THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28, 1988,
Q
FOR BILLIARDS
BUT
New Lite to your Worn TyrCK)
TYRE-RÉTREAD
Full Circle Retreading
TYRE EXPENSE SAVED
by
RELIABLE &
EFFICIENT
UP-TO-DATE PROCESS
CAVE
DWELLERS
U
TIGER FOR
BEER
Sole Agents:
A. S. WATSON & CO., LTD.
NOW ON SALE
#I
MARCH
H.M.V.” RECORDS
New Recordings by:—
Nelson Eddy
Lawrence Tibbett
Tito Schipa
Karl Erb
Kirsten Flagstad
Ernest Lough, etc.
For Particulars and Cost
apply
Hongkong Hotel Garage
Phone 27770/0
Obe
Stubbs Itd.
Hongkong Telegraph.
WEDNESDAY, Mancir 23, 1938.
LESSON IN ECONOMICS
RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL?
B
"I think unless something can be done to meet this air menace, in the latter part of this century the people of this world are going to live like troglodytes, as they did in the days of the cave-dwellers."
--said Mr. Eden in the House of Commons. ---Strube in London "Daily Express"
'PLANES Over
The PACIFIC
A
American Aleutian Islands, which stretch for 1,500 miles COMPACT fleet of
like a necklace ncross the throat of the Behring aircraft, eighteen strong, recently Sea, in the north of the Pacific. The United covered the 2,500 miles from San States already has an air base in the islands at There is a story told of four Diego, California, to Honolulu in little Dutch Harbour.
The Japanese are exposed to grave danger farmers in the Canadian North-more than 20 hours.
of aerial attack from Siberia. Vladivostok is a west who gambled the best
Developments in flying technique are pistol pointed at the heart of Japan, for the thousand aeroplanes which the Soviet Govern- years of their lives and all their ussets on wheat-growing. They throwing an aerial bridge across the 7,000 ment is believed to maintain there have only GOO That ocean, or 700 miles to cover before reaching Japanese were middle-aged men at the miles width of the Pacific. time the story opens, and bitter weight of repented defeats. If
and weary, and bowed under a
it were not rust that ruined their crops, it was early frosts,
big as all the rest of the seas of the world territory,
At the same time; Japan is actively develop- together, will soon be crossed in every ing air lines on her side of the Pacific. direction by great aircraft droning over
its vast empty spaces.
"THE VERY IDEA”
RAMBLING FROM A SICK-BED
•
By Eddle Thumatica" Kelly
HELLO, children.
Here we are, back again, ready to resume work, after having just risen from a bed of pain and escaping the clutching hands of the Grim Reaper.
We decided to get well again after our bottle of rum gave out.
Flu, we had. Our mind wan- dered at times. However, we are not sane much on that sub- ject.
We thought up lots of learned crevlees (learned crevice—————wiso crack. Sno it? Ha! Ha! Ha! .. Oh, well!) for the "Very Idea" while we lay there dying.
We were awfully worried about the chaps on the "Telegraph," wondering whether they'd be able to produce the paper without our Assistance. As a matter of fact, they were forced to temporarily cease publication on March 20. They resumed again on Monday.
We think we caught flu out at Repulso Bay, where we mot Mary.
Mary is non-explosive. You know, dynamite but Mary wouldn't. Dynamite was the breed of drink she introduced us to, Mint julep, she called it, and told us it was what everyone drank in the south- ern states.
Mini Julep is what caused, the American civil war, The war col- lapsed when the Yankees captured the mint.
Wo collapsed after the boy at the Repulse Bay Hotel captured $4 of our mint, which was the price of four julops.
We can feel our sciatica coming on again. It catches us something terrible, right at the back of the throat.
We were reading in _the_paper yesterday that n chap's flesh is slowly turning to leather. Wo suspect the same is happening to us-you should have вест
our
We are now going to drink with
a sailor a tough old salt named Epsom.
Hoping you are the same.
tongue this morning. The Peace Conference gave her all the island possessions of Germany north of the Equator in that ocean. The Washington Agreement pre This would be a matter for rejoicing were it vented her from using them as naval stations, not that, in a world so full of international hosti- but she is finding them of great value as air bases. I remember the dalighted laughter which lity, increased accessibility promotes the chances of conflict as much as purposes of peace,
broke out in Paris 19 years ago when the Allied The intensive aerial developments in progress Peace delegates discovered that one of these on every horizon of the Pacific are of a strategic insignificant possessions was called the Island of character. It is preparation for potential war Yap.. that inspires the energy with which hitherto un-
them.
