TUESDAY, AUGUST 18, 1931.
ANCIENT DEW PONDS FRANCE'S FORTRESS
OF ENGLAND.
Why They Are Never Dry.
MODERN EXAMPLES.
In agricultural England two men hold a secret which is said to have been handed down from one gen- eration to another from primitive The secret relates to the times. exact method of construction of Dew Ponds which remain full of
water while large ponds in valleys
dry up.
Their name is Smith, they live near Basingstoke, and have mide these ponds in almost every county in England and Wales,
This is how they do it: They dig out soil to a depth of 5 ft. in the centre, sloping upwards to the edges where it becomes level with the ground and is then banked up 18 inches. The pond is lined with straw. The straw is covered with clay and the clay covered with lime. But, the lime is on no ac- count allowed to mix with the clay,
A special substance is mixed
with the lime, and it is in the con- stitution of this substance that the secret of the brothers, lies.
Plain earth is laid over the lime, and hammered down with wooden
rams to make the bed of the pond.
"That completes the job, and it only remains to wait for the pond
to fill from rain. After that, the
less rain the more easily the pond may be watered from it when other sources have dried up.
remains filled and stock
Science Fails to Explain.
of course,
There is a scientific explanation, and that is that the layer of dry straw insulates the earth below, and prevents heat passing from it to the water in the pond,
causes
FOR GOLD.
THE CINA MAIL.
safety locks, appears as just a
The first door, with its multiple LEARNING TO READ
sheet of steel painted a glistening white like the. walls of the vault, for already we are in the second]
Rivals any Romance in floor down of cellaga.
Fiction.
GOLCONDA OF WEALTH.
"But there are a few. small round holes to which a handle is attach- ed and then a wheel, and, finally, a key alides home-absurdly small, it seems for such a gigantic sinb of steel-and two huge door back flush with the wall men haul the behind.
The story of the digging of new vaults for the Bank of France, in which to safeguard more than one half of its total gold reserve, is "This door is over two feet thick said to rival any romance in fc-and is made of steel that is proof tion.
against any blowpipe known.
"The safe experts compute that were the keys of this and the other door lost, it would take at least two month to blast a way through, working without let or hindrance night and day."
The approach to the vaults, we are told, is guarded by such monsters of steel and concrete in the shape of doors and revolving walls, shafts and elevators, passages cut through solid rock and lined with chrome ateel, plates two feet thick, that one is struck with awe in approaching this Gol- conda of wealth beyond human imagination.
German Big Bertha shells and bombs from Zeppelins and Gothas, relates Harald G. Cardozo in the Continental Edition of the London Daily Mail, caused the governors of the bank to consider seriously, after peace was signed; the devis- ing of a huge, underground vault.' Shell-Proof.
It is designed to be proof not only against the common wiles of Balfe breakers and well-piecers, it appears, but also to withstand the most terrific bombardment that military genius can imagine.
It is intended also to house not
only gold and notes and scrip, the wealth of a city in jewels and Papers, but also a war-time emer- "The store of gold held by the Bank of France, according to its
gency staff.
most recent weekly balance-sheet amounts to no less than £411,040, 219, which is more than twice that held by the Bank of England.
The rapid growth of the Bank
"More
past ten months.
IN RUSSIAN
Forty Per Cent. Adults Illiterate.
CHILD TEACHERS.
Last
It is estimated that 30 to 40 per are, still illiterate; in some cent. of adults in the Soviet Union
dis tricts as many as 60 per cent of the population are analphabet. year compulsory education was in- troduced for children of from eight to twelve years of age, and all the time, without cessation or interval, propaganda is carried on in every kind of dress to encourage adults to "liquidate their illiteracy."
The opening of this door reveals the mother, the movie and the radio Posters show the child teaching a passage a few feet deep, and gives lessons, the "talkie" pro- then there appears a blank wall. nounces the letters of the alphabet; This wall is described as slightly travelling schools and libraries Thereof the Union the language of the and visit the villages. In the republics chinkation is taught, and the reading made. books are, many of them, translated
Into 53 languages.
rounded, and of solid steel
concrete eighteen feet thick. does not appear a crack or by which an entry can be It is a blind alley-
4,
in diameter.
a
::
Q.M.S. HILL.
Laid to Rest at Happy Valley.
