RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 136, 4 March 1940, Page 6

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights On Current Events (By Kickshaws.) A film star says it is just as Lough to make love on the screen as it is in tlie drawing-room. We doubt it. # # A well-known actor is said to carry his make-up in a paper bag. We presume it is a face-saving invention. £ One effect of the war, says a clergyman, is the appearance of threepenny pieces in the collection. The congregation. we assume, is prepared to give its bit. “Regarding the query who is the oldest person born in New Zealand, it may interest your readers to know that some years ago those attending the Wellington Supreme Court were astounded to hear a witness state that there were 140 years’ difference between himself and his brother,” says “Longevity”. “When au explauatiou was asked, the man stated that his father had married young. The first son had died in infancy. The father subsequently married again, when be was an old man. The witness was the son of this late marriage. Can readers beat that?” The admission on the part of a witness that he had buried a sum of money by the roadside for safety, is a reminder of a farmer named "William Felty, of Harrisburg, U.S.A. This individual saved £lOOO. He buried the lot in a tin can at a time when things seemed uncertain in the banking world in America. That was all right. Unfortunately, he forgot where he had buried the money. He looked for 10 years without success. Comparatively recently he found his cache. Unfortunately, the tin can had rusted, the paper money was mouldy and rotten, and most of it valueless. Tin cans are not suitable as containers for buried money. The average tin can rusts through in under a year. The oldfashioned oak chest, or its equivalent, in totara is serviceable enough. Nevertheless, the container may outlast the paper money it contains. An old woman in Albania, for example, carefully buried some paper money in 1914 just before the Great War. When she presented the notes to a bank in 1934 she was told that the country that had issued the notes had disappeared, and they were of no value.

The vicissitudes that occur when one starts to hide valuables was emphasized in the case of a certain thief who had made a good haul of goldeu sovereigns. He decided to hide the money behind the panelling of a crosschannel boat. It had proved perfectly safe on previous occasions. Subsequently the thief found himself spending a time in prison, on a subsequent charge. The moment he was liberated he took a ticket to France by the channel boat; in question. To his horror he found that in his enforced absence the steamer had been completely redecorated and overhauled. The panelling no longer existed, as the entire wall had beeu removed. A more fortunate iucident took place near Sydney. Some boy scouts found in some dense bush a bottle which they thought contained directions by which to seek their associates. The bottle, however, was found to contain 500 golden sovereigns minted mostly in 1.910. A German had hidden his savings in 1914, fearing that he was going to be interned. He had returned since the war to search.

It would appear that the desire to hoard is to be found iu more people than might be imagined. Actually, the amount of hidden money and other valuables is far greater than is usually imagined. Discrepancies in the amount of gold and currency iu the United States of America reveals that at least £00,000.000 cannot be accounted for. In fact, it is estimated that this is only a small part of the millions that lie hidden away in various secret hiding places. Since the discovery of America in 1492, gold to the value of £4,000,000,000 has been mined. Out of this total a sum amounting to £1,000,000 has disappeared, allowing for known losses at sea and elsewhere. If one could locate all the big and little unofficial hoards of gold they would tot up roughly to this figure. The £60,000,000 hidden by Americans is only part of the total. French peasants are said to own £50,000,000 of it. and India contains vast boards dating back long before 1492. * * »

India’s gold hoards are in themselves something of a problem. For the last 1000 years or more the gold of the world has been flowing into India, but very little has ever come out again. Some 25 years ago the late Lord Cable led a campaign to discover where these riches had got to in India. The religious scruples of Mohammedans regarding putting money out at interest has increased the difficulties. Various estimates have been made as to the value of the gold hidden away by various Indian princes. Nevertheless, nothing definite has ever transpired. Some idea of what has been happening may be had from the fact that at least one Indian prince admits a lorry laden with gold to ills underground vaults every year. The driver stops the engine, leaving lorry and gold for all time underground. Indeed, financial experts are said to discourage the liberation of India’s hidden gold, because it would upset the world markets hopelessly. * * *

There are many amusing stories told regarding the habit of the Boers fo hoard gold. One such farmer, indeed, brought a bag of sovereigns into a bank at Ladysmith because he was afraid of trouble. He asked bow much the bank would charge to keep the money for him. When he was told that the bank would pay him interest every year for looking after his sovereigns he became so suspicious ho took the money away and buried it. It is a sad fact, of course, that buried gold pays no interest. At normal rates of compound interest a sum of money doubles itself every 15 years or so. A sovereign placed at compound interest in a bank will be worth 16 times its original value in 60 years. That is, of course, one will be given 16 bits of paper reputed to be worth one pound each in place of the golden sovereign previously deposited.

"Could you please publish in your column the address to which gloves, etc., for members of the Air loree are to be sent?” asks “M H. ’

|The honorary secretary, Wellington Metropolitan Patriotic Committee, kindiv advises as follows: "All garments knitted for Air Force men for which Ute knitters supplied their own wool should be sent to ‘Air Force Relations Committee. Marine Engineers’ Inst Bldg., Aitken Street, Wellington.’ Garments knitted in colours other than air force blue for which knitters supplied their own wool should be sent to local patriotic committee or to the patriotic committee in the nearest large centre. Garments knitted from wool supplied by local patriotic committees must be returned to those committees.]