NEWS FROM ALL QUARTERS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 714, 18 March 1933, Page 22 (Supplement)

NEWS FROM ALL QUARTERS.

CAMBRIDGE BAN ON SHAW. Bernard Shaw’s book, “ The Adventures of a Black Girl in Her Search for God,” has been banned from Cambridge Public Library- A member of the committee, Mr. E. S. Peck, said that, after voting in sub-committee for the book, he read it, and voted against it in the committee. Major T. J. Fryer said that the heated discussion in committee showed that religious feeling in Cambridge was a more tender plant than in many towns in England. PETRIFIED FOREST SOLD. The celebrated petrified forest at Ada, Oklahoma, long a subject of study by scientists, is no more. The petrified wood has been 6old by its Indian owner for use in the construction of a commercial garage. The “ forest,” with remains of giant trees of long scattered where they fell, was described by geologists as the largest of its kind in the south-west. Ada civic leaders had hoped to include the forest in a twoacre park, but the petrified wood was sold and hauled away before they could obtain the land. HYPNOTISM BY PHONE. Dr. Hildred Carlill, of Harley Street, London, warned the boys of Dulwich College that they should not lightly allow themselves to be the subject of hypnotism. “Itis a terrible business,” he said, and should be left entirely to the physicians. Dr. Carlill -said he had a patient who had been hypnotised by him so many times that the man would do anything he told him. “If he were in Paris and I telephoned him he would do exactly as a told him; he would not even stop at crime, added the doctor. FEE TO ENTER GAOL. Superior Court Judge W. F. Harding had to go to Greensboro’, North Carolina, to learn that the law requires a prisoner to pay 50 cents to get into gaol and 50 cents to get out again. The statute was enacted by the legislature of 1919, and makes lawful a turnkey fee of one dollar, charged by the Guilford County gaoler. Judge Harding said he had never heard of such a thing, but the public local and private laws of North Carolina substantiated the fact that “ imprisonment of any person in a civil or criminal action *’ would cost “ 50 cents, and release from prison 50 cents.”

CHINA’S ENGINEERING FEAT. Enough earth to build a wall three feet high and three feet wide that would run four times round the world has been piled up by the Chinese in little more than a year to prevent a recurrence of the disastrous floods of 1931, which caused the death of millions, and which left millions destitute and starving. Sir John HopeSimpson has acted throughout as DirectorGeneral of the National Flood Jfceiief Commission, but he has pointed out that the engineering of the entire 3000 miles of dykes was in the hands of Chinese engineers, and that, outside the executive work done by him and a few foreign helpers, everything was done by Chinese. RHODES COUNTED THE DEAD. How the late Cecil Rhodes, after leading a surprise attack, by a party of negroes, afterwards went back and counted the bodies of the massacred men is revealed by Mr. William Plomer, the novelist and poet, in a biography of the Empirebuilder, “Cecil Rhodes.” In August, 1896, Rhodes found that the Dutch settlers at Enkeldoorn were “troubled by the presence of a native chief whose kraal was a few miles off and who ‘refused to surrender.* ” “We’ll go out and attack them,” he said—and he himself led the commando up a kopje in the dead of night. At early dawn, says Mr. Plomer, “the whites attacked the unsuspecting natives, who were shot like rats as they ran from their huts. Seventy of them were killed and one white man wounded.” An argument arose as to the number of negroes who had been slain, and Rhodes returned alone to recount the bodies. On another occasion, he told a police officer, “You should not spare the natives. You should kill all you can, as it serves as a lesson to them when they talk things over at their fires at night.” ALL IS NOT GOLD— The Joint Council of Qualified Opticians (London) has been investigating the proportion of gold supplied by manufacturers in “gold-filled” spectacles. The matter was first raised, states the report of a special commission of inquiry, by the “repeated complaints” of insurance societies as to the widely varying prices for gold-filled frames of apparently similai* specifications. These complaints, the commission states, were conclusively shown to be fully justified, and a series of analyses of frames which purported to consist of one-tenth of ten-carat gold proved that they averaged more than 20 per cent below the gold content stamped upon them. The commission also caused a series of photographs to be taken beneath the microscope, which revealed that the gold might be more than five times as thick in one place as in another and that at the crucial points of a joint it might be totally lacking. As a -result new specifications have been introduced which stipulate that the finished spectable shall have the correct amount of gold. Other recommendations will ensure that base metal contained in the frames shall not be exposed to corrosion. CRIMELESS ARMY. Army “ crime ” in the Salisbury Plain camps has disappeared completely—motoring offences excepted—since the introduction of organised games and the provision of playing grounds. This statement, made by a Wiltshire Chief Constable, was quoted by General Sir Archibald Mont-gomery-Massingberd, who last month relinquished the presidency of the Army Sports Control Board on his appointment as Chief of the Imperial General Staff. Discussing games and sport in the Army in relation to the problem of recruiting. Sir Archibald said: “ The eiicouragement that we have been able to give to sports and games generally has, no doubt, been responsible to a very great extent for the present high state of discipline and good conduct. It is this aspect of a soldier’s life which I think may appeal to the young men in the country. Nowhere, not even in the big public schools of England and Scotland, do better facilities exist for physical training than those provided for men who join the Army.” Sir Archibald disclosed that men educated both at universities and secondary schools are joining the Army in increasing numbers, but he said there is evidence of a decline in physical __ standards. “ Recruiting,” he added, “ is not best where employment is worst.**