MIL
"TARY FUNERAL,
Q.M.S., W. S. The funeral o
-ly on Sun- Hill, who died sudde
military day, took place with full honours, at Happy Valley yes..
*er- day evening. The service. Was conducted by the Rev. Sy C Knight Anstey. mourners.
Mrs. Hi and Master Billy Hill were the chief
Borderers led the cortege, and amongst the Service representa
The band of the South Wales
tives were Col. J. H. Thoms, D.S.O., R.A., Brigade Officers, Indian Officers, Royal Engineers, ers, R.A.S.C., and R.A.0.C.. Argyll and Sutherland Highland-
sentatives, as did the R.A.0.B., Kowloon. Dock Recreation Club, H.M.S. Otus also sent repre-
colleagues and friends attended, and Referees' Association. Many in addition.
The profusion of wreaths testi- fled to the esteem and affection in which Quartermaster Sergeant Hill was generally held.
Mrs. Landolt's Funeral.
Door Weighing 14 Tons. At the Gossensdat-the State "But no-there is a way of get- Publishing House they showed ting past this barrier if the secret me their books specially printed pass-words are known, far more for illiterates (writes Ella Winter .. The funeral of Mrs. J. S. complicated than Aladdin's Open They are books just as well suited whose death was reported in in the Manchester Guardian). Landolt (nee Cynthia Tavares) Sesame.
"This blank wall is part of the to, a foreigner learning the Russian yesterday's China Mail, took place surface of a huge cylinder of con-language or to a small child. The at the Roman Catholic cemetery, crete faced with steel eighteen feet first pages are printed in very Happy Valley, last evening, be- large type; the alphabet is given ing attended by a large nuinber "In the passage wall another in print and in seript, in small of relatives and friends. steel, door bars access to an elec-letters and in capitals; then follow Rev. Fr. L. Rossi conducted the trie motor which, if everything is words, phrases, short-sentences.
-service-at-the-graveside. normal and the right keys are pro-Very short stories come next, aa duced, revolves the massive cylinin our childhood's "French with der on its pivot in a quarter-circle, out Tears," and every story is ac disclosing a steel and concrete companied by an illustration. The armour plate in the form of a stories give pictures of present-day gigantic rectangular 'cork, as the Russia. bank officials call it.
"It weighs more than fourteen tons, and when in turn its bolts
"Let Us Learn.”-
I was shown four books in par- ticular which serve as beginners
The
The chief mourners were the husband (Mr. J. S. Landolt), father (Mr. J. M. P. Tavares), and four brothers Messrs. F, A. M., A. R. and A, E, Tavares).
In addition to the above, Mrs. Landolt is survived by her mother, a sister (Mrs. C. M. Tavares), and two other brothers
resident in Shanghai, and (Mr. Fernando J. Tavares), who is on holiday in the North.
of France's gold reserve 'will be have been drawn, an electric trol- literature, two for townsfolk and (Mr. Alva M. Tavares), who is The water thug remains cold and seen from the fact that it stood at ley runs up on rails and slowly two for peasants. The town book
the moisture-laden night only £253,776,876 at the end of pushes
this eighteen-foot-deep is called "Let Us Learn," the air to part with its water-hence 1028, £271,963,526 in February, wedge down the passage, leaving peasants book "The Red Flough the term Dew Pond. The heat of 1929, and £341,803,306 in January the way, free.
man: A Country Alphabet for the day also enuses evaporation, of this year.
"Eight tons of aclid steel (the
Flowers from the husband were Adults." Each contains little which lowers the temperature and
buried with the remains and than £60,000,000 have first door), and fourteen tons of stories about workers in the old amongst the large number of further facilitates condensation. been added to the huge store in the steel and concrete (the 'cork'), had life and the new women and their other floral tributes were the fol-
The brothers have not been ablej
been manoeuvered, unlocked, and position, children in to keep their secret, in its entirety. 1. have just been privileged to driven aaide, and the long passage schools, how workers live, what family: "Dad," "Mother", bro- nursery lowing from members of the to themselves, save for the combe one of the very few people ad- with its steel sides, steel floor and they produce, and so on. Many are there and sister: position of the special mixture mitted to the great vaults in Paris steel roof, was awaiting me.
very moral little talea. There are law and sisters-in-law; Harry and brothers-in- which they make themselves. where the Bank of France keeps "Suddenly, just as if this gigan- lessons against the evils of drink, Emily; Tilda, Carlos. Dick and the main pertion of its bullion re- tic mechanism had been working quite like Mrs. Henry Wood: Billy; Chico and Cissy: Lucy,
for her sole benefit, a little old against excess of eating, smoking: Alfredo, Melina and kiddies. "I have laid my hand on thou-woman clad in spotless white, a against slackness in work, and so sand of those oblong yellow bricks dainty white bonnet on her silver on. which are French or American hair, and a duster in her hand, humorous. ingots and on the sloping truncat appeared, apparently from nowhere. ed blocks which are made of British gold..
