CURRENT TOPICS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CVI, Issue 12588, 24 August 1901, Page 6

CURRENT TOPICS.

A NAVIGABLE BALLOON.

The Parisians had hardly recovered from their eostacy over the Gustave Zede’s submarine feat at the naval manoeuvres before they were

AAJHMuuwu »va ui/iui a vliOj* VVJCA O wafted into the - seventh heaven of excitement by seeing the Eiffel Tower rounded by a navigable balloon. Last year M. Deutsch, a Rouen petroleum refiner, offered a prize of £4OOO for the first flying ntachina that starting from St Cloud circled the Eiffel Tower and returned to the starting point in half an hour, the pace required being about thirteen miles an hour. if. Santos Rumon't, a young Brazilian aeronaut, has recently made a bold flight for' the prize, and although unsuccessful at - the first attempt owing to a slight accident, seems likely to succeed! at his second try. His navigable balloon is the result of prolonged experiments, and the fifth he has made. Composed of the finest silk, it measures 110 ft from tip to tip. The usual network of ropes encircles the actual balloon, which is cigar shaped, and from which descends , a frail-looking wooden frame separating the motor from the catr. This framework is triangular in shape, and runs to a point at either end. The car ha tdaced well forward. It looks for oil

tile World like a crow’fi-aest manned at sea. It is so small that M, Dumont has only just room to stand in it. Before it is a crowbar somewhat resembling a small yard-arm, affixed to which, era the usual astronomical instruments, indicators of barometrical pressure and so on. Below are the apparatus for controlling a Daimler motor of 16 h.p., used for developing a speed of about twenty-five miles ap. hour. The screw-propeller, the escapevalve, and the guide-rope jure connected by an ingenious arrangement of slip-knots.' The motor is carried a little further back, down •midships, and the shaft runs up to the stern, where the double-bladed propeller revolves like the arms of a mill-wheel. Just below is the rudder, also of silk, struck over a bamboo frame, and fashioned very much like an ordinary ship's rudder, The whole is strung together with finest wire, so drawn, as to be invisible a. few feet from the ground. I

DUMONT’S ATTEMPTS.

M. Dumont made hia first public trial on the racecourse at Longohamp, and

on the same morning sailed ■from Sfc Cloud to the Bois de Boulogne and back. Then his -workmen cried, “ To the Eiffel'Tower.!” so off he flew seme 1500ft’ up " H®'was dose to his goal when his left-hand rudder broke. Had the righthand one gone it would have ’been all up, or rather all down, with Dumont, for he would; have shot into the Eiffel Tower. ' However, he curved off, set his rudder to tights, weathered the Tower, came 'back against the 'breeze and' grounded safely. On the following day he made his first attempt ■ for the Deutsch prize. Fortune did not favour him, for at strong breeze was blowing, and a sound like a pistol shot when his motor was started showed that some-, ■ thing was wrong with the works. One of' the four cylinders was out of order. up went Dumont in the pretence of 300 motor-men and aeronauts, xom the Parc d’Aerostation. The motor rattled, the machine cleared the trees, and when 60fb up, made a hold sweep until its bow was pointing for the Eiffel Tower. • Off it bolted in a bee line at twenty miles an hour. The wind carried it a little off its course, but before a quarter of an hour had elapsed the air-ship had rounded the /Tower, and, in spite of the head 1 wind it had to face, was growing larger and larger every minute. It was just at the goal When the motor stopped working and the wind blew the balloon towards the Boas dsv Boulogne. A second cylinder had broken, down, and Dumont had thrown out ballast , and disturbed his'Vessel’s equilibrium. yond the river he had to tear a hole in bis air-ship in order to land, and descended in the trees of Bare® Edmund de Rothschild’s park. M. Dumont made his trip - cx •nine miles at an average speed of 13| miles an hour, the last half of it against '» strong wind'. He was ten minutes too late to secure the prize. The tone of the British a GEBMAir Press references to the death

A GjBBM&N ZHFKBIAXtIST. f. ' ■ .

