LATE CABLE NEWS

Hokitika Guardian, 19 January 1932, Page 3

LATE CABLE NEWS

SWALLOWED POISON

FATE OF MOUNTAINEERS

iNEW YORK, January 8

Two trappers in a snow-bound cabin in the mountain country of Idaho, both accidentally took poison for salts the day after Christmas. Their bodies were brought out by a detachment of mounted police. •

Vernon High, 45, scribbed a note that his partner, Raymond Lee, 24, was already unconscious and that High realised that death would soon come for 1-itn as well. Desperately they swailloftved mustard and other remedies for crystallising fox poison, which High used in trapping operations. DANGER TO N.Z ? FREEDOM FOR INDIA. LONDON, January ...8. ‘The security of Australia and New Zealand would be gravely imperilled,” .says a correspondent to the “Daily Mail,” “if British sovereignty in India is destroyed, or even weakened.” “Yet,” adds the correspondent, who signs himself “Australian Imperialist,” “their Governments, apparently, have not been consulted since the ignominoiis' negotiations with the Indian rebels were begun. “Intelligent and patriotic Australians, possessing a knowledge of Lidia, are astounded at the proposal to bestow on India Dominion status, which would he a questionable boon, tantamount to banding over India to Indian politicians.” MELBOURNE INMAN. INTOXICATED AT WHEEL. LONDON, January 7. No motorist should drink two whiskies and sodas while driving, said the, police surgeon giving evidence in a case- in which Melbourne Inman, exchampion at billiards was charged with driving while drunk. Inman had pleaded that he was not drunk, having had only the two whiskies and sodas. He was really suffering from vertigo (attack of giddiness). Inman, who was fined £5 in October for a similar offence, was fined £2O and seven guineas costs, and his license was suspended for a year. The magistrate deplored such a speedy repetition of his offence. FATAL THIRTEEN. ZEPPELIN WRECK RECALLED. LONDON, January 7. How a souvenir-hunter withheld from the British authorities a book of' immensely valuable secrets, obtained by him when a German Zeppelin was brought -doAt’ii near London during the war, is revealed after 16 years. It was the unlucky 13th voyage ot the airship L 32 that saw its destruction in flames. The book shows it, but the commander who staggered, dying, from the burning wreckage knew it, too.

In September, 1916, L 32 and Tk33 were brought down during a concentrated raid carried out by all the naval Zeppelins, in which 38 people were killed and 125 were injured.

The original finder of the book is now dead, and it was obtained from his widow, who desires to remain anonymous.

It appears that when the man saw the Zeppelin falling in flames at Billoricav, Essex, he hurried to the scene, and ""as one l of the first to reach the blazing,, wreckage.’He saw a man staggyring out of the holocaust with his clothes on fire and his face blackened by smoke, and clasping a large book. Suddenly be pitched forward on his face and shouted three times'in a clear, shrill voice, “Dieizehn” (Thirteen). He was Commander Petersen, the only mail of the crew to escape immediate death. Apparently as he jumped clear he remembered the superstition attaching to the number 13. and it was uppermost in his mind as he dropped dead

The book Is the airship’s ballast hook. It shows the distribution of the weights and the amount of gas, fuel, water ballast and bombs carried on the 12 voyages, the record for the 13th being incomplete.

RADIO' CEREMONY. SHOULD KINO BE APPROACHED. LONDON, .January 4. Whether the Government of New South Wales, realising the interest taken by tho Empire generally in the Sydney bridge, will invite the King to perform the opening ceremony' is a question constantly asked in London. The special representative of the “Sun” says he understands that the King, if asked, would he di lighted to perform the ceremony from the centre of the Empire by radio. The King has followed the progress of the bridge'"'with deep appreciation of its signicnffl'c? and of its engineering importnace. Leading Australians here point out that it would he a courteous gesture il Mr Lung waived the privilege of opening the bridge, lie does not. fully appreciate. perhaps. the tremeiudoiis interred, and pride* with which Great Britain has watched the progress of a British engineering firm’s work - , which has been so often featured in the Press of the entire conn try. U 1 unexampled opliol t unity js offered of securing a sentiment of goodwill toward New South Wales if the Empire's greatest Inidge is oj ened by the King.