EXAMINED TEN STALINS

Evening Star, Issue 23492, 5 February 1940, Page 3

EXAMINED TEN STALINS

HEART SPECIALIST'S EXPERIENCE DICTATOR TAKES KO CHANCES NEW YORK, February 3. ; Mr 0. C. Thomas, publisher of medical books, received a letter describing how a Dutch heart specialist, Dr K. Wenckebach, was summoned to Moscow to attend M. Stalin, but was forced to examine 10 Stalins, two of whom were found to be suffering from high blood pressure. Dr Wenckebach felt that the dictator was one of tho latter, but was not told which. SENTENCED TO DEATH TWO POLISH WORKERS BERLIN, February 4. Two Polish workers were sentenced to death on charges of maltreating a German women at Lodz and setting fire to her house in September. EMPIRE AIR SCHEME AMERICAN INSTRUCTORS SELECTED NEW YORK, February 3. The first group of 35 American instructors for the Empire air scheme have been selected. Instructors on primary trainers will receive 300 dollars a month, and those on multi-engined bombers 500 dollars. NO IMPERIALISTIC DOMINATION LABOUR LEADER'S VIEWS LONDON, February 3, “ Britain must be prepared to bring all her colonies under mandate and extend the scope of international control if she desires to persuade others that she wants the world free from imperialistic domination,” said Mr C. R. Attlee in a broadcast. “We must extend self-government, abandon claims to special rights, rid ourselves of any taint of imperialism, achieve an equality of recognition for all at Home, and build a new Britain to lead the world from anarchy to peace.” BRITISH SHIPBUILDNG PRESENT CAPACITY REVIEWED (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, February 3. Tho weekly journal ‘Economist,’ commenting on co-ordination by the Admiralty of construction and repair of both merchant and naval vessels as from February 1, reviews Britain’s present building capacity of merchant ships. The journal says that at the outbreak of war merchant shipbuilding capacity was about 2,000,000 gross tons per annum. In addition there were facilities for the construction of some 500.000 tons of naval vessels in private shipyards. The current volume of output of merchant vessels is at the rate of about 150,000 gross tons per annum. But during the first four months of war the losses were at the rate of about 1.300.000 tons per annum. It should not be difficult to increase the output to *1,500,000 tons per annum by simplification of designs and by the speeding up of construction. The task facing the Admiralty is by no means an easy one, but Britain cannot afford a repetition of the experience last war, when the output fell from 1,932,000 gross tons in 1913 to 608,000 gross tons in 1916, and recovered to only 1,348,000 tons by 1918.