1954-01-23 — Page 5

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THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, JANUARY 28, 1954.

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CONVICT ISLANDS

BECOME

MODEL COMMUNITY

By JACK SENN

CALCUTTA, the hills. So far eight thousand

600 homeless

STRETCHING for 600

Bengal into Ocean lies a chain hundred islanda Andamans and Nicobars,

the

settled there.

Indians have

bern

the Indian This have been granted a of 2,000 rupees (£ (54) logn of two

each to buy farming implements. eds and livestock. Each has been allotted ten acres of land, which will be cleared for them by bulldozers and grapplers.

Six hundred miles east of the Indian sub-continent, they provide a tropic setting of hot watch al corul recía, lagoons and white surf.

Bofore the war, these islands were notorious is a penal sette ment, Today they have special strategic significance.

And they are also fl developing into a well-suffletent outpost of the new Republie of India.

The Indi Government has permitted the Royal Air Force to set up a mult bow there from which to communicate with

ships pasping

amel aircraft. Periodically, civil airliners touch down, too),

In the event of war, however, the islands would become vitally important. For they lie within

striking tlistance easy Bengal's highly industrialised areas to the north and the Madras coast to the west

In

of

enemy hands, they could prove us much menace t India was Germany's North Sea Istand outpost of Heligoland to Britain.

The Bottlers themselves are helping in the reclamation work with hand axes to hasten the moment when their plots will produce wheat and rice, their staple diet. This they will aug- ment with bananas, papayas, other oranges, KIMLINGVIES fruit growing abundantly in the Mills

find

Good Investment

The Inclin Government believes that it will all be a gooi myostment, For by the time the Five-Year Plan is co- pleted in hoped that the idlands will have provided about 380 million rupees (£29 million) by way of trade and taxes.

So on paper the net Govem- ment utiny will have

been

23 million rupees (X2 million) a small figure for converting a one-line penal settlement into

Arishing community.

Inevitably Sume islanders study, brown-skinned people resembling the Indian theinselves--will resent The arrival of the new setliers,

f

the

So may the aborigines, who

No More Despair still hunt with bow and arrow

So just now, India is paying increasing attention to those territories, which, despite their by Japan, Avarlime occupation remained loyal to Britain and afterwards to Indk when the

transfer of power was completed.

and maintain their old custom of cutting off un enemy's head. to prove their bravery.

IT

But it I hoped thuit as the Islands

developed The tre population will co-operate forming a model community.

Valuable Link

No longer are they islands of despair, the living hell of the life-sørving criminal. They There will be no background have become the promised land of innate coste distinctions, and both to the inhabitants and to the stigma of the "prison com- thousands of homeless Indians, munities" will be wiped out for uprooted by the 1947 partition, ever. who have been given a new start in life there.

Though the island! une day may be a tourist centre with The Indian Government has liners plying to Port Blair, the drawn up n Five-Year Plan to Government of India intends to develop

the foster India's best traditions and resettle and

in everyday life, In during Uils customs terroris anel,

403 million festivals and celebrations. period, will spend rupees (231 million) creating

With autonomous status and new alusteles, bukling reds und schoÈN and establishing repremiatives In the New Delhi Parliament, the islands nuy police and customs posts.

well become a prosperous part Alosely the task has begun of the inhan Union and ut the same lithe a valuable link in the of reckung 20,000 the plans and a similar area in country's defences.

acrta (7)

The Teenager In

H

A Lost World

By LES ARMOUR

E hates his job, finds Only the opprentices liked The shop assistants his amusements bor- their jobs.

their end ofllee boys loathed wants ing, reads thrillers,

work. The machine minders band leader and, found relief only by quitting and to be il

else every most of the time, he starting somewhere

Yet almost about six months or so. doesn't give a hoot

all the boys thuaight they would anyone but himself.

stick to their occupations for the rest of their lives.

Vou Stroheim us es

represent his filmi

A

ESSES

Would your watch have kept

time on the sea-bed?.

WEARINO a Rolex Oyster Perpetual, profommor of Milan University wash for a win off Ospri. But the strap-buckle was loose, and his watch broke from his wrist, and

sank to the bottom.

