A BACKGROUND OF THE NEWS

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 262, 3 August 1939, Page 7

A BACKGROUND OF THE NEWS

Lord Howe Island A proiwsal has been made in the English aviation magazine, “The Aeroplane,” that Lord Howe Island should be fortified and equipped as an aircraft station, primarily for defence purposes, hut also for emergency use by commercial Hying boats proceeding to and fro between Australia and New Zealand. Lord Howe Island, as was pointed out in the article, is too far off the transtasman air route to be of normal use in the commercial service. It lies 436 miles north-east of Sydney and some 400 miles from the Australian coast. It is 700 miles to the north-west of the most northerly tip of New Zealand. The island is of 3220 acres, and measures about 5A miles by one mile, being well wooded and reaching an altitude of nearly 3000 feet at the southern end. It is volcanic in origin and is fringed on one side by a coral reef. Settled By Maoris Lord Howe Island was discovered in 1788, and was first settled by a party of Maoris in 1853. Later a colony was formed from Sydney. It was made constitutionally a dependency of New South Wales, and it is included in King, one of the electorates of Sydney. A board of control in Sydney administers the affairs of the island and supervises its palm seed industry. When a census was taken in June, 1933, the population of Lord Howe Island was 161. Its land belongs to the Crown, and is occupied rent free on sufferance- The climate is mild and the rainfall abundant, but only about 300 acres are suitable for cultivation. As a possible strategic point it has advantages which are shared also by Norfolk Island, which lies some 400 miles to rhe east of Lord Howe, but in a more northerly position. The two groups maybe said to command the northern entrance to the Tasman Sea. Girl Guides’ Jamboree At Godollo, a market town and beautiful summer resort of Hungary, about 20 miles from Budapest, the Girl Guides organization is holding its first world jamboree. There are 4000 girls present, including 500 guides from the British Empire, of whom a few are Australians and New Zealanders. The Girl Guide organization was a spontaueous offshoot of the Boy Scout movement. The call for such tin organization was so insistent that in 1910 Miss Agues Baden-Powell co-operated with her brother, the Boy Scout Chief, in devising a scheme. In 1915 Lady BadenPowell took part and was api>ointed Girl Guide Commissioner for Sussex. Two years later she became Chief Commissioner. The movement then went ahead by leaps and bounds- In 1918 Lady Baden Powell became permanent Chief Guide, two years later Princess Mary accepted the presidency, ami in 1923 the movement was granted a Royal Charter. In America, where the members are known as Girl Scouts, not Guides, the first troop was established by Mrs. Juliette Low. a friend of the Badeu-Powclls, at Savannah in 1912. The movement has now spread throughout the world. Although the present gathering may be the first official jamboree, the first “world assembly” of guides was held in Foxlease Park in the New Forest in 1924, when representatives of nearly every .European nation were present. Safety For London’s Maw If it be true as announced in England that, the Port of Loudon has been so equipped and organized that its business can be carried on “in all circumstances,” one of the greatest problems facing the metropolis in the event of war has (at any rate, theoretically) been solved. The Port of Loudon, broadly speaking. covers both banks of the Thames, and in some cases extends a considerable distance inland from the river, from the Poo] of London to Tilbury and Gravesend—a distance of more than 20 miles as the river winds. Included in that area, of course, are a large number of privately-owned warehouses, factories, wharves and geueral industrial facilities; but, taken as a whole, it is the domain of the Port of Loudon authority—a vast, complex city lu itself, with its own police force and its multitudes of facilities for the handling of ships and cargoes from the seven sensThe Port is London’s maw. Should it lie blocked or made inoperative by enemy attack, London’s millions would have to be fed and supplied from South and West Coast ports, which would throw a tremendous strain on railway transport facilities west of Loudon, not to mention the congestion which would result from diverting sea traffic from the busiest port in the world to ports which, themselves, are far from idle.

Huge Annual Trade Throughout the 24 hours of every day and night, shiploads and trainloads of foodstuffs are converging on London from almost every point of the compass. Not only is the consumption of the British capital itself enormous, but London is also a clearing-house and re-distribution centre. Thus, it is a common thing for fish landed, say, at Brlxham, a few miles from Torquay, to be purchased for Torquay consumption in London ; or for vegetables from Cornwall to travel to Covent Garden before being finally sold retail and consutited somewhere else in the country. But the quantity of necessaries arriving in London by road and rail each day and night, hour by hour, is small Ix'side that which floats up the sluggish grey waters of Bather Thames In 1937 more than 31,000,000 tons of vessels arrived at the Bort, of London the cargoes they brought, being valued at round about £1.000,000 a day. A very large part of this total represented foodstuffs. A Vulnerable Target

In spite of all that has been done to provide air-raid shelters for 30,000 and more dock workers, special moorings for ships and an interlocking system of dock operation in case of damage to any particular part, it cannot be gainsaid that the port has many vulnerable features. In the first place, it is within easy reach of the Continent. Secondly, the docking system is such that most of the basins where ships are discharged and cargoes handled are reached through locks from the river, along canals which extend an appreciable distance “Inland.”

The blocking or damaging of these lock entrances would be a serious matter, either bottling up large quantities of shipping or releasing the water on which the ships are floated when the tide is low in the river itself.

Whatever precautions may be taken in dockland to maintain some sort of system in time of aerial attack, the principal hope of immunity lies in aerial and anti-aircraft defences. At all costs the air above the Thames mouth would be kept clear to that commerce might continue to come and