CRAZE FOR SOUVENIRS

Evening Star, Issue 20371, 31 December 1929, Page 7

CRAZE FOR SOUVENIRS

SPREAD OF THE HABIT ASTONISHING EXAMPLES Something must be done, and done quickly, to stop the souvenir hunter, for ho has become Car too costly to tolerate, and his pastime is spreading like a malignant disease. This is the vieAV expressed by a Avriter in a London journal. The night before the recent Grand Rrix one car entered for the race Avas left outside an hotel during dinner. 'When'the driver returned almost every movable part of the car had been stolen. Radiator cap, hub caps, dashboard instruments, fly-nuts off the hood, and even the electric light bulbs had disappeared. Much time and money had to be spent in replacing the losses. A racing driver Avas telling the writer of some of his oavii experiences. There seems to be a craze for hub caps just noAv. All four on his special model had disappeared, and the losses had been discovered only by chance at the last moment. “Supposing I had driven off,’’ he asked, “ Avbat Avould lira-c happened if a Avheel had come off at 100 miles an hour?”' A. short time ago. Avhile on manffluvres, the Avriter Avas sent in charge of a party to guard a bombing plane that had crashed Avithout harm to itself or its occupants. When he arrived men, Avomen, and children by the score were crawling all over the wings and in the cocknit. The plane had been down only about nn hour, and yet huge pieces of canvas had been hacked from off the Avings, elevation plane and rudder had been ripped away, screAVs and nuts by the dozen had gone, and practically every instrument—oil gauges, recorders, compass—Avas missing from its place. In something like sixty minutes souvenir hunters had had material Avortli £SOO. Is there any sense in it? An even more destructive type of souvenir hunter frequents national monuments, cathedrals, castles, etc., and calmly steals fragments of the time-worn masonry. In Worcester Cathedral are carved stone figures mutilated by CromAvell’s fanatical Ironsides, avlio Avere rigidly opposed to ecclesiastical decoration. And there can also be seen figures, headless and armless, destroyed beyond repair by the vandqls of the tAventieth century. From railways they take notices such as “Do not lean out of the windoAV ” and “To stop the train pull the chain ” I —AA’hy the ordinary sane man can never fathom. They cut the straps from the windows for use as razor strops or purely as souvenirs, and ti*cy take the toAvels and mats as a matter of course. Hotels lose linen—toAvels, sheets, even pillow cases—in large quantities; in spite of avovcii names. The writer concludes:—“ And so it goes on. It is simply thieving Avhich should be’stopped. The thieves should be traced, and they should be sent to prison. Until that is done souvenir hunting will continue to be a popular pastime, the scandal of which is Avinked at by the public.