1929-01-19 — Page 12

PAGE TWO.

HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, JANUARY 19th, 1929.

KING OF ALBANIA.

STORY OF MUSCLE SHOALS. SCHEME. HOW U.S. GOVERNMENT IS LOSING $3,000,000 A YEAR

(By Robert Talley.

Abore is a view of Wilson dam at Muscle Shoals, Ala., where 87 per cent of its available and installesi power enpa- elty has been permitted to go to waste this year because of the lack of buyer. Below are part of the eight 30,000 horse- Jawer generators, 57 fert below the water line, only three of which are being used and these only part time. In the dia- gram at the right, the figure of the man gives an idea of the size of one of the big turbine generators, the moving jarts of which weight 320 tons and whirl at a speed of 100 revolutions per minute, "

1

GENERATOR

!WATER WHEELS

日

SHAFT

Muscle Shoals. Ala., Nov. 22.--fof 13 per cent ased it 87 pe for as little--as it chooses to feed Through the raring sluice gates tent wasted. Under its contract, into its own transmission lines. of the government's gigantic the Alabama Power Company pays

City Can't Buy Power. Wilson daim here, built with the the government, 492115 cents for

Meanwhile, the enterprising Liberly Bond money of the jalut two mills) for the power it!

since little elty of Muscle Shoals, Ala., Anerican people, a Tortune is takes, and at this rate, flowing to waste to-day.

4an. 1, it has, paid the govern-jis trying to buy power at the same Fifty million dollars were spent, ant the sum of $41,915,38-rate paid by the Alabama Power: Thousands of mentolled like while the government has lost a Company-about one-tenth of a eent per kilowal; hour-but hav beavers and years, were consumed potential income of $2,761,0,

been refuser on the claim that

in building this great hydroelectric H is difficult for the layman to the government could not eco- plant on the Tennessee river. vizualize the enormous size of Homically sell on a small peale. Completed three years ago, it is Wilson dam, where the govern one of the largest, finest and most mont's $50,000,000 costly in the world,

investment

Meanwhile, under the 30-day

anw producing gross revenue of contract arrangement, nobody in

A solid wall of concrete as high less than a half million dollar as a 10-story office building and rear.

nearly a mile long, it holds back!

JI

artifelal lake 17 miles: ing

A Battery of Switches,

aj

willing to invest in expensive transmission Fines Lo Muscle Shoals; also, the franchises in nearby cities are already held by the Alabrous Power Company or

a visitor pass companies affiliated with it.

length. Buried deep in its re In the power house at the south resses are eight 30,000 horsepower end of the dam.

Meanwhile, the cities of turbine generators which would through the control rooms. There) supply an area for many miles are massive molor-driven switches Florence, Tuscumbia and Shefeld around with current for homes, and circuit-breakers eapable off-which girdle Muscle Shoals- farms, factories, street cars and handing 164,000 volts. The great are using power obtained from switchboards are a mass of trem- the Alabama Power Company. lights.

And yet today 87 per cent of bling dials and inlicators and Por this, the average householder s high as 10 cents, per the power that Wilson dam is blinking red and green signa) mnya

I

kilowatt hour. equipped to produce is going to lights.

waste in the form of water that Deazending in an elevator that! Meanwhile, the government's Wilson Blows unlurncased past the dam. travels 13 stories from the offers rent $75,000,000 nitrate plants

A bare 13 per cent of the avail-above the dam, one reaches the at Muscle Shoals, which able production is being bought big generators 57 feet below the dam

was built to averate. stand

by the Alabama Power Campany,jupper-side water line. Eight In silent and deserted except for the sole purchaser, which holds affine and each nearly as big as a caretakers and watchmen.

Turbines Are Idle.

A

The problem, "Who is a bona

Lieut-Colonel Alston will he interested to hear the suggested

Host of a Sentaman who went to

contract with the government.bungalow, they occupy a room; With this exception, the Tennessee that would be big enough for Tour) river-despite the fifty millions football fields. And behind that have been spent and the concrete partition is room for 10 de Scotsman?" is still unsolved by the Scots Guards, Some time thousands of men who have toiled more, yet to be installed. -flows as untrammeled to the sea

Four of these great units are the War Office decreed that today as it did when the Cherokee each of 30,000 horsepower, with only bony fide Scotsmen should bb arrepfed fi the regiment, and Indians pitched their whewans on rotating parts weighing 345 tons recently, Lieut-Colonel Francis its banks and gazed upon its tur-that whirl at a speed of 100 re Alston, Eneaking at the annual bulent waters.

volutions per minute. Extending dinner of the Dundee Branch of upward from the spinning water the Scots Guards Assoolation, A battery of eight mighty tur-wheels to the generator is a solid admitted that the regimental doubt bine generators, each unit of steel driveshaft, 20 feet long and authorities were still in which cost the government nearly as big around as a barrel. Every about it. $750,000, stands practically idle. second three thousand cubic feet Only three of these units are being of water rues through the water used and these only part time; onwheels. some days they are not used t The other four turbine genera-Amurlea. which positively reeks Give lors are of 35,000 horsepower each with nileged Scotsmen, The Alabama Power Company, and have whirling parts that them all one kilt euch, he said, owning the only transmission weigh 320 tons. lines out of Muscle Shoals, par- Although only three of the units chases only as much power as it are being used part time at needs to bolster up its own lines, present, government engineers Some days it taltes more, some say there is sufficient water to days leas, some days none at all. operate all eight anits at full Dally figures for November capacity 80 per cent of the time. show that present purchases are Meanwhile, Congress is unable Russian would not fall to find the averaging only about five per cent to decide what shall be done with kill "at home"! on his fine figure, of the plant's capacity, 95 per cont Muscle Shoals except for the tem- What would be done if he pre- going to waste,

porary contract, renewable every sented himself at the recruiting Total figures for the first 10|30 days, by which the Alabama office of the Scols Guards, and months of 1928 show an average Power Company buys as much—j said hia' name was Charlic Appin?

all.

