6
THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1938.
Life Begins at 8:01
Burnett's
Celebrated.
LONDON
DRY GIN LA
slurls you off right
Sole Agents:--A. S. WATSON & CO., LTD.
GET THE BEST
OUT OF Your recorDS BY USING
THE FINEST NEEDLES
"GOLDEN, PYRAMID"
AND
"EMBASSY "
A PRODUCT OF REDDITCH, ENGLAND WHERE FINE NEEDLES ARE MADE
OBTAINABLE ONLY
AT
S. Moutrie & Co., Ltd.
York Building
Chater Road.
Music hath charms
Sunday Classical Concert
at Repulse Bay Hotel
Under leadership of
Geo, Pio-Ulski
Programme for Sunday, 25, Scpt., 1938. 1 p.m.-2.30 p.m. PROGRAMME
1.
Le Barbler de Seville. Ouverture.. Rossini,
2. Brunette or Blonde. Waltz Waidteufel.
3. Rapsodie, Andalouse
4.
Faust, Selection
Ross,
..Gounod.
5. Je me souviens de Naples... Buninconto,
6. Was Blumen Tracumen
7. London Again
For Reservations
phone 27775.
...Translateur.
.Coates.
NEW VAUXHALL
CAR
A popular-priced motor car NOW introduced, automatically selects the ratio of petrol mixture which is most suitable to road conditions as they change.
TWELVE-.
CHEAPEST FOUR FAMILY CAR, WITH A MAXIMUM OF 65 m.p.h, AND A GUARANTEED MILE- AGE OF 35 TO GALLON OF PETROL.
A
has independent front-wheel springing. The alteration of the petrol mixture ratio is
effected
"Six- by Phase" carburetter, and the engine gives greater power and smoother running.
COMING SOON
HONGKONG HOTEL GARAGE
Stubbs Road.
The
?
Hongkong Telegraph.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1938.
GENEVA AND THE CHILDREN
A new report published by the League of Nations contains the welcome tidings that, in almost
"
I VISITED "SKODA"
KODA is the richest mould pressed the ingots down, menta shaped like dumli-bells, White Skoda is the largest,
scene is but one unit in tho arma- part of the treasure shooting sparks, and then ex- Beaming down on this
pelled them as glowing-red shell from a place of honour on the ment production of Czecho- which Hitler failed to shapes. Then the lumpen-pro- wall was a portrait of the late Slovakia. Here follows a fairly take on May 21 and which fetarians threw them non- President Masaryk, apostle of complète list of munitions plants This present mobilisation chalantly on a pile to cool. pence and democracy.
und what they turn out: again threatens. Skoda is
was a heap of funny the largest of Czecho- little trench-mortar.shells in one Slovakia's arms plants. And corner, fat artillery projectiles it ranks-alongside Krupp
and Schneider-Creusot-as one of the largest in the world.
There
in another.
THE "museum,"
The Ceskoslovenska Zbrojovka at Brno-small arms and the machine-gun, which made under THE cannon work-shop, licence in Britain is known as the Bren.
however, presented which the
most arreating picture.
The Tatra auto works in I next visited, was Some gun barrels turned slowly simply a shell sample room. On around in the mouths of huge Prague-tanks and motorised. It is also, as I discovered re- neat shelves lay the various pro- lathes. Derricks raised others. equipment. cently, a difficult citadel for a ducts from 2-inch up to 15-inch. Still others suspended by chains journalist to storm. In Prague On one part of the shelves were from roof-cranes, sailed swing. I had first to satisfy the Foreign ranged anti-aircraft shells, some ing by only a few feet above the Molada Office of the innocence of my in- long like cartridges with brass machines. I saw
Office bodies, for long range tentions, then the War and finally the management of others, short
arniament secrets.
with
guns
many nent
The Skoda auto works at Boleslav aeroplane motors and Diouels. piles of finished anti-tank gun The Ceskomoravaka-Kolban- Danek plant at Prague-autos, variously barrels. the company. My passport re- coloured and caligrated tips.