That comically named pin-prick of the map inhabited and nameless coral islands are being of the Pacific Ocean is now the key-point of a converted into refuelling stations, provided with Japanese system of air routes which cuts right barracks, store-houses, repair plants, wireless across the transoceanic air lines of the United stations, and defences for the men who staff States.
The Japanese have also recently occupied a If the Pacific Ocean, whose emptiness has so small island called Pratas, between Formosa arid long kept it a No Man's Sea, one day forfeits that the Philippines, which might serve as an air base title in the political sense, it will be the petrol to menace shipping in the South China Seas. The first air conference between the Japanese Govern- engine that has made this possible.
ment and its colonial administrations is now bo- ing held in Tokyo.
Key
Islands
WITH
VITII air fleets crossing the empty ocean British Interests
at 200 miles an hour a rapid shrinkage
From Hawaii another air line branches off, into an area where British air forces can operate
or one of the other enemies of the wheat farmer. One fall they met on a Government road project for all of them were in need of some ready money to buy seed and equipment—and they fell to talking hoarsely and a little disgustedly of their pros- pects. One of them happened to mention that so-and-so had grown a fair crop of barley, and someone else had had a decent yield of corn, and still another had had a paying crop of oats and alfalfa. And they pondered these things and talked about them at length and finally came! to a decision. They decided to pool their resources. Each of
of the Pacific has begun, and all the Powers with
THOUGH Britain has not such a direct them would concentrate on one interests there are engaged in a scramble to
interest in the Pacific as the two erop either wheat or corn or establish air routes across an ocean the control of Powers whose mainlands confront it on cast and oats or barley, and do a little which will have incalculable importance in the west, the defence of Australia and New Zealand general farming to keep their future.
and of British interests in the Far East is leading households supplied with essen- Last year four-engined American Clippers to the tardy development of our aerial forces tials. They thought that at flew 36 times to and fro the journey of 7,000 there.
Singapore is the main British air base on least one of these crops would miles from San Francisco to Manila, in the Philip-
pines, making stops en route at Hawaii, two coral the fringe of the Pacific, and steps are being be profitable and must succeed;
atolls fitted up as refuelling stations, and the taken to develop the triangle between Singapore, and they were right. Scarcely island of Guam.
Hongkong, and Port Darwin, in North Australia, a year goes by, now, but more Complete descriptive catalogue sent on request. than one of them have a good yield; sometimes all of them have bumper crops, and they divide the profits and are just LTD.
about ready to retire.
There should be a lesson for Road.nations in this experience of simple men, not very wise in the complicated subject of econo- mics. This was no more than price, the labourer 25 reason- an experiment in community able farming, of course. been practised elsewhere. But it is a mystery to the unexpert mind why the system cannot be perfected and applied on 1 wider scale. The United States Government has tried crop con- trouble probably is that govern-highbrow musician. I don't
yond that I cannot go. I do not trol and made a success of it. ments are so very preoccupied much for music that I have to be
I can appreciate Presume to criticise good music. I The producing nations 'have got with political matters that they "educated up to." down to a working arrangement have not the time to consider the waltzes of Strauss, and I could merely repeat that I do not care for
like it. in the rubber and tin fields, and economic affairs. And it is listen indefinitely to a piece are doing well for themselves. possible, too, that they are
sugar and afraid they may lose something League of Nations might suc-dances now and then, but I haven't Where wheat and
by restricting proceed. And there is no doubt yet learnt what "rhythm" means, nor tea, rice and dairy and general in revenue
that of this a plan which would "swing" is. I'm not sure if I even farm produce, motals, timber duction in any form; or and fish, in fact the whole list there will always be "price cut-open the way to free commercial know a crooner when
My dictionary informs me that of marketable commodities are ters" who will undersell them. Intercourse between nations, to "Croon, icoon, V.l. (Secot)" means,
a the abolition of tariffs, to the "o concerned, why should it not be They prefer, then, to tako
utter a low, monotonous, in open competition, reduction of freight rates by articulate sound like a baby: to sing possible to regulate production chance
the estimated never realising that this is not land and see, would go far to- or hum in an undertone." according to needs of the world always the safe and most profitable waywards removing the causes
of (Ct. Dut. kreunen, to groan.)"
is "a low murmuring sound. strife leaving a safe margin in caso to do business.