Without much hope, the professor naked some divetu, working nearby,

to keep an eye open for his watch. Surprisingly, wovon days later, they actually found it, and lb was still keeping perfect time. ›

It is not really so incredibia, For this supech watch, pompletely pro tected from water and sand by the famous Oyster waterproof caso, la automatically, wound by the For petual "roformedhan femanator Rolex Inventión,

Isis in theirability to stay accurate under much incredible taste afondur ance that Rolas watches prove their immunity from, the more normal Lila Lima Howok un ordinary watch.

LATERSTRING FROCK

"DID YOU GET ONE?"

London Express Service

DAVID LEWIN looks at The Hollywood

Fable

in

two the light of

persons

THE VON and

the

VOICE

sch, of "Como On- My Ilouse," are Paris, has a homely face

By

from

came 68-year.

inxed manner.

LAND

and

old Erich von She is in films now ("Here

"Red Ga Stroheim, the Come the Girls," heavy-hecker) as well as on the record. although she says: "1 2013 a ed Prussian girl anyone

look

like officer of so pluinisti. My voice?

Studied to sing. Jo knows more many films.

about that than I do. I justi But unless make a commercial mound that 1 had seen sells angs.

Miss Clooney

never

"I don't warm up my Volco

goat. My talent was for direct- ing; but I stayed on in Holly- wood for a while doing the next best thing-acting. And because an actor has to eat at fenst twice a week, I appeared' as the Ger- spy, the brutal, guttural muo officer. I wore a monocle-- it was expected-but I wear one off-screen."

TTE

never

I would have or anything like that. What He said "Being in the garbage

missed the do I have to warm up to?"

full

nancy

meeting

cora-

-not wanted by Hollywood -may have certain compensa- ilons I live pleasantly, ofortably, in the country outside Paris, I write books and act in an occasional French flim."

poig-

That is the accepted Holly of wood

singer's

approach Mr Arging, but husbuntl Ferrer "She underestimates

เวน

von Stroheim, says For he talked herself. She can discuss music nke - even long-hair in the past music. And I like the way she Lense. She loots," penny to

used

the. monocle future.

☆ SAYS VON STROHEIM:

I'm in the garbage'

☆SAYS ROSEMARY CLOONEY:

"The future's grand'

and

LONDON. Von Stroheim said: "I am in I don't HE fun and the agony the garbage now-and

relish 1 was pushed there of the old Hollywood by people in Hollywood, success fable were de- of course I am bitter." monstrated side by side in

Bosemary Cloonty says: London. Happily, and smil- **Lam' the future wonderful? ing, Rosemary Clooney, a r'd like to try

D Broadway 23-year-old musical now em married to slight, blonde,

He'd be a great coach. Saturday nights, they went to film and record singer, flew Jo

Just about the best." the movies. Often, they found them dull.

But they couldn't in from New York with her

else to go.

husband, 41-year-old Joge He is almost ANY teenager think of anywhere

Ferrer. from almost ANY London Sunday morning, they stayed in suburb.

Most of them had girl friends, The

call But their primary interest op-

He is a British teenager from a mildly down-at-heel London suburb.

sociologists might

bed.

him "typical" от a "statistical peared to be sex and not com- average.

He is, in fact, what ponionship. seems to have emerged from a careful study by R.FL. Logan and E. M. Goldberg,

overage

much

Few of them cared about the people around them or assumed that anyone else cared much about them.

LIKE MACHINES

Dr Logan is a physician. Me Goldberg a social worker. They questioned 85 youtha in an carefully suburba selected cross-section from an

In short, they were almost area chosen because the people

10 the who live there are typical of a sub-human-closer large part the British public. machines they worked than to

any ideal of humanity.

Their Andings are about as pleasant as a swift kick below the belt.

NO ADVENTURE

THEY

A note of sadness entered the deep von Strohelm voice; "My career is ruined, but I can re- member the past. I did one or two things that stay to the pre- sent day."

is his

With him in London last

business manager, Denise Vernac, who translates his

who

word married July-a comingly strange match between the ma playat artist Toulouse-Lautrec books into French. She gave a new alant to Stroheim. "Erich and the girl who once sang a likes to pretend he is tough tobacco warehouse tances.

off-screen as well. Of course he But Ferrer is singer and jazz- isn't He is shy, timid, chorm- Kuchent to0.

ing. He puts up a notice, 'Be- wäre of the savage dog,' at his home. But his dog is a spaniel."

in splie

of her apparent casualnes, Rosemary Clooney

knows

exactly where she is going in alms.

