CURRENT TOPICS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 296, 13 November 1937, Page 8

CURRENT TOPICS

(By “Wayfarer.”) Animal lovers are starting a crusada to abolish the use of the horse in warfare. So now all we need is that lovers of men shall start a crusade too. „ * . , * * * During the performance of an opera in a Paris garden ■ a wasp stung the leading lady. The flautist grew red iff the face through trying to reach her subsequent high notes. W The cables to-day announce the remaining winners for 1937 ot the Nobel Prizes, which are bestowed annually on eminent men and women who have contributed richly to the advancement of society in one of five specified directions. Established under the will of the late Alfred Bernhard Nobel, the Swedish chemist, their recipients are persons who during the year have earned distinction in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature of' an idealistic nature, and tlie cause of peace. Each prize is of the value or £7500. and people of all nationalities are eligible to receive them so far as the Nobel Foundation is concerned; a German author'who received the honour was, it will be recalled, subjected to the severe displeasure of his Government, The Nobel Prizes are the happiest legacy of their founder, who gave to the world dynamite and nitroglvcerine. With liis father, Alfred Nobel experimented from 1859 to 1861 in the study of explosives, inventing dynamite by mixing the liquid explosive of the time with absorbent earth. He settled in Paris in 1873, and shortly afterwards invented gelignite His death occurred in December, 1896, when he set aside £1.700,000. the interest from which was to be devoted to awarding the prizes which bear his name. _ ****•.

Tristan da Cunlia—“the world’s loneliest island” —is again in tlie news with the announcement of a proposal to establish a radio transmitting station to enable it to keep in touch with the outside world, principally Capetown. Lonely though it may he, Trishan was represented at the Coronation by its resident chaplain, and it is largely through his efforts that this amenity of civilisation is to be brought to the islanders. Tristan da Cunha, the chief of a group of islands of volcanic origin, is about 2000 miles west of the Ca.pe of Good Hope, 4000 miles north-east of Cape Horn, and about 1500® miles south-south-west of St. Helena. From the middle of the eighteenth century it was the resort of British and American sealers, and passed into British possession in 1816. When the garrison placed on the island was withdrawn, Corporal William Glass, with his wife and two children, elected to remain. They, with two masons employed on the garrison quarters, formed the present settlement. Some years -later, coloured women from St. Helena and others from Cape Colony arrived to join the settlement. The‘British strain, however, is predominant among the inhabitants, who are noted for their longevity. In 1933, they numbered 163. They raise crops s.nd own sheep, cattle and pigs. A council of four (one of its members acting as chairman) governs the island. * * * *

The appointment to the Supreme Court Bench of the United States of a Judge who formerly was associated with the Ku-Klux-Klan has revived among Americans interest in a society which has created a considerable degree of controversy throughout a long period and of which many may find it difficult to obtain a true perspective. The body as recently known lias nothing to do w-ith the sufferings of the South, the aftermath of civil war, and all those things to which Southern patriotism has lent that kind of romantic air which cloaks the robberies of Sherwood Forest or the villainies of the highwaymen of Hounslow Heath or the Great‘North Road. The original Ku-Klux-Klan was a comparatively small body, and its life was short, for the order of disbandment was issued by the “Grand Wizard of the Invisible Empire,” in whom full powers were vested, in 1869 after the Tennessee Legislature had passed the penal Bill of the previous year. No doubt ruffians used the name and uniform of the Klan for-years thereafter; no doubt some members of the Klan found it a convenient cloak for misdeeds, hut the effective life of the original Klan was one of about three years. The Klan of to-day dates only from 1915, hut it spread all over the United States in a few years and is said to have had three million members at its strongest. *****

Count Felix von Luckner arrives in New Zealand this month in the course of a lengthy cruise in his sailing vessel Seeteufel (Sea Devil), his programme including also the Azores, the Island of Saba, the Galapagos, one of the Pitcairn Islands, Fiji, Samoa, and Australia. Before leaving Hamburg he said he looked forward to meeting old friends of prison days in the Dominion. “After all,” he said, “they were fairly good company and I wish to shake hands with them again.” After his visit to New Zealand Count von Luckner will proceed to Australia where the Australian Boy Scouts have organised an extensive lecture tour for him. “I always wanted to visit the Island of Saba because of its scenic beauty,” von Luckner declared recently, adding that he had heard so much from friends who knew this picturesque out-of-the-way place. “On the Cocos Islands I might join the treasure hunters. I have super-sensitive electrical apparatus aboard which will help me in the discovery of buried gold or other precious metal,” he stated. At the Galapagos, von Luckner also wants to try his hand at mantu hunting and wants to harpoon a few sharks. Thence he will set sail for one of tho Pitcairn Islands. “I have been invited by the inhabitants of one of the islands. They are Adventists and they have asked me® through Hamburg Adventists to pay them a visit on my cruise. I shall do so, not in the last place because I want to taste roast pig stuffed with banana and pineapples, which they told me the Pitcairners can make excellently,” the Count stated. From Pitcairn, he will visit the former German colony of Samoa. “Wherever I go I shall deliever lectures on Germany’s work for peace,” he said. Von Luckner’s new Seeteufel is a 200-ton sailing vessel, equipped with auxiliary motor and with nautical instruments and wireless sets which are the last word in these fields. The Seeteufel formerly was an Icelandic fishing craft. It has been remodelled according to the plans of von Luckner. The crew of the Seeteufel numbers eight and there are two passengers, Countess Luckner, who has accompanied her husband on most of his cruises after the War, 1 ’ and Mrs Kreuger, the wife of the first officer. Count von Luckner was the scourge of merchant shipping over the world during the war. He slipped through the Allied blockade in the North Sea in a disguised windjammer and was said to have destroyed half a million tons of Allied shipping.