NEWS OF THE WORLD.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8361, 26 July 1920, Page 4

NEWS OF THE WORLD.

CLIPPINGS PROM VARIOUS SOURCES. The Derby Sweep. There is more doing in Derby sweepstakes this year in London than anyone can remember, says a London correspondent writing towards the end of May. Possibly it is the heavier taxation which makes fortuitous money more welcome than ever, possibly many people think that as they have saved the sweepstakes losses daring the war they can now let themselves go a little, and generally because a bird in the bush seems to be worth two in the hand at present. In any case, more clubs are running more sweepstakes than ever, and many are running two sweepstakes. The Carlton, for instance, and several other big. clubs are running a pound and a five-pound sweepstake. The Stock Exchange sweepstake this year is expected to run to £SOOO for the first prize, and many of the clubs will have at least a £SOO prize. Most of' the big city institutions and markets have sweepstakes and many of the big offices. It is the same in the big works and factories. An innovation this year is the sweepstake bet at bridge. Men playing on different sides at bridge _ will have a side-bet of a sweepstake ticket. The loser of the rubber pays usually a guinea, and the prize is halved if there is any prize. In this way the loser of the rubber may win half a first prize. He has at least that consolatory thought.

Mistaken for ex-Crown Prince. Arrested by fishermen because he was believed to be the German ex-Crown Prince escaping from Holland, Karl Otto, a Berlin painter, was afterwards discovered to be a notorious jewel thief, for whom the police had been searching for months. Last December Otta inveigled a 17-year-old jeweller’s apprentice, Karl Goldschmitz, to part with £300,000 worth of jewels. Both lived for some time in the most luxurious hotels in Germany on the proceeds of the gradual sale of the jewels, until, panic-stricken by the publication of their portraits in police placards, they lied the country.

Reaching Hamburg, they bribed a sailor, to purchase a sailing yacht to convey Otto to Denmark. The vessel was chased by a police motor boat from Travemunds, yet Otto managed to escape in a mist.' He was wrecked off the Denmark coast, where the inhabitants of Korsor arrested him, under the impression that he was the German ex-Crown Prince. The local fishermen, after comparing him with pictures in the illustrated papers, eventually released him. He reached Norway, where he again lived luxuriously on the proceeds of the jewels, to which he held fast during the wreck. Goldschmitz joined him at Christiania until his fiancee.

Huge Greenhouse Blown Up'. The Duke of Devonshire has discovered how to get rid of a conservatory.

At Chatsworth, the Duke’s ancestral home (and a “show place” visited by thousands of tourists) there was a conservatory which was the finest and the largest in the kingdom —a crystal palace among conservatories, indeed. And curiously enough it was designed by Sir Joseph Paxton, the man by whom the Crystal Palace was created.

Owing to labor conditions and the coal shortage the wonderful conservatory had been closed and sold as so much scrap. It is very scrappy now. The problem was how to demolish the thousand tons of ironwork and the 40,000 panes of glass. Experts discussed the puzzle. They probably came to the conclusion that to do it by hand would take years. So they decided to blow it up. One hundred and fifty pounds of explosives were used—enough to blow up three Tower Bridges. The explosion was terrific and was heard seven miles away. And the scene at the blowing up was indescribable. Billions of particles of broken glass and other debris came down in showers over a wide area. That 1501 b. of explosives did the trick in a moment. England’s biggest conservatory is no more. The Fastest Warship. What is the fastest warship in the world? I heard an interesting discussion on this topic the other day at one of the Service Clubs (writes “Clubman” in the “Pall Mall Gazette”). Apart from the forty-five knot coastal motor boats, which can scarcely be classed as “warships” in the strict sense of the word, there are two claimants to the distinction, and both are destroyers—The Turquoise, completed by Messrs Yarrow in March last year, and the Teazer, delivered by Messrs Thorneycroft in August, 1917. The last-named boat, which is about 100 tons larger than the 930-ton Turquoise, is said to have attained a speed of 39.7 knots, while an actual trial speed of 39.6 knots was recorded in the case of the Turquoise. These speeds arc equivalent*to forty-five miles an hour, and they have not yet been approached by any foreign destroyers.

But from the layman’s point of view the Hood’s performance is still more remarkable. Sir E. Tennyson d’Eyncourt, the Chief Naval Constructor, tells us that this huge vessel, when running her trials last March on a displacement of 44,600 tons, reached a velocity of 31.9 knots —or 365 miles an hour. Syrian King’s Little Ways. The Emir Feisul, who proclaimed himself King of Syria, is destined to play a big part soon in that region. He is at least a personality, and he has big ambitions. All sorts of stories are current about him. He

said: “I want to be a modern monarch, a constitutional king!” Everyone applauded. Then he inquired what were strikes? On being told he reflected, and then inquired: “Why not cut off the heads of the leaders? That would stop the business.” He was informed that by doing so he would not be a modern monarch. The Emir Feisul was pulled up with a round turn by this suggestion, and he is now reconsidering his situation with regard to the desirability of being a constitutional king. £I2OO Cottages. A widespread ca’ canny movement among the building trade operatives is threatening to further hold up housing schemes throughout the Northern counties of England, says the ‘ ‘ Observer. ” Bricklayers are the ringleaders, and although their union is giving no official recognition to the plan, it is being vigorously enforced in many centres.

The men have decreed that no man must lay more thari 300 bricks in an ordinary working day. Some idea of what this policy entails may be gleaned from the fact that before the war the average day’s output of men engaged on straight wall work was about 1000 bricks per man. The mas--ter builders declare that even fourroomed cottages will cost over £I2OO each to erect. Fate of Ex-Czar. The various stories current as to certain members of the Russian Royal Family having escaped the massacre in which the Czar met his death should be disposed of by an official document now filed in the Principal Probate Registry in London. This is an affidavit by the Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia (wife of the Grand Duke Alexander Michaelovitch and sister of the late Czar), in which she swears that his Imperial Majesty Nicholas Alexandrovitch, Czar of All the Russias, died on July 16th, 1918, at Ekaterinburg, in Russia, domiciled in Russia, intestate, and that neither his wife nor any child of his survived him, and that under Russian law his mother (who survived him) has no interest in the estate or in the grant of letters of administration, which interest vests in his two sisters who survived him. Letters of administration have been granted to the Grand Duchess Xenia as regards the English estate of the Czar. The gross value of the estate is £SOO.

Millionaire Draft-Dodger. Grover Cleveland Bergdoll, a wealthy Philadelphia youth known as “America’s millionaire draft-dodg-er,” who was serving a five years’ sentence for desertion from the army, escaped on May 22nd from military custody in circumstances which recall Harry Thaw’s escape from Mattewan Asylum.

A few months ago Bergdoll was apprehended after a country-wide search and was convicted by Courtmartial and sentenced to five years’ hard labor for evading military service. His father, a wealthy Philadelphia brewer of German family, left a fortune of several million dollars. Bergdoll, who was a military prisoner at Governors Island, New York, was taken to Philadelphia, at his own request, to sign the papers necessary for the administration of his father’s estate. While his guard, a sergeant and a corporal, waited in the draw-ing-room of his mother’s home at Wynefleld, an exclusive Philadelphia suburb, Bergdoll excused himself, dashed through the kitchen window to a racing motor car that was waiting at the kerb in charge of a chauffeur, and before the guards realised what had happened he had escaped. An alarm was sent out to all Eastern cities. He was dressed in the regulation military prisoner’s uniform, but it is believed that the motor car contained a change of clothing and ample funds.