THE CHINA MAIL, THURSDAY, JUNE 17, 1954.
TILES
TURKEY
PERSIA
SYRIA
ERAQ
"Remember, mon-my Grandma's Rommel and the rest of 'em are dangerous Jerry troops."
with
INSIDE RUSSIA RENE
MacCOLL
where moustaches
This is Georgia-where
make a man and it's an insult to sip brandy
Travelling reporter Rene MacColl is on his way through the heart of the Soviet land. This despatch comes from the colourful country where Stalin was born.
more
Merow is more than
1.500 inles away-arid seen: more. I ke It a whole lot better here Than did in Moscow. For une thing the people are exuberant. They seem to enjoy artel they ጊዮን" extremely picturesquN,
A m
TIFLIS (Caucas). a pretty good tan
after life the three {{a!༥ ---
and! some
M in Georgin
other Georgia.
the of the citizens sport panama
large
In the evening as the heat Every member of the wanes the town comes out for a orchestra hud peeled his jacket stioli. People amble and and was lieless. There they all down the main street, under
in their away. were, playing the plane trees, enjoying the brown and blue and pink and flowers: chattering, laughing, striped shirts, the double bass дет In arm; having a shop
with his sleeves rolled up, and shine on one of the high shoe-
the drummer who almost had to shine thrones; buying drink
move his moustache out of the of kvass, a sweet barley drink from a barrow boy with sweep way before he could get at his
instrument
proved to be chacha, a Georgian brandy of great potency ("I one drinks chacha the head con- Linues to feel nice, but the leg is not working." it was later explained to me). I sipped this but the swarthy one insisted on no heeltaps.
Learning that I was "Angli- whhot n mustache ski," he grinned and remarked: these prits ES OUT
"Ah, then I beat you" or may
handlebar moustache; but anyway it seemed meant in getting weighed on a kerbside a good spirit.
weighing machine: window- This is an old Georgian shopping.
the eustom of hospitality to stranger." explained my guide as we broke away. it is intended
ill-
hund thui produced hats and white vests worn
The lund of outside the trousers, Cuban "upped. Moustaches run right be it was "Then I bet you"-
Stalin.
me
Clark in from down the Cables to R.AF. Jobs. (One ancient shepherd I
way mountains the
had undergrowth of p so tangled that it made me feel
his account that ex
tobacco and tea plantations, style. vast vineyards which supply
Others prefer sheepskin ont Soviet wines to the whole
of shakos, dyed brown, and a piece Union, nund orchards plums, lemons, grapefruit, leggings. and tangerines.
here in Georgin
Sorry
Feminine clothes whiz all soup is one of Georgia's greatest the way from European- delicacies.)
Hlowered
summer
Thu
men
There is bright sunshine type
I've got dresses hanging straight 10 lustrous
the garish gipsy-like ros- s.deburns. tumes of the Kurdish who look women street cleaners,
Against
skin disease and itching
Mitigal
A GENUINE BAYER PRODUCT (BAYER
MANUFACTURED IN
LEVERKUSEN, GLEMANT
DON'T
WASTE
WATER
SOUTH
tains many
Lill
of
snowbound -
indred Arinenian
have
lend to Jiquld eyes And all those chaps like Armenians
Armenians
Soviet Socialist
publie being just next door.
are
the Re-
I must try to get used to the old Georgian customs, for as
restaurant
д
London Express Bervice
BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN
SLOW BUT SURE STRANGULATION
S
By Ritchie McEwen
the Communist pins, leather footwear, cotton or noose draws tighter cotton fabrics, wool or woollen around the satellite fabrics, silk fabrics, fodder, seed, petroleum and petroleum pro- countries of the far-flung ducts, timber, paper, stationery. "Russian Empire," private or antiques. enterprise is slowly but surely being strangled out of existence.
more im-
Jut to make matters a trifle more difficult for your Rumanian
capitalist, he may not:
1. Lay In supplies exceeding his weekly requirements.
The larger and
2. Buy from the State-run portant undertakings, of course, have long since fallen under the
wholesale frins any articles for
wine re-sale other than:
and Hammer and Sickle, and now
tobacco, the full
cigarettes, weight of the Party spirits, machine is directed against the matches, stamps, sugar, bread, I found myself heaving with small-time shopkeepers and the
Bait, ready-made clothes, news- inward laughter, and my cum-one-man business,
papers, periodicals and posters Rumania what thooke
(the Danion
La pro- and a special licence Wos. But I couldn't explain gressive' of the subject terri- required to deal in even these
under that had just had a vision of tories
the Red Star items. Sir Thomas Beecham striding banner) is now getting a real: 3. Purchase agricultural pro- podium and glancing taste of Democracy-the People's ducts markels or other
And 10
himself
con- version
places where farmers Bell greatest ,port kis gigantle fronted with this wonderfu} To begin with, no Rumanian their products direct, to the
Stand there
Rustaveli Street (named after Georgin's
to the down
collection.
dominates one statue
end of the street) and in five minutes you will see perhaps a dozen different racial types go by... and half a hundred mixtures.