jrress reit?reiices to UO9 treat n of Prince Hoheniohe show that .the great German

patriot -was known and: appreciated dn Lon' 1 •'don. He contributed even more than Bismarck to tie establishment of the German Empire, and his methods were peaceful and conciliatory. A Bavarian by hirth, he encountered opposition and suspicion when ho first took his seat in the Bavarian Diet, because even ■ then be waa a Pan-German. When . Ms country really, needed Ms services, during the years before the brief struggle of 1866, ho was living in comparative retirement. But when Prussia had thoroughly beaten the Austrians,' Hohenlohe’s adyice was taken, and it was Bavaria, that moved first in the direction of German confederation. It was as an Imperialist that he protested in 1869 against the Papal attempt to,interfere in temporal affairs. His opponents were too powerful, for ham; however., and he was forced to resign the Premiership. In 1870 hj. -was found advocating the union of the German States against France, and when the first German Parliament was opened he was appointed Vice-President- Sn recognition of Ms patriotism'. On Count Arnim’s disappearing, Hohenlohe was seat as German Ambassador to Paris. According to M. de Blowitz, he was so annoyed by a •note in the French papers saying that he had been given the Paris post in order to ' disturb Franco-German relations, that he • was nearly leaving Paris a few days after . Ms arrival.. However, Ms courteous and considerate manner ; soon made the relation® between the Parisians and 'himself so amicable that the threat of his departure was the most powerful lover for obtaining concessions. Ho helped largely towards averting war in the crisis of 1875, and ten years later he was made Governor of Al-sace-Lorraine. The mailed fists of Ms" military predecessors had: failed-to pacify the people of the recovered provinces, hut his conciliatory policy had the desired : result. ‘ For nine years he was occupiedin diminishing the natred of the Alsatians, and at the age of seventy-five he looked forward to a quiet life on his estate 'at ScMUingfurst. But in 1894 Caprivi retired, and Hohenldhe waa regarded as the ■ only possible Chancellor. His greatest work was done in those secret affairs of which the world hears only the vaguest 'rumours. He was a strong personal friend and political ally cf the Kaiser, and he was notoriously anxious to taka to himself the i ' blame Tor the famous telegram sent to Mr Kruger on the failure of the Jameson raid.

OPPOSED CUBE POR CANCEE.

That this terrible scourge of humanity should ab last be vanquished, seems almost too good ,to be true, yet there appear to be reason-

•bla grounds.for believing that this has been done by Dr J. H. Webb, a member of the Royal College of Surgeons. This gentleman deals with the subject in a recent number of the “ Intercolonial 1 Medical Journal of Australasia,” and although entirely technical, and addressed 1 to doctors _chiefly, it is full of such deep interest as to> merit widespread 1 attention. Tha doctor’s method, in support of -which, he quotes a number of instances, consists practically of the injection of soap. In many of the cases he mentions, this simple cure acted like a charm. One patient suffering from a breast icirihus, ‘which a brother doctor bad diagnosed as undoubted cancer, was healed completely in about two years. The hard , tumour, as large as an orange, disappeared entirely in six weeks, and for fifteen months the cancer was apparently healed. Then an unmastakeaible cancerous growth reappeared, and there was a malignant cancer, the size of half-a-orowm. Again recourse was had to the soap injection, and in two months the trouble, was completely gone. Another case, that of a rodent 'nicer of eleven years’ duration, was completely cured in two months under soap. injection and some thyroid taken internally. But Dr Webb’s champion case was that of a man. in a very advanced stage of the disease, who had had the tongue., lower jaw, tonsil, and palate removed. When he com-

men cedi the soap treatment, the whole of the interior of the mouth and cheek was one mass of cancer, and although the patienlb had not quite recovered when the article was penned, there had been an entire disappearance of all outward and visible signs of cancer. If Dr Webb has, indeed, achieved no more than to give temporary relief, without the use of the surgeon’s knife, he has done much for suffering humanity, but he himself thinks ho has dome more, and has found an absolute cure. At any rate, his experiments ought to be carefully examined by the accepted medical authorities. !