1961-04-14 — Page 6

THE CHINA MAIL, FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1961,

A Russian adventurer takes his place beside Columbus and Marco Polo

MAN'S TRIUMPH

Apr. 18.

OVER SPACE

WHILE America slept, a man left his planet for the first WHY DID AMERICA

time and come back. He is a Russian, How great is he? and How have the Russians managed to do it ahead of any-. body else?

Answer One is simple. He is a very great man indeed. No living body has taken such a pummeling and pounding. Few minds can have known such fear.

And if you doubt the risks, let me assure you that Ameri. can intelligence is convinced that he went up with the sure knowledge that two of his comrades had perished before him.

So let Major Yuri Gagarin take his place in history along

side Columbus and Captain Cook, Livingstone and Marco Polo as a great explorer.

Answer Two is also simple. At the end of the war, Rus- sia decided that its military strategy should be baseil as' quickly as possible upon missiles,

A MIGHTY BOOSTER

The Russian H-bomb is thought to have been a rather clumsy and heavy affair. No petty firework codkl possibly carry It across a continent to land on an enemy. So a mighty booster was developed. The Russians had a nucleus of brilliant German rocket

scientists plus the secrets of the V-2 to start off the project. They also had a ruthless system of Gov- ernment which was able to push through the plan to the exclusion of all else once the decision had been taken.

Russia's programme of Sputnikry alone is thought to be costing the Soviet taxpayer something like HK$24,- 000 million a year. How much extra is spent on

LOSE

THE RACE?

rockets in the defence budget. is never revealed. But it has certainly delayed the arrival of such things as washing machines, television nots and cars in many Soviet homes, The rocket which launched Gagarin into space is thought to be some five times larger than any American rocket yet use to orbit a satellite, America plumped for a variety of mbasiles

to do different tasks. As a result the industry is only now gearing itself to concentrate on one equally massive booster-the Saturn.

It is today only at a stage of having its

engine ground-tested. But with her variety of missiles America

has achieved far more than Russin in space from a purely scientific stand- paint. She has now put nearly 50 satellites into orbit and the reams of scientific data gleaned by them has filled in many of the important gaps in man's knowledge of his environ- ment.

The trouble is that inftrumenta no longer

make newaMen do. The other important difference between

the way Russia and Amerien have handled their space programme is that in the US the responsibility has been livided.

The propaganda impact of Russia's "firat” on susceptible nations is not reckon- ed today to be as much as was once feared by the West. America has – done enough in space to ensure that. But President Kennedy has said: "He who controls spnes dominates the world." And although the Russians are not today in control of space they have taken an important step forward. What next? Curiously enough, I expect the Russians to relegate the manned space flights to second place for while.

Cosmonauts will undoubtedly go up for longer and longer periods. For there in Russian are still big gaps even knowledge of the effect of radiation and weightlessness on the human body. But first they are likely to concentrate in their single-minded fashion on landing a "Flying Labara- tory" 011 the moon and sending another close to Mars.

BITTER RIVALRY Bitter inter-service rivalry has been rife. Intense competition among firms for to plum missile contracts had led fantastic duplication and a heavy drain on the total money available. They have their disagreements in Russia The Russians have sol 1967 as their target

By

also. But always at a low level.

the time

the a project reaches Academy of Sciences, Moscow or the Kremlin it is in a form where only a harmonious "Yes" can be given. And once that word has been spoken nothing is allowed to stand in the way of development,

for landing a mun on the moon. So there is plenty of time to perfect human space riding.

Once these other objects have been

achieved then we may grow goggle- eyed at the doings of cosmonauts. Even more than we have today at the feat of Yuri Gagarin.-London Ex- press Service.

IF THE SOUTH HAD WON...

THERE is a game being played in the United States at the moment, on this 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War.

It takes the form of a speculation: What would have happened if the South had won?

Statesmen and commentators, novelists and tycoons have bent their minds to this intriguing question. Naturally, their imaginations have come up with different conjectures, but most of them are unanimous over one thing.

They agree that if the South had won, it would have been a bad thing for both America and the rest of the world.

There are, for example, the thoughts of former President Harry Truman, a Southerner by birth and ancestry.