This La Georginand im mensely proud of it. You must not make the gaffe, as I did at first, of talking about Russia if
Russin you mean Georgia.
is somewhere else entirely. This is It means he the autonomous Georgian presence and S.S.R. which has been joined on
with Russia since the start of pastures. This guide possesses a brand the last century. of English which has me In
The Georgian language stitches. I was feeding a stray even harder to master than the cat some chicken bones after a Dienic and
the guide observed: Russian,
I went to the ballet at the "Ah, now the lucky cat is in
here, Opera House
a spirited the seventh sky.")"
affair, performed of course Georgian dancers.
Tilis lim in a narrow walked Intu the valley with towering moun- which soars on a mountain high them above the city-you reach it by
fumcular railway--a as a compliment. sleep round swarthy
man with a mighty did like your In shape the det Kazc tu and about.
him leaped character." eity is like High Wycombe to his feet and beckoned me in Buckinghamshire, only peremptorily to his table,
more
80, being 22
miles
long and only four wide. It
They were is also 1,500 years old and
A tough-looking clustered his friends 600.000 people live here, bunch
around, and one character was Included among them are fast asleep hend down on the
2
which
5,000 Moslems who have a table amid a junior forest of musque,
i boliles. And there is
The swarthy one held out Christian church, started
full glass of something in the fifth
century, but pillaged and wrecked and rebuilt and rewrecked many times in Georgia's turbulent history that you
80
have to use a microscope to find any of the fifth-century bits knocking around.
ORNING
“KONG & KOWLOON
You look down on Tills from this funicular restaurant and it
is nearly all red-coloured.
asiced
most
on his may carry on business own without a troding licence. As these licences have to be approved by the local Communist 'Co-op. which controls the
not
on
consumers.
4. Buy form produce in any areas other than those specially designated by the Ministry Home Trade.
of
5. Make more than 18 par- cent gross proft on each Item sold, or sell arileles at a lower or higher price than the local Slate "Co-op."
But let's get away from all State-owned 'competition' across this, drive out of town-and it's the street, they are hard to come a land of vast and compelling by,
and huge Once he has licence а beauty. Mountains
are Rumanian shopkeeper Is valleys, and rivers which always in a hurry. Cherry and allowed to give it up, retire, or peach and apple trees in loaded sell his business without special blossom. Great flocks of sheep permission from the Ministry of
their
The spring
To make sure he doesn't inter- fere with the profits of the New measures aimed at 'dis- And a
strolling State Co-op,' he is forbidden young man, and forget-me-nots, strumming along a road among buttercups to:
way
to
Trade.
1. Carry on a wholesale busi-
is
by
a chonguri to the singing of hisness, companions-a chonguri being
balalaika, B Georgian
only narrow, like the blade of an onr.
2.
What was he singing?
"Gcorgla
that
The orchestra gave me a bit A
pity that, because in this hot of a shock. True, the conductor be his equivalent of climate it ought really to be was in faultless evening dress favourite white, like the Riviera lowns, with white tie but his men! mind.”
DON
IDDON'S
DIARY
May-
Deal in second-hand goods.
3 Sell cereals, fish, oll, fard, bacon, cattle, horses, donkeys, pigs, sheep, goats, or their meat old or preparations made from this myment, hides of any kind, (includ- Įing dog pelis), sausages, thimbles,
THEY CALL IT THE ZANIEST TOWN
Jersey City, Tuesday.
T
IN
THE
the
UNITED STATES
with
couraging workers from be- coming ill are being introduced en a wide scale in the satellite 'exem- countries--modelled on plary' practice in Mother Russia.
A comrado who commits the 'crime' of falling sick and can-
to work not go
is regarded with the gravest suspicion and
treated accordingly.
For he is holding up the vital flow of armaments and other goods for the Soviet war
which machine,
is already bogged down with
enough quite headaches on
pt questions supply and production without being burdened with .tho additional problem of having to
one with copo
large numbers of seedy workers among the sub-
ject peoples.
for
their
and
Itors' certificates are ex amined by Party officials with the same care as a bank teller would serutialse a brand new bank note, and are then poured on to the sick man's foreman whose duty it is to make a lay investigation and report on the So far as I can see, Jersey being the days of Mayer some slight improvement." They takes long holidays in Florida in HE people of Jersey Hudson River from New York,
City, which Is just across the Hague's domination.
quote the fight promoter, the the winter and regularly attends "symptoms."
The foreman appointa a panel The present mayor is Bernard late Jack Jennings, who said: a sanatorium for rest cures and City have probably compares favourably with many Berry, an enemy of Hague, and "It isn't how the ballots go in check-ups.
of the patient's fellow workers had
specially picked moro ex- of our industrial towns in the the hand-picked succestor of the box that counts-it's how perience of power- Midlands and the North. Cor. John Kenny, Hague's fiercest, they come out."
