A BACKGROUND TO THE NEWS

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 55, 29 November 1937, Page 9

A BACKGROUND TO THE NEWS

Baron Von Cramm Baron Gottfried von Cramm, the great German tenni s player and second ranking amateur tennis player in the world, has stated that in five years he intends to enter the German diplomatic service. Standing six feet tall, Baron von Cramm is one of seven sons of an Oxford-educated, tennis-loving Junker. He used to roll the courts for his father and brothers on the family estate at Oelber, near the little village of Nettlingen, in Hanover. He started to play tennis at the age of nine years. By that time he had attracted the attention of two of his father’s guests. Roman Najuch and Otto Froitzheim. At 19 he entered the University of Berlin as a student of law (his family wanted him to go in for 'diplomacy), and the exclusive Rot-Weiss Club as a student of tennis. He was soon spending most of his allowance on tennis lessons from a professional, Robert Kleinschroth. At 21 he married his childhood friend, Baroness Lisa von Dobeneck, who became one of his most useful mentors in the game. Recently von Cramm divorced his wife. In order to achieve distinction as a tennis player, he abandoned the law for a tennis career. He eschewed tobacco and alcohol, had 11 hours’ sleep every night, and had long hours of practice with the professional coach. He has independent means. In 1931 he won his first big event, the Greek singles championship. In 1934 he reached the last four at Wimbledon, and became Germany’s greatest hope in the Davis Cup matches. He has several times put Germany into the inter-zone final; he has played 74 Davis Cup matches, losing only 14, five of them in the first season. He has ' defeated every leading player in the world, and has been French and German champion. Great player that he is, he is also recognised as by far the most gracious loser in the game. His court manners are the admiration of everybody who has seen him play. Von Cramm speaks French and Italian and a reasonably fluent English. He likes dancing, hockey, swimming, hiking, the cinema, and Wagnerian music. Harry Bridges Figuring very prominently in the industrial troubles of the United States of America is Harry Bridges. It is said of him that he owes his prominence in American industrial life to his enemies, particularly William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper magnate. The bitterness of unceasing attacks on him has gained him more friends than enemies. “Privately and publicly labelled as a Communist, an alien agitator, a ruthless doctrinaire, a wrecker with a lust for power, he has become in three years the bogy man of the Pacific.”

In the previous 34 years of his life he was completely obscure. Born at Kensington, Australia, in 1900, he was christened Alfred Renton Bridges. His father, an estate agent there, explains that his son was called Renton, but “this name was a bit too much for his American pate,” who dubbed him

Harry. At 17, after a sound schooling, he obtained work as a clerk in a Melbourne firm. From there he worked on a ship plying between Melbourne and Tasmania and was twice shipwrecked. Shipping as a seaman for San Francisco, he was legally admitted to the United States on April 12, 1930. For the next two years he shipped from United States ports. About two years later he married a Scottish woman who had come with her parents to the United States when she was 12. He gave up the sea and settled down in San Francisco as a longshoreman. Life was not easy for him for some time, and there were occasions when he had to go on relief. To-day he is paid 73 dollars a week as Pacific Coast , district president of the International Longshoremen’s Association. “Nervous, quick, wary, intolerant, he is scornful of the Press, both right and left, and ignores any questions he does not choose to answer.” Russian Submarines

Soviet Russian submarines are reported to have been taken overland in parts to Vladivostok, where they are being assembled by day and night. This is regarded as Russia’s reply to Japan massing troops on the Manchnkuo and Mongolian frontiers. This is no new thing. Soviet surface ships being admittedly weak in numbers and lighting quality, this vigorous submarine base of Vladivostok, at the end of the trans-Siberian railway and on the shore of Japan’s most personal sea, becomes practically the total sum of Soviet naval strength in Pacific waters. Next to the air fleet, capable, it is stated, of attacking the cities of Japan, the submarine squadron is potentially the most significant weapon of the Soviet Union in the Far East.

The importance of these submarines in the event of Japan and Russia being involved in a war, is said to reside in their ability to tie up Japanese shipping and transports, and thus hamper the landing and supplying of armies on the Asiatic mainland. It is assumed that the Soviet submarines would have to operate at and beyond the five exits of the Sea of Japan. These are known as the Strait of Tartary, the Strait of La Perpuse, the Strait of Tsugani, the Straits of Shimonoseki and Bungo, and the twin Straits of Tsushima. Vladivostok

Vladivostok is a town and harbour of Siberia. It stands on the southern end of what is called the Muraviev Peninsula between the Amur and Ussuri bays. It is the terminus of the trans-Siberian railway. The town was founded in 1860, and does a considerable trade. There is a fine harbour, but an ice-breaker is required to keep open a channel for three months in the year. Its old name was Port May; its present one means “ruler of the east.”

In 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War. the Russians used it as a naval base. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the formation of the Bolshevist Government, Vladivostok became of great importance for the Allies as the only base for the Czechoslovak army, and it was occupied by British. Japanese. Americans, and Italians. After the Czechs had been withdrawn the Japanese remained, but later they agreed to withdraw. The population is about 100,000.