Ancient Origin.
An important fact. about these ponds is that since they are in- variably located on high land and on hill tops they are evidently not filled by any system of drainage and soakage. That is indeed their origin, which goes back into the dim past when primeval ancestors never felt safe from attack unless their camp or fort was located on
a hill top and their water supply
assured. They assured it by
means of Dew Ponds.
serves.
•
"In the bright light of the enor-
Sume of the stories are
The lesson teaching the time has!
NEWS-IN-ADVTS.
On Friday, August 28, a pro- She was one of many who work a picture of a clock, the explana-menade concert is to be held at the deep underground keeping spotless-tion of sixty seconds in a minute, Volunteer Headquarters, at 9.15 ty clean the Palace of Gold. sixty minutes in an hour, and so p.m. Among the artistes who mous underground vaults of the "I passed on through these on, and then goes on to tell how have promised to give their weft- Bank of France, the rows and rows fortress gates and reached the many hours workers worked before tance will be Mrs. Neil Mathiesen, of ingots piled one on another in shaft which takes one by lift or the revolution and how many they Mrs. F. C. E. Rendall, and Mr. great steel cupboards shone dully stairway to the cuter walls of the work now, how many hours there W. M. Barton. The Corps Band behind the simple screen of woven vaults eighty feet below. This are to a shift and when the shifts will be in attendance. Admission wire, with tiny cardboard tickets first gate was merely a sally port. change. The town book, in ex- will be $1, including tax. to the special mixture of the bearing merely a handwritten date Smith Brothers which they mix and figure."
"Here again, where not even plaining about health and diseases, with the lime is not apparent, but
tremor of the far-distant street tells about the night sanatoria to The B.. President Lincoln will traffic can be heard, but which, all which workers may go when they and for New York at midnight the fact remains that their ponda
"There was just 27 milliards of the same, is full of strange throb are threatened with illness. There to-day. are very effective, and they have franes in gold (about $216,000,000), bings and the rhythmic hum even been invited to go abroad and
of are pictures of Lenin, Stalin, nake ponds in California and else- or more than half of the total re- hidden machinery, are the same Kalinin, and other Soviet leaders; Fathers,"
What particular value adheres
where, but they say they have all
Hoard of £216,000,000.
serve. The rest is kept in other
the orders they need in England. vaults, not only in Paris but devices
Bound by Oath. They have taken
an oath of secrecy handed down through their family for many generations, and they say they cannot leave their to the nation because of
secret that onth.
"TOO RIGHT.” It's So Expressive.
HUMAN SPEECH.
Adelaide, June 27,
throughout France.".
and others, perhaps fatories of a boy's fe in a factory, stranger atill, known only to about of how they live in a Commune, of For three years, shifts of work- a dozen bank officials, to protect the behaviour of a certain religious men have been busy night and day the entrance to the great under-sect in one works (with an anti-
religious moral). hewing out of the rock beneath ground chamber itself.
These doors, however, are only the bank a vast underground cham-
ber measuring 10,000 square metres to be shut in time of the greatest peril, as they can be opened from in area, or in other words, a square outside, but only by the garrison about two and one-half acres
which has locked itself up with its-fantastic stack of gold."
extent...
in
Above the rocky roof of this chamber are at least thirty-six feet
4
Kitchen In The Vaults.
For The "Little-Cultured.” In addition to these primers, or "text-books," a number of books
are specially printed for "the little- cultured." There is a fat "second book" for the peasant and the town worker respectively, the town book with a great many statistics (in of rock and water, representing a Escorted down, another passage, weight of thousands of tons. To the writer was taken to a great picture form) and graphs, pictures this must be added the weight of kitchen with gigantis ateam-heated of Russia with the factories under the new bank building:
stew-pans, all-heaters and electric the Five-year Plan spread all over "As the vault was excavated, the kitchen ranges "as big as those in it, tales from the history of the The town book haa roof was kept up by huge cylindri-a palatial hotel." He tells us fur-Revolution.
