HERE AND THERE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16642, 26 January 1922, Page 6

HERE AND THERE.

WIRELESS WATCHERS. * The employment of “ wireless watch* ers ” on board ocean-going ehips ha® recently been given some prominence in shipping and wireles® circles. Tho watchers are employed to ” listen in during the operator’s rest periods,and ic ie stated that more than 1200 watchers’ certificates have been issued to seamen. It is alleged that the result of this policy has been to throw 300 operators out of employment. The amount of training necessary to qualify for a w’atcher’s certificate ip, it is declared, negligible; a certificate can bo obtained in two days. All that a watcher attempts to do is to be on the alert for an “ 5.0.5.” signal of distress. Expert operators state that any watcher might miss 50 per cent of such calls in a given test, and that in consequence their employment at sea adds to the risks of ocean travelling. But even supposing every certificated watcher could he guaranteed to pick up every S.O.S. signal, that degree of efficiency would not solve th© problem. This is strikinglv illustrated by * recent dram® enacted in mid-ocean, when the answer to a wireless call played the chief part in saving th© lives of th© captain and many of the crew of the s.s. Wekika. Symptoms of sickness wore wirelessed to a doctor aboard another steamer 500 miles away. Th© doctor recognised ptomaine poisoning, and prescribed accordingly, with th© result that all recovered. *«• QUARREL OVER AN EGG. ** Certainly th© use of a knife on th© throat of a woman must always be regarded as a grave matter,” said Mr Justice M’Cardie, at Glamorgan Assizes, at Cardiff recently, in sentencing William Henry Carter to nine months’ imprisonment for wounding Ellen Rosa James, his mother-in-law. Owing to the house shortage, prisoner and h:s wife were compelled to live with the latter’s mother, and constant quarrels occurred. The mother-in-law admitted she had aggravated Carter, and lie had never even answered. Accused said that, following a breakfast-table quarrel over an egg, he lost control of himself, and, going to where she was washing up dishes, drew a knife across her throat. In view of the naan’s good character, th© judge ordered the sentence to b© served in the second division. AMERICA’S MANY RACES. Canon Carnegie, who has returned to England from the United States, where he spent three months for the benefit of his health, expressed his views on America’s racial problems in an interview. America, he said, was not as yet a homogeneous country. For thirty years before th© war about a million emigrants annually flocked into America from Europe. These people had not been assimilated, and the task of doing it was by no means an easy one, for til© tendency of these people was to settle down in segregated groups, where they retain their own language, customs and traditions, having very little intercourse with their fellow-citi-zens. In most large cities there were Italian, Jewish, Serbian and Russian quarters, and many thoughtful Americans were becoming very anxious as to the state of things which had arisen. They recognised that the task of Americanising these various elements is stupendous. They had hitherto depended upon the influences of the common education at the public schools, but they were now finding that weapon by no means as powerful as they had hoped it would be.

DRAGON OF THE SEA. A super-dredger, destined for Bombay. has been launched at Renfrew, Scotland, and is now being fitted. She is in reality a huge engineering workshop afloat. Her machinery has been designed to cope with, th© clay bed of th© port of Bombay. She will cut up tho clay - blocking the entrance channels, suck it up through big pipes, and discharge th© mass through a floating pipe-line to land, a distance of 10,000 feet away, and to a height of sixteen feet above sea level. The dredger will raise and discharge 2000 cubic yards of clay per hour from varying depths down to 70 feet, and will be able not only greatly to improve the navigation of the port, but to reclaim large areas of territory from the sea. The dredger will steam at eight knots, and all her operations in navigation, excavation, and pumping can be controlled by one man on the bridge. A TUNNEL TO AFRICA. “ Tho Channel tunnel sinks into the sphere of prosaically practicable things v hen it is compared with the grandiose project to which the resilient mind of Paris is at present devoting itself,” says the “Glasgow Herald.” “The idea of a tunnel under the Straits of Gibraltar is not a new one. It has, if we mistake not, been a siUy-seasor topic in France for many years. But it represents a real desire of France m to link up uer .capital more closely with her Algerian possessions, and to increase her influence generally along die north coa3t of Africa- It has also an imaginative appeal to Britons, who can lot their Imperial fancies play with the idea of a I.ondon-to-Cape Town express, via the Channel tunnel, Paris. Madrid, tho Gibraltar tunnel, Carthage Junction, Cairo, Khartoum, and to on. Such a journey would demand in th© passenger tc considerable degree of staying power—and also of courage, for in the middle of th© Gibraltar tunnel he would be twelve miles from land, 1254 feet below the surface of th© sea, and enduring a minimum temperature of over SO degrees.” JAZZ “ TOYS.” French Customs officials hare been puzzled of late by the necessity of classifying certain curious wooden instruments, or implements, which hav« at laßt been found to be “objects intended to produce sounds ” —in jazs orchestras! This discovered, the oft einls hare been under the necessity of determining if such objects may b* considered as “musical instruments” and they have accordingly come to a decision which will surely spread con aternation in the ranks of jazz-musi-ciuns, plain or coloured For that old enemy the “ trap drum ' is definitely cla&sified as a toy, and will be subject to tho duties levied on toys. Presumably the duty on toy® ia higher thajr the duty on musical instruments.

CRIMINAL DIES WITH HIS SECRET. A notorious Neapolitan criminal, Carlo Cioppa, died in prison on th® Island of Pi#Lnesa. Fifteen y«art ago C’oppr. killed th?ee men, wno were brothe-a®, afterwards escaped to New York. There he organised and led a big criminal association until he was recognised on Brooklyn Bridge by a detective. He jumped off the bridgs into the river, but was arrested, a few hundred yardt* downstream After he had been extradited he was condemned to fifteen years’ imprisonment. He died within a few months of th© completion of his sentence. Towards th© end Cioppa asked to ses his brother in order to reveal to him the place where, he said. £25.000 in gold was hidden in a house in New York. He died before th® brother readied him.