According to newspapermen i patriotism to visit him every hungry politicians than the tainly it la as handsome as for, who helped to break the The present mayor is not talked to, ho has ambitions to day to offer 'moral help
make a comeback. It is his encouragement' and to make people of any other town in Wigan, Warrington, or Bolton. Hague machine.
news compared Kenny was elected mayor for
making much the United States. They
his predecessor. At the dream to replay his slar role as sure that the wretch Isn't Just The approach, once you have
shirking, time second
Last spring present time his administration a political master mind. have had a taste of dictator left the Jersey turnpikej, cuta after some busy campaigning, is under investigation-this is a ship.
Although he never carried through factories, wharves, de- but last December he abruptly great place for probes by more than $8,500 For 32 years
D year, his resigned os Mayor auddenly emerges into a wide (there caying warehouses, and then
city commissioner court-appointed Mr Samuel personal fortune is estimated at the are five commissioners Larner, a gifted lawyer.
unfortunato man-or Frank ("I am the law") tree-lined boulevard. which re in Jersey City) and mayor and
$4,000,000, and he himself has admilied to having $2,000,000 to go to hospital, he or she is woman-is seriously ill and has Hague ran Jersey City-its minded me of Harrogate or said: I have had just about
Ho lives in great style in a people, its politics, its in- Bath.
entugh. I am handing over to
Jersey City apartment building still not free from bomradely dustries, Its habits, and its
Berry. I can't tako it any more,
which he owns. He has a large mission', on whose diagnosis the allding attentions and the 'Lay Com- especially the antics of crack pots."
Jack treatment, or He tells his onllora: 12 you
it, into city spending under work hard and stay honest you Although all workers, in the Jersey City is famous for its Tamer investigation is summer house and fins cars.
ultimately depends. ESPITE Jersey City's lurid anties and Its crackpots. Many John Kenny and Bernard Berry can grow up like me."
He saye atellite countries make com- cide, I do, me" and the D
Americana call it the zaniest There are reputation there are not down in the whole United States have been wasto and oxirava stock market tips, from wealthy pulsory
charges that there his fortune came from hot
'National Health con people obeyed.
many gangsters and little vice. Even In Inst year's elections garice.
and bars flourish, there
friends, Whether he will ever were borrage Worth a visit
Jersey City is one of the biggest sky-writing, maratha parades, The man who was mayer for doubtful.
balkóns, Frank Hague must be smiling, climb back into power again is betting towns In the United
ted Arocrackers, brick and States, and 110 bookmaking tossing, dozens of street fights haps the biggest polical, bore Eg eight successive terms and per- THOUGHT that as the junior syndicates were
for years and bigger skirmishes, ono fatal America Benator from Wisconsin, protected racket,
shooting, and scores
hobbies. Hague was the
law.
Ho used to shout: "I de-
out so
A flutter
Bookmakers
THE
A..comeback?
in
(he delivered the * Ibel entire Slalo vote for Roosevelt) made Jersey City's tax rate the
hls
and
Jomph McCarthy, is now reach-. The streets are cleaner that suits for millions of dollars.
desperately for many of New York's; the personal power in the country as people more polite.
Getting better
of
tributions based on their wages and salarier, the benefits" "they receive when they are ill arbitrarily deelded by a "Com- mission of his (or her), follow worker. Woe betido a patient who is unpopular at the works! Hospital patients are treated Itumultuous city absorbed in Few hospitals have shoets;
Colourful
highest in the United States, you wild gather that this is with the contempi they deserve.
McCarthy,
It is inevitable and comforts are restricted to
Journal Square, 'where the
To bulld a whole, it might be an idea to
machine visit Jersey City and see how it Jersey Journal is printed and
mules it the smoothest-running politics, said with as much colour enough blankets. In the winter, getting along without Hague, where the outdoor politica
is the country Hague stacked a carnival. had always been told that meetings are held is about half TTS citizens are not too sen the city and comty stan with that it should be intensely in the irreducible minimum, In
Breksiard Jersey City, scarred and sollpe as big a Trafalgar Square,attive about criticism, they his political henchmen, In some ferested in Senator Joseph the
· hospital | near, by
binck with soot,
kukan, have had so much. wot, though not so Imposing Industry
They tell Instance" ha pald judges two
Budapest, for instance, inclce, and alume, wat ons of The mquare - hu bow quiet you openly that there has been salaries, he increased property. Some people in Jersey City patients are made to out theic theglast communities in during the couple of days good deed of corruption, but aastanamenta, "grid siphoned {have”, sild” tọ, tiec TRYta runs with their firigenti EA American
people have, have been here. My gilda told that things are getting betarti milikam : from the taxpayers) Somet even said: "Is Jersey City a city medyou mould have seen, Ita. They may: We see ka not- Today, at 17 Hague (Milliye
in the old daga kuthe old days looking for Utópia, but, just pur in
or e-dieesse?";
'got "the org
He know, fork and spoon would be he wealed on the feeble said, "whe