would have been sufficient to buy up all France, Belgium, the South American Republics and all the railway systems of the world.

There are so many ways of looking at the money spent on armaments, it fe difficult to get a true perspective of the best way that the money could be used in the best interests of the world as a whole. Another way of looking at the matter is that if every country agreed not to spend money on armaments it would be possible to raise the general standard of living of the entire civilised world by a minimum of 10 per cent. This may seem a small amount, but a statesman who did such a thing would have worked a miracle. But in another way it means that the larger nations of the world could each devote anything from £100,000.000 a year to £400,000,000 a year on wars against disease, poverty, slums and the like. Instead of this it is taking at the moment the whole time labour of some 30.000,000 people of the world to pro duce the means to pay the annual cost of wars past present and future. Nearly three-quarters of the taxes are spent for this purpose. Britain alone has to find £6OO a minute for past wars, and. all told, a sum of £l5OO a minute for everything connected with war.

“Could you inform me if S. Watene, the New Zealand League team captain, toured Australia with the Maori AU Blacks last year?" asks “C.F.” [lVatene has never gained u place in a New Zealand Maori Rugby Union representative team. He made hfe name as a Rugby League player, and has been playing under the League banner for eome years.]