1 saw piles of used cannon aeroplane engines and tanks. ceived close scrutiny and I had
"This is a cadmium tip. You barrels. Skoda does a big busi- The Benes (no connection with to sign one paper waiving claims see different customers have ness relining, reboring and re- the President) plant-aero- for personal injuries and an- different notions as to what they pairing these barrels. I watch- planus. other promising not to pry into need," explained the Skoda offi- cd a reboring machine-a long,
The Avin-the largest acro- einl, with an indulgent smile. I shiny oil-spattered steel cylinder, After these formalities have remarked the same sort of rotating slowly as it pushed its plane plant in the country.
a Yugo-Slav cannon went to Pilsen (Pizn), the ram- smile on the lips of tailors when way into
The Aero auto factory-zero- bling, smoky old Czech city they said that some gentlemen barrel, then as slowly withdraw plane engines. tore famous for its brewery insisted on two pleats in their ing. The boring knife, placed than its arms factory.
trousers.
on the end of the cylinder, was a tiny affair, about the size of Then into the shell-finishing thumb-nail, made of fine steel, works (the next to the last tungsten and molybdenum— Besides these, there are the stage, for the shells are charged raw materials which are also the "underground" factories AS my guides led me with explosives in a testing plant lure of the dictators.
through the factory
which people in Prague ate, they explained that Skoda outside of Pilsen). Hundreds makes other articles than arms. lifting shells from conveyors, of workmen bent over machines
Skoda produces rails, locomotives
reaming.
Skoda makes no small
The Vijenska Letecka Tovarna -the Government arsenal at Letnany-small arms.
By Frank C. Hanighen
had
rubber
to
refer
(I saw two brassy locomotives handling little tools, all ready for shipment to China),
planing, polishing.
In one corner stood some mysteriously. They are said to various kinds of forgings, all Some of the machines bore finished products-mounted 150 be hidden away under hills in sorts of machinery, elc. The German names Dusseldorf, mm. howitzers. Some had their Slovakia. Here, in subterranean plant covers 400 acres and pm- Leipzig. But many more bore harrels decorated with the crest workshops, small artus, cannon ploys 30,000 men-the latter the trade-mark of Skoda. For of the King of Rumania; others and ammunition can be produced mostly Czechs. with some the machine-tool business, were destined for Yugo-Slavia, in perfect safety against air at- ganised Slovaks (and no Germans), or- should war break out, will prove One bore a plate in the Turkish tack.
in Socialist and to be a very critical "slot" for a language. Sonic National-Socialist (the Benes big buying serumble. France tyres, other carriage wheels. party) unions. -
makes few machine-tools, im- For while motorisation remains ports many from Germany and important, many military au- No other small nation arm Switzerland. every corner of the globe. machine-guns or aeroplanes in more than France, but still de- artillery best for certain kinds large munitions establishment.
Britain makes thorities consider horse-drawn
can boast of such a more enlightened outlook its Pilsen establishment. But it pends heavily on the United of terrain.
Hiller, hell-bent on rearmament, turns out a multitude of shells. States and on Germany. developing with regard to prob-cannon and military tanks.
That was all the Skoda official could make no richer conquest. lems-of child welfare. Indica-
permitted me to see, He re- But Skoda, I was told, is by
I asked the Skoda official for The shell foundry was an in- ferno of noise and fire. A great Bre long, it will be able to pro- factory. Nor would he reveal suggesting that such informa-
on armament way of becoming self-sufficient. fused to admit me to the tank figures
output. press broke off long thick bars are all its most necessary ma- any figures as to output. From tion, if published, might awaken of steel into little chunks-like chine-tools.
other sources pieces of stick candy. Trog-
in Prague, how the British public to the danger ever, I learned that a year ago of a German attack. The off- with tongs picked up white-hot anti-tank shells into a testing- cent. of the Skoda works were "I believe that the British Gov- lodytic-looking workmen armed We followed a truck of little between 30 per cent. and 40 per cinl shook his head and smiled, ingols, scraped them with long room, where a score of giris ap devoted to armament manufac- crnment already has iron instruments and tossed plied the British "Go-No Go" ture. Experts estimate that to- formation and will act accord- them about. A massive pattern diameter test with little instru- day this has been doubled. ingly,"
is
tions of progress, often of the most unexpected nature, abound in the information which has been collected from some forty countries. We rend of the "Jordan's gardens”-nitractive
play centres for children- which are springing up in Po-- Jane. It is a great advance for Iran (Persia) to send juvenile | offenders to special educational
A
stantiated.
But there
New
is one counL 011
Subject
For
BY ERNEST DYER
Chairman of the Northern Counties Children's Cinema Council
But they see a hundred films for
Schools
|7
this in-
They
have learnt about Lym- bolism, with special reference to Ibsen's Wild Duck" and Masefield's "Tragedy of Nan." Did anybody re- mind them of the tumbleweeds roll- ing before the wind in "The Petri- fled Forest" or the rain relentlessly falling in "Winterset"?
homes instead of to prison, or THE charge that the schools!
are out of touch with the for Iraq to appoint trained world is a charge often brought. nurses to look after the young-It cannot on all counts be sub- sters in even small villages.
