POSTSCRIPTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 129, 2 June 1945, Page 6

POSTSCRIPTS

Chronicle and Comment

BY PERCY FLAGE

Character is like a will and reputation is its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the will is the real ; thing.—Abraham Lincoln. ri Spanish budget for 1945, as approved hy Franco, * foresees expenses of £80,000.000 for the services and pensions, as against £12,800,000 for education and £20,000,000 for public works. ' •::-* # ! The 26 French Courts of Jusiieei with only 623 Judges, as against 2200 . 1 before the war, have already passed ! 2500 sentences, including 300 death ' sentences, on traitors and oollaborat- ! tionists; 18.700 cases are being invests i gated; 50,000 cases in all are to be *ried- .x- * * He who gives a-child a treat Makes joy-bells ring an Heaven* And he who gives a child a home Builds a palace in Kingdom come. —John Masefield. * * * INTIMATION. Dear Percy Flage,—l have come across-the expression GJ. or Gl (one? in American magazines a good deal lately. Could you or one of your readers tell me which it is and the literal transcription? We're having quite a controversy, over it; some say that it is Government Issue and some say it is Grade One. All the best to C6lumn Eight^-Yours G.I. means Government Issue. STALKEBS STALKED. Action of an unexpected kind wai experienced by Australians on Tarakan in Borneo lastf month, when, in thick country, a section on patrol observed movement ahead. The supposed enexny was carefully and skilfully stalked, and turned out to be a large ape. Comedy threatened! to turn to tragedy when it was discovered that the patrol itself was being stalked by a very real Japanese. He was dealt with. « » * ANSWER. Dear Percy Flage,—"Curious" was asking through your column the names of the actors, and the' actor who took the leading role, in the film "ftuggles of Red Gap." The leading role was taJaen by Charles Laughton, who played the part of an English butler in the service of an American family. The part of his American employer was taken by Charles Ruggles. Roland Young and Zazu Pitts were also in the cast. The rest of the players have slipped my memory, I'm afraid. • Hoping this will settle the argument among "Curious" and his friends.— Yours truly. GRASS-WIDOW. * «- «■ EAVESDROPPER. A story going thJe rounds of the . American 9th Army concerns Private Melvin Wittenberg, who was in an observation post when three German tanks pulled up near by. The Americans could hear the crews talking, and Wittenberg, whose German was supposed to be good, was told by his platoon commander to listen carefully and find out what they were saying. "Those guys are arguing, sir," he/ finally decided. "What about?" the officer asked. "I don't know, sir," Wittenberg replied. "But I thought you studied German at school." "I did, sir, but only for two years, and those guys are using third-year words.1' ■::■ * * BATTLE MARKS. Alter tills wai', monuments will no doubt mark the sites of the greatest battles in history. The Russians have already planned several. The "Soros, which commemorated the Battle erf Marathon, is also a great mound now covered with grass and bushes, fit is 120 feet high. Under it lie the banes of 192 Athenians who fell fighting the Persians on August 12, 490 BO 1, . Another Greek battle monument is the famous £ion of Chaeronea, on the spot where over a thousand Athenian* died in a vair* effort to check the onslaught of Philip of Macedonia in 338 'B C 'The Angel of Cawnpore marks the site of the well into which the infamous Nana Sahib threw the bodies of 200 English women and children massacred on July 15, 1857. At Salem Bridge; in' Massachusetts, is a plain stone monument which marks the spot where the first armed resistance to the British forces tooK place in February, 1775. The stone bears an inscription describing this skirmish between two nations now firm allies. __ O.Jc . ! THE WORLD'S DARKNESS., In the world's darkness, in this cay« of night, ■ . Where all men walfc as strangers; m : the gloom ' . Of each frail soul's despair, a feeble light . • Is faintly- burning—burning an the tomb _ . ' Of Man's enlightened days. There s not one hour, . Life's blackest and Lifes worst, but still will shine That feeble lamp of hope. As from a tower , ■ j Its thin, weak rays are cast across th« brine , ■ Of the dark-raging seas, and broken. ships Like driftwood borne before the howling gale, Creep safe to. port Then gently from the lips Of fearful men who steered upon the deep, You heai- God's praises. Who shall say we fail, Though through the night the mournful nations weep? —K. Collopy. •::• # -a TOOK £4000 FROM BOOKIES. With his pockets filled with banknotes, Private Gordon Roll made a spectacular return to racing after an absence of five years when he entered the ring at Windsor with a bodyguard of Australian soldiers who were fellow-prisoners with him in a war prisoners' camp in Silesia. Private Roll is a son of the late Sir Cecil Roll, master builder, and shared in his father's half a million estate in 1938 at the age of 23. Private Roll left hospital 48 hours previously on 42 days' leave, and his party determined to make a day of it. ' He i-eceived a cheer from the bookmakers, when he entered the ring, but he took £4000 from them. He1 splashed his money about liberally, including a handful of notes for a waitress who served him with a ninepenny sandwich. The Australians told how Private Roll on a 700-mile trek from Lunisdorf hell camp to Hanover, carried one of his fellow-prisoners many miles on his back. Fourteen of 4000 prisoners died en route. * * * INDICTABLE CRIMES. . Wartime crime in London reached its highest peak during the blitz in 1940-41 and the flying-bomb attacks , in 1944, it is revealed in a report of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police (Sir Philip Game). . Indictable crimes last year totalled 103,804, or 13.8 per cent higher than the previous year. There were 14,512 cases of house and shop-breaking. This type of crime increased markedly soon after the advent of the flyingbombs, but the suggestion that the in- . crease was due to the easier entry of premises damaged by blast is not confirmed. The increase generally was more marked in areas suffering least from bombing. More than 6000 cases of looting were reported. Scotland Yard has been unable, to suggestions of some newspapers that the black-market is being controlled by a vast criminal organisa- ; tion all over Britain. Only two of the ; 18 murders in the London area- last year remain unsolved. The worst age group for crime was that between 15 ; and 18 years, which, it is suggested, ■ is partially due to the unsettling effect ;of temporary employment while (awaiting call-up