He thinks that had the Southerners been victorious, there would have been a number of smaller republics instead of a United States, Russia would have kept Alaska, probably taken North-West Canada and might have moved South.

The Americans could have created an alliance and held the Russians at the Mississippi. Saya Truman: "Isn't it great to contemplate?"

Then there is novelist Upton Sinclair, also a Southerner." He considers that the South would not only have brought back slavery In the North; they would have invaded Mexico and Cen- tral America, going as fur south as Brazil.

peace. And with

Russia might be on the

Mississippi today.

peace, pro-

They would have restored the Derity abounded. Airlean slave trade wholesale Having triumphed over the region. Southern planters, the American policed the business

to cultivate that vast

They would have

clars went on to the

North and made the hiding of a conquest of a continent and to the acquisition of a world economic empire.

fugitive slave a hanging act.

The reason for this feeling. even among Southerners, that

STRUGGLE

By FRANK WRIGHT

WAR THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

ways: tiny ways and gigantic Ways

It is evident in the glint of Coca-Cola bottles discarded in the sand of a South Sea island by an American soldier; in the massive outline of a river dam like Gary, bullt In India out of American steel tycoons Schwab, Carnegie, Morgan; oil capital; and in starving children tycoons like the Rockefellers; in the Congo enting American

like machinery tycoons

Me breakfast foods, Cormick; rallways tycoons like Whitney, and Ryan,

of

And out of this prosperity America emerged to take Its place as a world power, sending Akled by the technological

its wealth and manhood to the North's victory was the best knowledge mastered in the war.

money on science. And science, Europe to turn the tide of two possible resuit, is not hard to the united nation put machines in turn, opened find.

to work to strip the forests, open of profts.

Each syllable uttered by its leaders became of importance to the world.

a new source wars.

Whatever the ambitious, the land. build the railways, It drove technology on, be

orcedy motives of the North in pick the cotton and thrush the cause forchid the South into a post-whout.

tion where it had to fight, the In Europe, the business class had to fight an unremitting struggle for centuries against the political rulers and the sorta! aristocracy.

end result has been a pheno- menal success. Few wars in the whole of Julstory have

elded such dividends. True, it cost something like In America, the sway of the £3,000 million and $20,000 lives, business class was undisputed. But for this price a territory Through research funds and big

every discovery of new techniques and processes meant

the culling of costs, the opening of new areas of investment, the reaching of now heights of pro- ductivity.

Americo, in the words of his- torlan Max Lemer, became "the enormous laboratory,"

There were big feats, big

ot 3,000 mlies gained enduring inboratories, it lavished Its money, big names

Todby, its ruling President, a man in his forties with the free of a youth, is the most powerful single voice in the whole of the West.

Virtually,

every square mile

of the world has come within the spread of America's power and influence-an influence that is evident in a million different

INFLUENCE

The influence, in there, too, in the shape of the American Seventh Fleet anchored in the anclent sea-battleground of the Aegean, in strains of American jazz coming from an attle in Moscow.

It all began with the Civil

Americanisation of the

world,

War, the war that started the affecting in some way, for bet ter or worse, the way of life of everyone from Parls to Peking, from London to Lahore. It en Americanisation which some consider has even observers now scarcely begun.

THE END

(ALL RIGHTS KESERVED)

"If you mutter ‘Do you mean to say that cost four pounds ninataan and alevan?' once more, I'm going home."

Lòndon Ramsèns Rection.

The expori- montal Saturn

which

tho United Statos has pinned its space hopos. But the first American to Jouve the earth will be picting

□ sleek, giant- poworod plane, the X-15. The Saturn comes fater...

BY PETER FAIRLEY

ก

LONDON IS PAVED

WITH GOLD FOR

JOHN KOON

HERE the East wind blows there flows the

"WH

gold," goes an old saying.

-By- DAVID LAN

When it blows the way of the Chinese res- taurants in Piccadilly, Marble Arch, Brighton, Clacton and Sussex, it brings their proprietur, John Robert Koon, a sizable $3 million every five waiters from Sheung Shul, years.

"The Oriental touch is the vogue of the day," said Mr Koon when I saw him at the Miramar Hotel during his recent visit to the Colony.

