A BAFFLING ILLUSION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19048, 19 December 1923, Page 12

A BAFFLING ILLUSION

Mr P. T. ' Selbit’s astonishing illusion entitled “Sawing Through a Woman” continues to mystify audiences at the Plaza Theatre. In this act, which borders on the sensational, the lady is placed in a cabinet in full view of the audience, after having her ankles bound together, each ■wrist and her neck also being attached to ropes which are passed through the box and tied and sealed on the outside. The dcor is then locked and the cabinet placed on trestles, Mr Selbit then passes three pieces of three-ply board and two pieces of steel at right angles through slits in the cabinet until it appears as if the structure is divided into such small compartments that it would be impossible for them to contain a body, however, contracted. Tapping from inside the cabinet shows that the lady is still inside. Two assistants, using a crosscut saw, out the cabinet into two sections, and the astonished audience sees the lady unharmed and still wearing the several ropes attached to her person. A picture programme is also provided.

CHICKENS COMING HOME. TO THE EDITOR. Sin, —The President of America has announced that Prance, Italy, and all other countries indebted to U.S.A. must pay their debts and there will be no abatement on any account whatever. America is a religious and high-minded nation, .but the almighty dollar is her god. Great Britain backed the Allies’ bill, and the United States, on that security, advanced 850 millions sterling, the whole of which was spent in war munitions in America, doubtless very profitably to that country. Great Britain, through Lord Curzon, said: "vVc frankly admit our obligation. We shall pay.” Lord Balfour before this suggested that if America would forgo her debt of 850 millions. Great Britain would cancel the debts of her European Allies to her amounting to over 2000 millions. But America heeded not so generous an invitation that would have solved largely the European economic situation History does not always repeat itself; at all events there are isolated cases. America is one. France forgave America’s debts to her in 1782, and took over and paid America’s debt to Holland at the same time. The American Minister at Paris, in recognising . this generous treatment, wrote: “It has pleased the King of France to assume the charges and commissions and costs for the said loan, and which costs Ids Majesty makes a present to the United States.” In raising French loans the American Minister (Mr Benjamin Franklin) wrote in a pamphlet translated into French: “England is an old, corrupt, extravagant, and profligate nation, sees herself deep in debt, dishonestly running deeper, and without any possibility of discharging her debt, but by a public bankruptcy.” Something of “The Ancient Grudge,” at which we can now afford to laugh. , . What is America doing now? In her day of necessity she appealed to the generosity of Europe. She sees Europe td-day in travail, and she puts Europe upon the rack of “the uttermost farthing,” and “countless thousands to mourn,” to use a phrase of Burns. We are a Christian people, say the Americans, but business is business. Benevolent America will not grant even bonuses out of her enormous wealth to the soldiers she nut into the war three years behind tho time when her signatory obligations necessitated her doing so. And America’s isolation is causing Ijer to he among nations as the lost sheep in tho ■wilderness. Yet there are those among us in Now Zealand who will exhort ns to bo as America is, to which I say simply and reverently, “Good God forbid.”—l am, etc., J. I>. Sievwright.