LONDON NOTES.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 27 August 1924, Page 7

LONDON NOTES.

BATTLE OF JUTLAND

LONDON. May 23

Mr Alexander (Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade), on behalf of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty, informed Viscount Curzon in the House of Commons ' that the date for publication of the official account of the Battle of Jutland depended on the time taken to produce and check certain diagrams. Owing to the unsatisfactory nature of the printing of these diagrams by the' first firm employed it had recently been found necessary to employ a second firm. It was, therefore, not possible to forecast the exact date of completion. The letterpress was complete. The ppblication would be a plain statement, in narrative form, of all the available facts, and their relation to each other, which bore on the action known as the Battle of Jutland.

Lord Je Hi cue's criticisms were being published as an np>pendix, with explanatory notes by the Admiralty, giving briefly the reasons whv the conclusions published in the narrative differed from the opinions of Lord Jellicoe.

THE DEATH RAY. Mr Grindell-Matthews, the inventor of the “death rav,” has placed his discovery before the. Wai\ Office, and has undertaken (according to the Dailv Express) not to dispose of it until official tests have been made.

The Minister of War is to be asked in the House of Commons “whether he is aware that the inventor has failed to find a purchaser of the invention in this country, and that he is about to sell it to a foreign firm.” Mr Grindell-Matthews is at present in France for the purpose of discussing an offer made to him" by M. Eugene Royer, the French submarine inventor. It. is claimed that the ray, which is invisible, will destroy life at a distance, that it can explode ammunition, and stop the engines of aeroplanes while they are in the air. Mr Matthews claims that he will soon be able to develop his invention so that its zone will be extended up to 58 miles, within which it is claimed no life can exist.

GERMANY AND ARMAMENTS. Stories continue to lie published concerning the piling up of war material by Germany. Yesterday the special correspondent of the Daily Mail supplied some disquieting information regarding the various secret activities in Germany. The correspondent maintains that not only is Germany not disarming, as required by the Treaty of "Versailles, but also that she is actually organising herself for the rapid production of great quantities of houitzeis, anti-tank guns, machine guns, ammunition, and poison gas. “As regards machine guns,” writes the correspondent, ‘‘it is known that thousands exist in carefully-prepared hiding-places throughout Germany. For instance, Germany lias never officially recognised the existence of her latest type of machine gun, the ‘Tuf,’designed against tanks and aeroplanes. A few of them have been accidentally discovered, and that is how the InterAllied Mission knows of their existence. One of the best instances of the German capacity for hiding guns and material is the fact that Germany has never been able to account satisfactorily for the disappearance of the Big Berthas which she should have surrem dered and which have never been found.

“The factories which were manufacturing shells and cartridges when the Armistice was signed have been examined, and, up to 18 months ago, kept more or less under the control of the Inter-Allied Mission. However, most of these factories have kept on their staff all their specialists, and many of them have recommenced, on a small scale possibly, the manufacture of cartridges and shell cases. The German arsenals, such as Spandau and the like, have been taken over by the Deutschewerke Company ostensibly for civil work, -but they have retained all their old hands, and now the Inter-Allied officers are no longer allowed to visit them. Konigsberg, nevertheless, is now the great reserve arsental for German kjg guns. It is practically beyond Allied control, and all training and artillery exercises are carried out there. Guns have been taken thither from all over Germany, and it is also worthy of note that the small German fleet authorised by the Treaty has either its guns already on land or else they are Gin guns specially designed for disembarkation and use in land campaigns. “It is worth noting that Krupp and Erhardtj who were rivals before the war, have now exchanged patents and processes for the manufacture of guns above Gin in calibre. The Krupp works are under Allied supervision, but the head office of that firm has established a subsidiary works in Sweden known as the Bofors firm. This owns all the Krupp patents, and manufactures and experiments with guns of all calibres and submits for all foreign, contracts. Erhardt, op the other hand, has an arrangemeift with the Smit firm, of Rotterdam, with similar objects in view. Machine tools for manufacturing big gun parts were sent out of Germany shortly after the Armistice in large quantities.”