HIGH COST OF DYING. Certain persons at Roubaix have formed a Committee of Economic Action Against the High Cost of Living. The first step taken by this organisation was to protest against the high cost of dying. The members declare that the local municipal council charge of £BO for a grave of the kind known as a “ perpetual concession " is 30 times as much as the sum charged immediately after the war. If the price is not immediately reduced the committee proposes to take legal proceedings against the council. Meanwhile it is urging its members and supporters to bury their dead in cemeteries where interments are less expensive. POLICEMAN “ SEES RED.** All Patrolman John Shannon, of Chicago, knows about technocracy is that it’s a suspicious sounding word with Moscow-like associations. He found two men distributing handbills announcing a discussion of technocracy at the New England Church. He took the pair to the station. “ Here’s a couple of reds,” he told Captain Charles McGurn. “ They’re cooking up a meeting to talk technocracy.** “ I don’t know what technocracy is,” said McGurn, freeing the prisoners, “ and maybe these fellows don’t either, but it’s not Communism. Communists don’t hold their meetings in churches.” MULE WRECKS TRAIN. A mule, which engineer A. Snyder says wrecked his train, added insult to injury by giving what Snyder believes to be the “mull” version of a “horse laugh” as it galloped away. Snyder, reluctantly, told of the wreck as workmen completed rebuilding 200 ft of Northern Pacific track. He said a mule contested the right-of-way with his “iron horse,” and that he bore down on the stubborn animal at a speed of approximately twenty-seven miles an hour. • The locomotive struck the mule and knocked it off the track, but the mule struck a switch lever and derailed the train, consisting of a locomotive and thre* cars. Then it “hee-hawed.” FLEXIBLE WOOD. A Danish carpenter of Middelport id said to have invented a chemical method of preparing wood in a way that makes it flexible to an almost unlimited degree. The invention has been examined by the Danish Technological Institute, when it was found that a piece of wood the thickness of an ordinary pencil might be twisted into knots, and a thick oak stick twisted and bent into any imaginable form. When exposed to dry heat for about twelve hours the wood regained its former condition. The method has been tried with oak, beech, and maple with satisfactory results, whereas fir and pine seem unsua* ceptible to the treatment. COST OF A BROKEN NECK. Damages amounting to £4766 15/6 were awarded in the King’s Bench Division to Mr. William Gustave Brown, a former immigration officer, living at Northfleet, in a claim for damages for personal injuries he brought against a French shipping company, the Societe Anonyme de Navigation A.LA.., the owners of the steamship Alsacien. Mr. Brown, whoso duty it was to examine the papers of aliens arriving at Tilbury Docks, was leaving the Alsacien when the gangway on which he was descending to the quayside, and which had been unlashed, slipped from the ship’s side and crashed four or five feet to the ground. Mr. Brown landed on his feet on the gangway, but the violent jolt broke his neck by crushing together two of the vertebrae. ETIQUETTE IN BRAILLE. Blind readers have discovered that there is no book in Braille dealing with the subject of etiquette. Hitherto, it has been a boast of the National Institute, which provides the blind with a Braille literature, that practically every branch of knowledge is represented in the catalogue, but a number of sightless employees at headquarters have brought this omission to the notice of the general editor. In a tactful reply,. he pointed out that tha manners of his many blind friends were so good that further polish was unneceo6ary, but eventually agreed to put tha matter before the publications committee. This committee has now decided to issue a Braille edition of Mr. Hugh Scott’s “ Good Manners and Bad,” and in future any sightless inquirer will be able to refer to this authority for an opinion on tha eating of peas, the subtleties of letterwrit jug, and similar vexed questions. BROTHER MARINERS SENTENCED* The tragic death of Mr. J. W. H. T. Douglas, the Test cricketer, was recalled when sentence was passed on Captain R. Eric Hjalt and his brother, Captain O. Hjalt, who were respectively in command of the Finnish steamers Oberon and Areturus, which collided in the Cattegat on December 19, 1930. As a result of thia collision the Oberon sank with the loss of over forty lives, including nine of the eleven British passengers. “J. W. H. T.* sacrificed his own chance of rescue id attempting to 6ave his father, Mr. J. W, Douglas. In the decision of the Court, it* was stated that the two captains failed to stop their engines or to reverse, and that they had not manoeuvred as the circumstances demanded. Therefore, they had transgressed against seafaring regulations. Both men were fined and ordered to pay part of the costs of the case. The two captains are appealing against the verdict.