LATE CABLE NEWS

Hokitika Guardian, 25 January 1932, Page 3

LATE CABLE NEWS

SMUGGLED DRESSES

NEW PROFITABLE INDUSTRY. LONDON, January 9. . It has been, estimated that the British Treasury hadraeen losing £300,000 a year in revenue through the smuggling of frocks from Germany and France. According to Mr Symonds, the chairman of the famous London dress firm/ of Reville, a group of 20 or 30 women, some English and some foreign, and some moving in the best English cirdos, had been regularly smuggling dresses into England from the Continent. A few days ago. the Customs authorities, apparently "on information received” from big West End business houses, raided a host of small West End dressmaker shops and demanded the production of books, invoices and records covering the goods ‘they had on stile. The raids were an instantaneous success. Records were missing and, recognising that prosecution would be dangerous, socially as well as in a business sense, the owners paid up the Customs duties on the goods, and many thousands of pounds thu s went into the Treasury. There was 'a similarity about the method by which -the clothes had been imported. It was simplicity itself.

HERETICS IN RUSSIA. ANTI-SOVIETS PERSECUTED. .RIGA, January 9. The Central Communist Committee's New Year "present” to the party Is a "sharp purge,” especially in the upper ranks, in order to "crush the incipient revival of anti-Leninism and anti-' ■Stalinism among the influentbils, especially those affected with rotten Liberalism, contraband Trotskyism and the falsification of Bolshevik history.” The “purge” must be completed by January 30, when the committee will meet to consider the results. It was M. Stalin, who is SecretaryGeneral of the Centra 1 Committee, who ■first pointed out the reappearance of "old heresies,” whereupon hi s henchmen b gan a heresy-hunt among professors of the higher educational establishments throughout. Russia. This resulted in ■2O being rapidly black-listed, and three summarily expelled. Newspaper s declare that heretics have been trying to undermine the latest official financial, commercial, wages and housing policy, atuLalso plotting against Stalin. Riotous scenes accompanied the "unmasking” of Professor NeLdofi, of the Financial Institute, Leningrad. Nefedoff flung inkwells and .other missiles at his ’ accusers, breaking the head of Comrade <Silin, who opened the attack on ills attitude.