..which to-day have I think the Dutch have it right. of erop failure--so that the] Perhaps with aims of the brought the world close to dronning is the word. Monotonously producer will receive a fair sort outlined hero an Economic leataclysm.
S. MOUTRIE
& CO.,
York Building
COPIES OF
Chater
PHOTOGRAPHS.
by "Staff Photographer" appearing in the
"SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST"
"THE
and
HONGKONG TELEGRAPH”
may be purchased ́
at the Business Office
of "The Hongkong_Telegraph”.
Morning Post Building, Wyndham Street.
And it has
via a lonely rock called Kingman Reef and Samon, within reasonable reach of refuelling and repair- to Auckland, New Zealand, and from Kingman ing stations.
Thus the Pacific Ocean already resembles a Reef again services will soon be opened up to Brisbane, in Queensland, Australia and to Tahiti, great chess-board, on either side of which con- the French island in the South Pacific.
testants are pushing forward pawns in the form And the Americans are developing another of isolated aerial units. Soon these will be fol- Pacific air route which causes more anxiety to lowed up by mighty air fleets. Then the game Japan than any of these. It will run along the will grow critical.
| MURDERED MELODIES
iragle
consumer wage and the obtain full value for his money?
A good many capable people there is anything more believe that such a system is not than a lost chord it is the slaughter by any means beyond the limits of an inoffensive one; and if there is of possibility. If it can be anything more harrowing than either, worked out on a small scale, it is the auricular evidence of n
don't know if that's what a present- day crooner or croonette is supposed to do, but it's what is done by most of the modern singers whom I hear, on the pictures and elsewhere. Espe- cially the croonettes.
The Worst Offence
I'm perfectly prepared to admit the ski of those who play and sing the modern stuff. It can't be very easy to produce the sort of sounds. they do. Especially for the instru- mental players who have to bounce up and down as they play.
Modern life is generally admitted to be rather feverish, aimless, and confused. Modera music. seems to me to express very well those attri- butes of the age in which it has taken form. In that sense, at least, it has perhaps some claim to be considered music. But
there
is a third source of an- noyance which, so far, does not even possess a name, far less a character.
It
t is a parasitic growth, battening pon the living musical compositions of former times. We all hear it con- tinunily. I refer to that orchestral Ju-jitsu by which some well-known tune is slowly, painfully and systematically warped into unre-
cognizable unconsclousucas.
Now,
setting
all jokes on ono side,
It is time somebody did something about this. We may be pursuing Progress, but we are certainly not so sure of our bearings that We can afford to obliterate our tracks as wo go.
Sabotage
An ordinary plece of music, like "The Blue Danube," "Colonel Bogey," or the tune of "John Peel,"
"Annie Laurie," or "Killarney," is just as complete, coherent, and inevitable a sequence as a verbal sentence from Shakespeare or Burns. In fact, i there is a
difference between a ver- bal and a musical expression of ideas, it is that the musical version is the. more sensitive and the moro In- folerant of innovation.
By One who Prefers it is a fine one.
Them Alive
will work in a larger way. The wholesale massacre of melody.
I hasten to say thnt I I am not a Mendiesohn's "Spring Song" Be
care
But I'm afraid I care even less for modern popular music. Perhaps don't understand it either. I go to
I see ont.
LT-
Croon-
and with an American accent.
We all know the tune of John Peel. If anyone doubts it let them try to compose one with. half its amazingly effective simplicity. The first period of the air consists of ten sound syllables. These sounds ure immutable in tone, and for all practical purposes in value also. The tune can, of course, be expressed in different keys, or by different chords,. and it can be played, as a whole, eller fast or slow. But the notes of which it is composed must stand.
Some people may prefer music of that less bold school that specialises In half tones. That is simply a mat- ter of faste. A minor key is no less musical than major one. But to substitute a half tone for an original full ono in' an existing and Inevitable composition is neither taste nor music.
It in a common practice among players Just now, to start up some well-known and well-tried air, and after following, the original tune for a bar or two, to wander of into half tones and minor keys, or even to (Continued on Page 5.).