TOPICS OF THE TIMES

Southland Times, Issue 22217, 9 January 1934, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE TIMES

Crime is Sordid

‘‘The police are just as much a social service for uplifting and improving the public as any other social organization,” said Colonel Brook, chief constable of the West Riding, Yorkshire, at a school speech day. “Some may think the duty of the nolice is to repress evil and keep the people in order; that may be true, but behind that the police service is a great organization for doing what they can to help people along right lines, and w lead orderly lives. There is very often an idea abroad that there is something romantic, glamorous and cheerful and right about crime. I tell you there is nothing romantic or glamorous about wrong-doing. You may go to the pictures and be attracted sometimes by wonderful scenes of some criminal supposed to be a hero, but, believe me, crime is nasty, sordid, mean and caddish. When you feel you like to admire and almost wish to emulate some of these criminals you may see depicted on the stage or read of in books, remember what I say—by one who knows—almost invariably criminals are mean, sordid and caddish, and there is nothing to be admired in them by boys and girls.”

Empire Communications. The outstanding part the British Empire had played in developing longdistance communications was discussed by Professor E. V. Appleton in a recent lecture to the British Service Guild. Professor Appleton said that the whole history of communication by electrical means, both by cable and wireless, had been stimulated by Imperial requirements. The first two great pioneer achievements in longdistance communication were concerned with the linkage of Great Britain with her oldest colony, Newfoundland. In August, 1858, long-distance cable communication was first established between Valencia, in Ireland, and Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, while in December, 1901, Marconi’s signals from Poldhu, in Cornwall, were successfully received over the Atlantic by means of a kite aerial at Signal Hill, also in Newfoundland. The commercial shortwave beam station, which to-day linked up England with India and the Dominions, constituted an unparalleled system of efficient and inexpensive point-to-point communication, while the giant Rugby long-wave telegraph station gave a service of nearly 24 hours a day to all parts cf the world. But the wonder of the wireless telegraph has been surpassed by the wonder of the wireless telephone. In the last few years direct wireless telephony services to different parts of the Empire had been established by the Post Office. The result of these direct Empire services was that it could truly be said that the whole of the Empire wa. on the telephone, with London as the exchange. A man in the Australian bush could communicate with another out on the veldt in South Africa, via Rugby and London. By way of the transatlantic route such outlying districts could be linked with the whole of the United States and Canada. London was, in fact, the world’s switching centre and Rugby its chief relay station. An American tourist out in Egypt would speak to his home in Philadelphia, not directly to the United States, but via the Egyptian service, through Baldock, London and Rugby.