MA record - even a top-seller lasts three months. Then it is forgotten. But Mm can go for years. To- be in ple- tures 19 an As

о

insurance,

for acting-well, I leave that to the The girl from

gramo-

30. He is the phus recurds, whore bigdat,

Me, genius. husky voice sold 900,000 copies just do what I

POLITICS

GAVE

THEM FREEDOM

From William Hamsher

Goettingen. But among these thousands,

IT seems that the Russians there is no sign of returning

want to begin Four

Britons or members of the nationalities reported by pri- The experts have made an Power conference year with roners to be held in the Soviet cffort at an explanation: "Our

some at least of their gaola Union. - eighteen-year-old must be seen and barbed-wire prison

|

am told.

a

I

"The only snag with

geniu

is that what you do for

a Uving ho does better hobby"

B5

B

The genius said:

"Not at all."

all

him

the

plc-

Blim

Now over to Erich von Stro- helm- end the sndricss ot 4 mon Hollywood has passed by:

There wag n for party (his old films are being revived in London), and round against the background of the

Prisoners who have already room there were world of war and the throat of camps emptied.

showing They are sending back to reached Goettingen, just Inside Stroheim war in which he has lived eines

Western Germany, say they tures They concluded that boys be- his corlicet awareness. There Germany convoy after con- have no idea why the Hussland him ba tween 10-18 have almost all lost is a great uncertainty about

voy of men of Hitler's what used to bo called the standards of behaviour end con- "senso of adventure.”

"They fusion about roles and relation- Wehrmacht, many of whom mould have released them just young man ("I have a pot-belly Rosemary: "I do what I am

Once he was a well-known convey the impression of passive ships in the home and at work." have long been given up for is a political decision boht now" in films of the 1920'.

their homecoming rather than

Hia Alms Hollywood director. Soviet kindness.

To back this view is the fact included "Greed," "The Merry Great Gobbo," They are Fending back that most of the convoys are Widow," "The

stopped him up of tough youngsters But Hollywood.

18 years political prisoners unheard of mado since they disappeared years ago who were obviously capable of directing more than ether on visits to the Soviet giving the Soviet Union years ago and accused him of extra- vagance. The legend mys that Union or

the Red zonat of hard work, or behind

once he kept 400 people wait- roaching frontier.

The men The number of homecomers Gootungen are not like thoseing on a film not for three days

Come

in the matuma, until a pet do sacosed may reach 10,000 in the next who few days, according to German Those were mainly the halt and Stroheim. Engered the gold. welfare officials.

the lame, no longer fit for work! They base this estimate on The newcomers will all be hints which have come to them valuable rerulle to the Wood from nerbaithe Iron Curtain, German Ikbour market;

acceptance of the world....This picture vividly contrasts with

..

In other words, the world hns, the provalent notion of, restless been shaken not only by the youth eager to explore and ex- uncertainty of events but also by "periment.” The quotation is a destruction of accepted values, from their report to the British And, whatever the cinise of that Journal of Sociology,

destruction It probably lies deeper than the war., They have lost their sense of

The teenager has no standard they have adventure because decided that life cannot con- other than his own amusement

by which colvably offer them anything.

to uncoure thing The 85 worked in a wide And he does not find the world arras of jobs they were factory very atraising.” apprentices, machine 'minders, Somehow, he will have to did yhoop: malatants and office boys, another soule,

dead by their relatives.

•

now-but they think that there

now

fold.”

Now Available

LO

Thia Rölen Oyster Perpetual is ním War to the one in the story, Permanently waterproof in its Oyster. Case, it le gtom perfest accuracy by the Perpetua? „salatinding Protor." The' Roles Bad Boal identifie every Raise obronometer.

After seven days Beneath the avo, a Holan Oyster Perpetual, brought up by dlours, war found to be still showing the right ilme? (The original fatter of Pro- Jesor Duole can be inspected at the Bolam lost, is rus du Marchk. Donors.)

W ROLEX

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| they claimed. I was a' mempe-

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