"It's got into the Alms, theatres, fashions and ture and food."

Chinese restaurants mushroomed in the U.K.

Iltera-taurant started by his father in Piccadilly Circus, was winding There, he put in a bid and set the restaurant right again,

haye

are now 1,100 of them.

He went into business with a think this number çquid

capital of £10,000 (HK$100,000), easily be doubled in the future,” Mr Koon prophesied "provided, ed his first "Lotus House" in

The next year, 1957, he open-

of course, that nowcomers aim London's Marble Arch.

It was completely styled in

He also recruited a dozen new.

"Most of our waiters are from Shoune Shui and they have

vouched for their rotatives and friends," he explained,

Started as novelty meals for rare occasions, Chinese cuisine hos caught en fust in Britain where people are flocking ti knowing how to order or even John's establishments without how to manipulate chopsticks. John solved this problem by ordering "any of my stuff to help customers with chopstick lensana,"

bination meals titled "A" "."

He set out on the mens corn-

"C" "D.”........This edges the way

at a good standard of food and servico."

modern Chinese decor, and for ordering. That was not idle talk.

MF turned

out to be the most Koon has been making steady muccessful Chinese restaurant in progress since 1950, setting up Britain.

chain of Chinese restaurants in Britain at the rate of one per

year.

Crowded

Main dishes

second "Lotus House this time, the fancy of guests are "Crisp In 1950, John opened tho Main dishes tut silentch

in Brighton, Sussex, serving Noodles (Chau Meln), "sweet Cantonese food with a bar and and sour pork," and "spare ribs," inuale for dancing,

he saki.

The following year, 1950, he But shes in a lot of amni "My restaurants are crowded set up a Chinese restaurant at a

Chinese restaurants in England every day of the week. Thea holiday camp in Clacton on the were of such a low standary trieni celebrities such as Nancy Enal Coast of England,

and service so poor, that "wo Kwan (Suzle Wonk of the The year 1900 saw John had to form the Association to

protect ourselves,“

| acroen), Tsai Chin (Buzle Wone establish yet another Chinese of the stage). Eddie ("Oh My restaurant, "Bognor," in SusseX Papa") Calvert, Frankie Vaug- on the South Coost.

How? By advising and help- try restaurant owners with

han (singer), Charry Wainer "And now here I am," Bald site selection, advice on service. (orgatist), Cliff Richards (rock John in Efongkong, "with mg and prices. Eventually we hope" n zollinger). 8hr Laurence head waiter, Mr Liu Man- to import dirett from "Hongkong. Olivier, Margaret Leighton, cheung, and my decorator, Mr to reduco prices of Ingrid Bergmann and even the Jerry Calvert."

.....

materials."

late Mr Robert Dknat....were What for? "We are in the A philanthropist, MY Koon frequent vigifors.

coume of a round-the-world was the sponsor of a free trip to "Ön Saturday nights my Lotus trip to get some new ideas on the U.X, by à Hongkong deal- House in Marble Arch has to Chinese cuisine and decor for dumb boy artist, Leo Man-sung. turn nwny two to three hundred another 'Lotus House to be and bla teacher, to receive a chair people, and welting customers opened this year."

prize the 10-year-old orphan In the cocittall lounge brim "This third "Lotus House," o fact won at an international art aver."

Rald, would be something of a competition in London in 1959. It was foresight that brought self-service cafeteria, alluated in Born in London, the Cam- John into this prosperous enture Central Lenton.

bridge graduate prise,

And it will be the alath in bachelor at 34. "What can you. In spite of a degree in Bust- his chain of Chinese restauranta do when you are never in ong nes Administration from Carn- with a staff of 300,

town for more than one day ot bridge, Mr Koon went through Now Chairman of the Chinese a time?" he says. the mill by studying cooking. Restaurateurs Association in The darling young man wir waiting and restaurant mavara- London, John also way out here be even buler when in several ment.

LO SECUTÒ POLrver of bidk supy years he will sell out his read a. Chinese:

In 1960 aylien the public com- plice as a'move to further cụt faurants and staṛt pany, which controlled a ros- costa.

hotel in London.

A