POSTSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 123, 26 May 1945, Page 6

POSTSCRIPTS

Chronicle and Comment

BY PERCY FLAGE

When I die I want, my tombstone to read: "I Told You So, Dammie!" — H. G. Wells. » « * The famous Lady Hamilton's necklace was recently bought in London for £750. The necklace was made of emeralds, topazes, amethysts, sapphires, and pear]s. ' ~ «■ * # • Dear Ruapehu, Will you please decide Whether you will belch Or'just rumble inside. E.C. •» ■ •» * GOLF STICK. Sergeant Malcolm Woods, one of the six Australian prisoners of war who were liberated from a gaol at Rangoon, has a grim souvenir _of his period of confinement. It is a golf stick, an iron, with which Japanese guards used to beat the prisoners. Woods said \he Japanese had two of these clubs, but broke one over a prisoner. RED TAPE. The American 30th Division overran a city bank containing about 280,000,000 marks in notes and silver, and also considerable art treasures. It also captured carloads of red tape, which is used for armbands by the Nazis. Russian liberated prisoners used the tape to cut out red stars, which they hung on buildings. i -* * -X- * COSMIC RAYS. Sitting completely surrounded by water inside the "Negress with Blue Eyes," a French savant has been studying the mystery of cosmic tays. The "Negress with Blue Eyes" is the picturesque name given to a black tower with blue windows erected at \he observatory at Meudon, near Paris. The tower is filled with 50 tons of water, inside which has been fitted a tiny cabin where Professor Dauvilliers, Professor of Cosmic Physics at the College of France, can carry out delicate experiments on mysterious cosmic rays which bombard the earth. He thinks that after the war the V-2 may be used to benefit instead of harm mankind by providing valuable scientific data on cosmic rays. He is even dreaming of the time when it could be adapted to "take a party of four scientists far into the stratosphere to study cosmic rays and other phenomena. « ' # * RED CROSS PARCELS. Because almost all British Dominions' war prisoners held by the Germans have been liberated, over 7,000.000 Red Cross parcels containing 35,000 tons of food are surplus, according to the "Sunday Express." Parcels costing £3,500,000 are on the high seas or in warehouses in Britain, Canada, Lisbon, Barcelona, Marseilles, Toulon, Geneva, and Gothenburg. A Red Cross official said that plans for disposal are being considered. About 2,000,000 parcels awaiting disposal are in Britain and Canada. The contents are not perishable, and parcels will be useful as a flexible reserve. Distressed British civilians in the south of France have already received some. A Portuguese steamer at Lisbon is already loading the first cargo for transport to Rome. * » * INFORMATION. "Is it true that the late Dr. William Temple was the first of England's 96 Primates to be cremated," writes "Kentist." f'When did cremation come into being years ago?" (1) Dr. William Temple's ashes were .interred at a private ceremony in the Cloister Garth of Canterbury Cathedral. (2) Cremation was practised by many nations and races in- ancient times. (3) Sir Henry Thompson, Queen Victoria's surgeon, formed the Cremation Society in 1874. (4) Dr. William Price, a Welshman, cremated the body of his child in the open. A nationwide outcry resulted in his trial and acquittal at Cardiff Assizes, Mr. Justice Stephens declaring cremation legal. First cremation under the auspices of the Cremation Society took place at Woking on March 20, 1885. -x- * * BALLADE OF VICTORY LOAN. My dreary days are full of dread; In sleepless nights I'm racked with pain. No comfort comes to me in bed. No former friend will ever deign To ease the grief and bitter bane Which make me sigh and weep and groan. , The sky resounds with this refrain: "I am the man who shirked the loan." I think I would be better dead. I know that soon I'll be insane. Despair, remorse, in me are wed. No joy will come to me again, No peace for me! I try in vain To close my ears against the tone Which voices of the damned sustain. I am the man who shirked the loan. My fires of agony are fed With memories which never wane, With thoughts of how our soldiers bled, And how they fought with might and main, And won their way through stress and strain; But all I do is sadly groan, And sob excuse which sounds inane, I am the man who shirked the loan. Envoy. New Zealanders, in your disdain, > I sit with Satan on his throne, In misery for my. chicane. . I am the man who shirked the loan. LEO FANNING. * * * RUHR CABBAGES. The only things the Ruhr produces today are cabbages. A British United Press correspondent who flew over what was once tne world's greatest centre of heavy industry and coal mining, says: "Towns and factories are nothing but chaos of obliteration. Twisted, rusted filigrees of marshalling yards, where trucks are tossed about as a tired child might toss his toys away, stretch out in the sun, with the grass already growing over ttfem. "Synthetic oil plants have almost disappeared under waves of earth tossed up by bombs which fell so close that the craters lap over one another. "Everywhere there is rot, rust, and decay. The great Rhine with nothing but gaunt walls stretching to the sky. "Towns look like ghost towns, barges lie half under water. "The Krupps works lie dreaming in the sun. "Nothing stirs in the ruins, not a single man can be seen within the boundaries, where less than two years ago 77,000 men and women daily went to work." * * * LEFT HIS PYJAMAS. | Two Japanese generals are believed to have had a narrow squeak bri Easter Monday. In fact, one left without his pants—his pyjama pants. The general, it is told, had been in (the habit of travelling in the best Samurai tradition —in an improvised ! chair borne by four sweating natives. After the Australian artillery had shelled the Japanese out of Yamini village, his bearers, thoroughly fed-up, beat it. When an Australian patrol reached the spot, the general had taken the hint and gone. He had not taken, however, crates of pigs and fowls and a flagon of liquor. These Jap generals do themselves pretty well. The last one scared I out left behind a bottle of whisky, a telephone excharjge, and all the paraphernalia of a headquarters—and the pyjamas, of course, silken pyjamas in gorgeous technicolour. such as only, a Japanese general would have the audacity to flaunt. In the action which followed the l shelling or Yamini. the Australians killed "sit least 23 Japs, among them two captains and a lieutenant.