The workers of the Lenin fac- fory gathered 1,500 children to- gether. They carried large ban- ners. This is what was written on them-
Lenin workers: You drink up 3,000 roubles every month. How many schools and clubs have you drunk away?.
We have insufficient, elothes, we have no shoes, and you drink. We demand soberness,
A bottle of wine costs I rouble 75 kopecks. For this money we ean buy milk and meat. Do not wasto money on drinking!
Home
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As soon as the workers came. out of the factory the children started a meeting, They de- "Bydney appears to be the main cal concrete pillars, and when the ther that meals for 2,000 clerks and pictures and 'articles about bees
manded that the saloons near the offender with nasalisation, because.
ful to crops, and a great deal about
factory be closed, of Its many American visitors whole space was hewn out there officials can be prepared in the and caterpillars, and Insects harm
J bank kitchens, and he adds:
the wild flowers found in the fields. The saloons were closed: Chil- ssid the Rev. G. E. Hale, Unitarian were 750 of these pillars.
"The walls were built of fifteen "Supplies of tinned and preserv- minister and elocution authority feet of reinforced concree, with aed foods are always kept in readi. (en there are men looking up at dren hang placards and posters in to-day.
Miss Alice Smith, lecturer in watertight layer of a patent ness, and there is a huge refrigera- aeroplanes, facsimile reproductions the factory. voice production at the Melbourne asphalt preparation in the middle tor to hold sides of beef and sheap marriage and divorce certifi- A generation of men and women plaining the new social arrange hogy as much about the social Teachers Training College, is lead to prevent the outside water per- by the ecore, as well as fresh Cates, and other methods of ex are growing up in Russia who will ments and institutions of this new institutions, administrative or. ing a campaign for clearer and colating. And thus the largest vegetables and other foodstuffs.
Situated far underground 45 world.
Pilsener, German, "Flying Zebra" brand per ganizations, and the general aims, better speech, and has a special safety vaults in the world
they are, condensation would grudge against "good-sh" and brought into being."
Works of well-known writers are purposes, and underlying phito- Wright-ob.",
"The approach to these vaults render conditions in the vaults ex also reprinted in large latters for sophy of their State as a post- Pilsener, Belgian, "Lion" brand, per Mr. Hall, who was taken to task it curious in the extreme as re-tremely unpleasant but for in
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Pilsener, Belgian, Lion' brand; ⠀⠀ per · case it was more suitable than most been imagined not against any absorption devicen.”.
4. doz. Qia certal He said there was a puny safe-breaker" with their oxy danger Janguage purists becom- hydrogen blowpipes but against
were
ing too highbrow. Speech was very the organized forces of an enemy
the illiterate either in whole or in graduate student of the London part. Or short stories are taken School of Economics might know from the classics and reprinted of his; and just an an eleven-year- with illustrationsTolstoy's old child in Moscow- to-day- will "Poliushka" has been so reprinted, discuss Marxian economics withi The York Safe and Lock Com-fand many of Maxim Gorki's stories the gravity and clarity of a profes- karmy or of a fresh Commune in pany of New York has on hand two and oxcerpts from Do talevskov, sor, so peasants who were buti Penn Paris.Coeffer outstanding, undertakings, First, and others. Sometimea well-known lately Illiterate will hold forth-on Fou Poong Flour Mill The shaft through which I was is the installation of a Massive cir, writers of to-day are commissioned world revolution or the dialecticn 26, Mokashan Road, Shanghai, taken by one of the highest official cular steel door in the vault of the to write special stories for the of materialism as if these were the bed an China », largest and of the bank, with an escort of other Kipcheng Banking, Corporation of liile cultured, sometimes men are latest racing tips or cricket scores, officials carrying bays and blue Shanghai (the first work of the engaged who write nothing else. And the Intensive propaganda. Magara, Henry Bimoa, Ltd, of enfermed sporters✨ to work the kind to be done in China), and the Out of the Mouths of Babes, against social, evils which 3 England. It is now a mechanism is protected by a wall building of the largest bank vault Here is one very moral little tale all over the country le me
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