A BACKGROUND TO THE NEWS

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 175, 21 April 1937, Page 9

A BACKGROUND TO THE NEWS

The G-Men An American G-man has died from injuries received when he was shot by suspected bank-robbers. Because of lack of co-operation between State and Federal police, Mr. John Edgar Hoover, director of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, organised a force of special agents, carefully selected and rigorously trained, and empowered beyond the ordinary scope of police detectives. The name “G-men,” standing for Government men, was first applied to them by the notorious gangster "Machine-gun” Kelly. In the course of about live years these men, skilled in criminal investigation, use of arms, l.aw and law-court usage, and every imaginable subject that might assist them in bringing criminals to book, practically exterminated the large-scale gangsters who had risen to power with the bootlegging and kindred industries of the prohibition era. To-day there are some 700 G-men, and the bureau, which was notoriously backward and demoralised when Mr. Hoover took over in 1924, is now one of the world's most up-to-date centres of criminal investigation. Oxford University Oxford University has issued an appeal for funds. Oxford dates back, as a city, to the beginning of the tenth century, but the university started 200 years later. It had no distinct or formal foundation, but grew up gradually as representatives of the early Church, Dominicans, Franciscans, Carmelites, and Benedictines gathered | there. In 1133 the theologian. Robert ! Bullen arrived from Paris, and lectured i there. St. Edmund’s Hall was founded in 1226, University College in 1249, Balliol in 1263, and Merton in the following year. To-day there are some 21 men’s colleges and four women’s, and between 5000 ami 6000 undergraduates. I Sugar

Tro.ops on duty mi Coronation Day will be issued with a sugar ration as | a stimulant. Sugar, which is a soluble carbohydrate, is a valuable producer of I energy, say dietitians. It possesses a 50 per cent, energy content, is readily assimilated, and is valuable from the dietetic point of view as serving to oxidise the animal fats which are themselves tlio most important sources of vitamins .and of energy. Although sugar has not a remarkably high calorie content, its heat-producing value being only 4100 calories a kilogram, compared with butter’s 7950 anil bacon’s 6000, it has the great merit of being easy to handle, compact, and clean. A soldier on parade can very well stow away in his pocket a sugar lump or two. when a rasher of bacon or a pat of butter would be a very different thing. But the stimulant merit is very little higher than that of chocolate. Marchese Marconi The Marchese Marconi, noted Italian physicist, is to attend a world radio convention at. Sydney next year. Guglielmo Marconi, son of an Irishwoman and an Italian, was born at Bologna in 1874; he is now 63. It is more than 40 years since he interested himself in the study of wireless waves. Others had preceded him in this field, but it was Marconi who first devised a practical means of establishing communication by means of wireless. In 1596 he went to England and demonstrated his inrention before Post Office and Government officials. Three years later wireless was first used to save life ,it sea, when the East Goodwin lightship was run down by a passing vessel, and the lifeboats were summoned by a wireless call to the shore station on the South Foreland. Marconi was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1909. He is now a Roman Senator, president of the Italian Academy, and holds many high appointments in the State. He still

retains hits position as the world’s greatest authority oy wireless telegraphy. Dartmoor Prison Dartmoor Prison, where a series ot incidents is reported to have led to stern disciplinary action, is sometimes known a« Princeton Prison. It was originally built for French prisoners in 1809, and was adapted for use as a convict prison in 1850, a purpose for which it has been used ever since. Dartmoor is a high plateau in southwest Devonshire. The higher parts are open, bleak, and wild. Sloping heights rise from the main tableland crested with broken masses of granite. Large parts of the moor are covered with morasses, and head-waters of all the principal streams of Devonshire are found here. The central part of Dartmoor was a royal forest from a date unknown, probably before the conquest. Its woods were formerly more extensive than now, but a few small tracts of dwarf oaks remain in the lower parts. Before 1337 the forest had been granted to Richard, Earl of Cornwall, by Henry 111, and from then on has belonged to the Duchy of Cornwall. The districts immediately surrounding the moor are called the Venville, or Fenfield, districts. Mutiny

A mutiny reported to have taken place on the ship Lackenby was later explained to have been merely an attack ou a donkeyman by a fireman. Mutiny on the high seas, a criminal offence formerly punishable by death, is to-day rare. Short passages and improved working conditions and wages have removed the causes of the frequent outbreaks of the latter days of sail, when it was no uncommon thing for a crew to rise and seize the ship, often murdering the officers. In 1797 the British Fleet at the Nore was seized by the seamen, demanding a revision of the Articles of War. The rising was gradually quelled, aud the ringleaders hanged. Naval and military mutinies are dealt with by courts-martial, aud come under different laws from those governing mercantile marine derelictions of duty. The word, which is now restricted in meaning, formerly included all types of insubordination, whence, of course, its application to the Indian Mutiny Panama. Panama, which has recognised the • Italian Empire, which means it recognises Abyssinia as an Italian possession, has been a republic of Central America since 1903, having declared its independence of Colombia ou November 3 of that year. It has an-area of 33,667 square miles, and a population of about 470,000. It occupies the isthmus of Panama, connecting North and South America, lying between the Caribbean Sen on the north and the Pacific Ocean on the south. The Atlantic coastline is 477 miles long and the Pacific 767.

Of the total area of Panama, fiveeighths are unoccupied, and but a small part of the remainder is properly cultivated. The forest resources are great. The chief exports are bananas and coconuts.