Making due allowance for the which it can, and that is in re- can all tell you, for example, how,
lation to the cinema. As a for-Shakespeare liked to open his plays every play. Isn't it perhaps worth They have learnt how Elzabethan natural inclination of Govern-mative influence on the thought, with a short exciting scene so that mentioning that they will And dramatists like Marlowe took the ments to paint a roseate picture standards and ideals of the peo-audience and then proceed at his a story in "Mr. Deeds" and count of their time and gave it a touch of he could grip the attention of his exactly the same device for opening popular blood-and-thunder material in their reports to Geneva, there ple, the cinema is as important leisure with the "exposition" of his less ether film in the same genre? poetry and an almost cosmic sig-
as the schools themselves. Yet theme.
They have learnt that the open-niflcance. Have they noticed that can be no question that the the schools, to all effective pur-theory is that it will help them to establish the mood." Has anybody gangster flm in blank verse— Why have they learnt this? The ing scenes of Shakespeare's playa Maxwell Anderson in "Winterset" work of the League's Child poses, ignore it..
view performances of Shakespeare instanced Mamoulian's opening shot does exactly the same. with a more critical alertness and so for "Cily Streets Welfare Committee is bearing
or Hlchcock's derive completer satisfaction and restless camera in the opening of
"Young and Innocent?
*
Yet what, it will be asked, ought enjoyment. fruit. Its investigations and the schools to do about it?
I would have them ali do two the publicity given to them are things.
an incentive to the more laggard them give to every child, as part of In the first place, I would have countries to do better. At the eracy, some account at all the main his training as a citizen of a demo- factors which act upon public opinion
press,
radlo
same time, by pooling informa
and cinema. The tion, it makes it easy for any young citizen ought to know the way these instruments are organised, the country to profit from the ex-forces behind them, their methods of
approach to the mind.
have eyes trained to see and cars trained to hear-by niceties af direction or cutting or imaginative sound, Sund
perience of others. Further Secondly, every child ought to be helped constructively to get what he the Geneva researches into can of value from the flims he
sees. Alm that contains The
nothing specific, problems, such as the whatever for the mind is the excep- Uhan the rule. What- protection of blind, delinquent tion rather
ever it may be in Euclid, In the or neglected children, the effects cinema the parts are often greater than the whole. A second-rate flim of unemployment upon the may have musle by William Walton or Arthur Bliss or Arthur Benjamin. An child, and the recreational unlikely story may be rendered full. aspects of the cinema, have of critical interest for those who proved of real sociological value. The League in its child wel fare work has adopted as its own the famous Declaration of Geneva, originally put forward by the Save the Children Inter- national Union. The keynote is
A great deal of time is spent in that "mankind owes to the child schools in leaching "musical appre
ciation"
And now that radio has the best that it has to give." brought good music within the reach The encouragement niready re- that teaching may be. Even more ceived will be an incentive to literature-and for be it from me time is spent on the "appreciation of THE HONGKONG & SHANGHAI HOTELS, LTD. still greater efforts to turn this to disparage it
But sometimes I wonder just how honest it all is. The 70,000 children
REPULSE
BAY
HOTEL
Ideal to reality,
consider photography. In many a drab industrial town the photo- graphy that appears on the cinema screens is the loveliest art in the whole town. Yet the beauty of photography is not fully apparent to the untrained.
of all a fine key to self-expression
GRIN AND
BEAR IT
By Lichty
W.PA TROJECT
Khmers 1870'ke Wallad Frations Graduats, Her.
"Take my advice, son-go back to college and get your diploma
then, come and see me.”
normal academle teaching bears
All of these are instances where
or might be made to bear on the appreciation of film. But the schools ought to go much further. The film has a
a language of its own. It should be assessed in terms of a own medium, not of some older more familar medium.
*
*
*
A recent report of the Wolver- hamplon Education Committee realises this. "It may be desirable," It says, to teach at least some of the children what may be called the grammar of film technique... Just as we do not exclude
discussion of
the poet's craft from school, so we ought not altogether to fall to train children to see the meaning of that technique essential to all flms int
are art as well as photograpin doing
Already some teachers are
this. Recognition of its importance grows daily, Schools Film Societies have sprung Into being in Middlesex
and London. There, is a Secondary Schools Film Society en Merseyside which issues lists of recommended flm to its members and some of the schools have their own Flim So- cieties and publish their weeldy
of recommended Alms.
Flats
Training in film appreciation is one of the main objects of the Scottish Educational Film Association, a body with a membership of almost 6,000 teachers, In America, training-In the aesthetics of the Dlm is part of The COURAG
་
colleges.
of numerous teachers"
So perhaps it is only a matter of time before questions on the film appear in the School Certificate Examination itself, and 70,000 child- ren will be able to go to the pictures and say with a clear conscience that they have been doing their home. work.