A BACKGROUND TO THE NEWS

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 105, 28 January 1938, Page 9

A BACKGROUND TO THE NEWS

Sir Harold MacMichae) Sir Harold Mac Michael, Governor of Tanganyika and the new High Commissioner of Palestine, has gone to take up his post. Sir Harold Alfred Mac Michael, who is 55, entered the Sudan Political Service in 1*305 and served there for more than 30 years. He was successively Inspector in the provinces of Kordofan. Blue Nile and Khartoum. During the Great War lie was Political and Intelligence Officer with the Expeditionary Force which reoccupied Da fur in 1916. He was awarded the D.S.O. and was mentioned i" dispatches. Later he was appointed Assistant Civil Secretary in the Sudan and in 1926 became Civil Secretary. In 1934 he was appointed Governor and Coinmander-iu-Chief of Tanganyika Territory. In a speech in 1936 he said that it would be "insane surrender” on the part of the British Government to transfer the Tanganyika mandate to any Power likely to uso it for military purposes or air bases. Sr Harold has written a number of books on Near Eastern topics, including a history of the Arabs in the Sudan and a work on the tribes of Northern and Central Kordofan. He was educated at King’s Lynn and Bedford Schools and Magdalene College, Cambridge. The post of High Commissioner for Palestine carries a salary of £4500, with a duty allowance of £l5OO, the same as for Tanganyika territory. Herr Hitler Water colours painted by Herr Hitler when he was an unemployed house painter and decorator, have sold for £1670 each. Adolf Hitler was a German Austrian of the middle class, a native of Braunau, close to the border of Bavaria. “Whether from delicate health or in dolence,” says an authority, “Hitlei failed in his studies at school, and consequently, in spite of artistic talent, was unable to get admission to an academy of art or to tin architectural school.” He was eventually forced to ply the trade of a mason, but he thoroughly hated his work and the men with whom he had been forced to cast his lot. It was in Vienna, where he worked, that he became a bitter enemy of Socialism and also of the Jews. Those who knew him accounted him “queer.” He liked to talk at random, but did not seem somehow to “fit in," and he lived, la fact, a rather isolated life. As he had moved to Munich in 1912, he fought in- the German Army during the war, was promoted to a corporalship, and awarded the iron cross. After the war, his health impaired, by gaspoisoning, he devoted most of his time and leisure to politics, and helped to organise a little group (he was number seven of it) which eventually became the National Socialist Party (the Nazis). In 1923 he took part in the abortive Ludendorff plot to overthrow the Government, and suffered imprisonment in a fortress as a result, during which period he wrote “My Struggle,” now considered the German political Bible. Herr Hitler is an example of the power of oratory over the multitude — especially in a time of discontent. He crystallised Germany’s thoughts of return to Power out of the depths of defeat. He became the mouthpiece of the whole nation, and by 1933 he was the most powerful man in Germany, the complete leader of the nation: & An illustrated British weekly 1 has printed some of Herr Hitler’s paintings in colour. They are mainly scenes of villages, some of them depicting the ruins of war. Imperial Chemical Industries Lord McGowan is resigning the managing direetorshipNof Imperial Chemical Industries, but will remain chairman of the combine. Imperial Chemical Industries Limited is a great combine which controls a large number of other concerns, the chief of which are British Copper Manufacturers.- British Dyestuffs Corporation, Brunner Mond, and Com pany, Cassel Cyanide Company, Cast-ner-Kellner Alkali Company. Excelsoir Motor Radiator Company, Imperial Chemicals Insurance, Kjynoch Limited, Nobel- (Australasia) Limited, Noble’s Explosives' Company, Sedgwick Gunpowder Company, and Welsbach Light Company. Its authorised capital is £75,000,000. and its chief productions are acids, alkali. ammonia,- artificial leather, chemicals. cycles and motor cycles, detonators, dyestuffs, explosives, fertilisers, lime, non-ferrous metals, and safe-ty-fuses. ■ • The first chairman, and indeed the instigator of the combine, was the late Lord Melchett (better known as Sir Alfred Mond). Lord McGowan (he was Sir Harry McGowan before being raised to the peerage last year), is 63 years old. A native of Glasgow, he joined Nobel’s Explosives Limited, at the age of 15. Twenty-six years later he was appointed a director. He was knighted in 1918. He is also a director of the Midland Bank and General Motors. Upper Silesia All Jewish-owned hotels have been closed in Upper Silesia. Silesia is divided into the two provinces of Upper and Lower Silesia, two provinces of Germany. Upper Silesia has an area of 3749 square miles, aud a population of about 1,400,000. Lower Silesia has an area of 10,277 square miles and a population over 3,000,000. Before the Great War, Silesia was the largest province of Prussia, but by the Treaty of Versailles, a part of Eastern Silesia was ceded to Poland and a portion of Upper Silesia to Czechoslovakia; while provision was made to allocate certain districts in Upper Silesia by plebiscite. In 1921. when the vote was taken, 700,000 votes were cast for union with Germany and nearly 470,000 for Poland, but in spite of that a district of 1241 square miles was transferred to Poland with a population of about 900,000. Tiie boundary between Poland and. Germany is an irregular line passing through a crowded industrial regidn where the population is rather evenly divided between Germans and Poles. To draw so irregular a line through a highly developed industrial country of mixed population is to invite endless trouble in the future. Tlie allegiances of the two nationalities are very hard to determine, for they depend not alone upon race, language and nationality, but also upon economic opportunity and cultural advantages, particularly schools, which are of higher quality under German administration. Trouble springs also from tlie uneconomic division of coal properties, industrial plants, cities and the country populations naturally related to them'. Iron and coal mines abound, and they play a large part in both Polish aud German economy.