POSTSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 95, 23 April 1945, Page 4

POSTSCRIPTS

Chronicle and Comment BY PERCY FLAGE South Africa has recently registered its 2,000,000,000 th letter to prisoners of war. * * ♦ A touch of the old arrogance appears in Mussolini's latest harangue, at Milan. It must be that failure has gone to his head. * * ';■. *'.■•'-.-.:■ The cost of living in France has risen by 700 per cent, since 1940, ac-1' cording to statistics published in the Paris Press and based on the actual experience of daily life in Paris. ' ■*■ *-...'* -.:; LISTEN. ' Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" has been translated into some 30 different languages, "including Yiddish, Gaelic, Turkish, Persian, and Polynesian-r-the last intended for the Maoris by an indulgent British Government." • B.A. * * * INFORMATION: In" reply to "Barrack's" ideas concerning Mandalay: Mandalay was, before the Japanese occupation, a town of nearly 150,000, and a great Buddhist centre. The climate is , healthy and relatively dry. Mandalay was, with Rangoon, one of the great rice centres of the world, the 12,890,000 acres of rice culture in Burma producing an annual crop of nearly 5,000,000 tons. Sesame, ground nuts, cotton, maize; and tobacco are all produced in the Mandalay district. Moreover, the river port of Mandalay was busy with the shipment of petroleum, lead, tin, tungsten, zinc, silver, iron ore, and salt. TERRIFIC TASK. It is hoped that the target of 719,000 bomb-damaged houses repaired in the London area will be reached by the end of April. . This total will include 90 per cent, of "repairable" houses damaged during the flying-bomb attacks last summer. bFresh damage has been done in southern England since the programme was started. According to the Health Minister, the "work ahead of us grew so much in July, August, September, and October that it is enough to daunt any man." In London 21,000 houses have been requisitioned to accommodate more than 100,000 people, in addition to 80,000 who have been billeted * * * VERSE BUILDING. t R live P 1 a geographical age, says 1.m.h., and one m which immigration makes a constant topic of interest and conversation; and, strangely enough, this, too, makes subject matter, for the scribe who has an urge to tax his ingenuity in verse building, and to estimate his powers of whimsical wordturnmg.^The following may be termed apt, if nothing else, and serves its turn as a humorous tit-bit for the agile-minded:--Brewers should to MALTA go. Fools to the rock of SCILLY; ISLEShOUId S6ek the FR*ENDI# Furriers'go to CHILE; £^k el?r? tothe UNITED STATES. -Old; maids to the ISLE OF MAN: Gardeners-should fly to BOTANY Shoeblacks tQ^JA#AN. "Ui^\ And little crying 3» ■ - QiJMi mhtly spoil..Qur^fest. -*-■■ SiJQUId be sent to BABYLON ~-X::^ To LAPLAND d^Hb -BREST' Z [7 LIKE A GIANT 'Flggk. -^ c * . „i£ Ge"£ an one-man submarin^ coin! piete with .operator, was hauled^shbre on a line like a giant fish by JapaneseA^ ric ™n sadlers.on the coastal edge of the Maritime Alps. s Kie German operator mistqok the harbour in our hands for a safe haven and started coming in, writes a "Sun" war correspondent. w Tu°S ps on shore'grabbed rifles and rushed down to meet him. The German realised his error, and then, seeing yellow-faced soldiers on . shore £o,?« er Kd *>? d wandered into the Pacific by mistake. He refused to believe they were the enemy, and indicated with German words and actions his desire that they push him out of the harbour For reply, JapaneseAmericans dived into the water, attached a rope to the stern of the submarine, and, yelling and cheering, they pulled him to dry land. • t„"? c«. W« s£ uite Wdignant and refused to get off the submarine," one soldier told me.. 'So we got some carWpetrers and literally cut him off.*- TtaT^ldiers also captured a.GermariOs-boat. it broke down oust-off : the shore and when the soldiers, started firing with small-arms, its^trew signalled surrender. ...;■/; : - - ° -■ 9- ■