.

and then parade them before you. Those who wear them like, pett conts are not Scotsmen,

But even then, there are bound to be exceptions. Teodor Chalia- plc, for instance, was seek

ing a kill whion In Edinburgh. The noble build of this great

A

CAREER OF NEWEST MONARCH.

be complete until some kind of Prince or King had appeared upon the scone.

PICTORIAL SUPPLEMENT.

Again, whereas the overyday marriage of this kind will take place or whether the new King nature of the arrangement was will seek the hand of a Royal widely proclaimed, the signature Ahmed Bey Zogu, who has been princess-a personal and political of a Defensive Alliance between eventuality which has already Italy and Albanin last November proclaimed King, is by far the strongest and most important een under discussion for some can only mean that the latter

time.

country was prepared to place personality who has arisen in the

The man

who has assumed herself in the hands of a Power country since the war. He made

determined to see that her posi- [By I Charles Wood.]

educated in his first real political appearance royal rank was The latest change in the Con-at the time of the Latania Con- Constantinople. He cannot speaktion remains paramount on the atitution and the replacement of ference in 1920, when he and his French or English, but he knows eastern side of the Adriatic.

Domestic Jealously. Republic by a Kingdom in tribesmen protected that patriotic Albanian, Turkish and German, Albania have come as no atonish-gathering from interforence by the last of which he learned while The present chango in the ment to a student who has known Italian troops, who were still interned in Austria during part of Albanian Constitution, indicating that country and her people for in occupation of "large paris of the war. Moreover, even if the that the ruler feels himself assur- more than twenty years and par- Albania. Directly afterwards he new King cannot boast of any ed, is unlikely to make any ap- ticularly to a recent traveller became Minister of the Interior, deep knowledge in the modern parent difference in the internal may add to the from end to end of one of Europe's and between that time and the sense of the word, he is distinctly situation. It smallest States.

summer of 1924 Zogu, whose shrewd from the Oriental starid-prestige and power of the ruler, The people of Albania, buck-prestige was increasing every point, and he speaks with a con- but it will increase a hostility. ward in education and outlook day, held various appointments, viction and determination which always dependent upon the fact upon fe, and probably nuniber- including that of Prime Minister. show that he possesses at least a that no Albanian, and certainly ing about 1,000,000 all told, are Indeed, in his several capacities superficial grasp of the home and no Albanian chief,,, Is willing to fundamentally Royalist. About a he remained, in fact, the Govern- foreign situations. In short, even admit the superiority-particular- year after the declaration of the ment of the country-the strong if many of Ahmed Bey Zogus ly the permanent, and perhaps the original independence at the end man by through whom things actions and much of his past hereditary, superiority-of any

policy are open to

criticism, other member of his, own race. of 1912, I happened to be in the were done.

he creates the personal impres- interior of the country at the very In June, 1924, there came the sion that he is endeavouring to do external affairs the appearance From the point of view of moment when Prince William of revolution. responsible for the the right thing, and that in spite of Wied was selected as its ruler appointment of Bishop Noli as

a King will probably bp of of mistakes he is far more patrio-widler significance. It is doubt. Prime Minister, and the new

tie than many of the people who less true that the decision on the King, who had been wounded in are to be his subjects..

subject was taken without the the carridor of the Chamber a few months earlier, took refuge The rulership and presidency formal approval of Italy, and the In Belgrade. Six months later he of Ahmed Bey Zogu, continuous Albanians certainly have the returned to Tirana, the, village since the beginning of 1925, are right to choose their own kind of capital of Albania, wader the principally remarkable for the Government, without considering auspices of Jugoslavia, and at the absolutism of his honto Govern the wishes of their neighbours. end of January, 1925, he secured nient and for the rapid develop But kings are supposed to be the abolition of the Regency ment of close relations between more lasting and more dißeult of system and his own election to Albania and Italy-relations lent removal than presidents, and the new sovereign is the Presidency of the Republic, ing to a consequent strain be- person of the which had just been established tween the former country and particularly disliked and distrusted

at Belgrade. by. 71 Constituent Assembly. Jugoslavia. That election, justißed as it may

It is to be feared, therefore, Complete Autocracy,

that, this latest development will have been by circumstances, was

Internally the present regine hardly tend to modify the gravity a complete farce from the Western standpoint. During it Ahmed has been complete autocracy, of the Serbo-Italian Adriatic pro- Bey Zoga sat next to the Speaker The Constitution, framed in 1926, blem-a problem the true mean- of the Chamber in plain clothes, is supposedly modelled in Honing and importance of which are and all the members of the. As ways along the lines of that of sometimes ignored by those who sembly voted in his favour the United States. There Is a forget that the Balkans were with the exception of one, who Senate and a Chamber, there are certainly the occasion if not the is sald to have lost his electione, and the Ministers, ap-getual cause of the World War. employment immediately and pointed by the President-King, his Parliamentary seat at the next

have to secure the confidence of election.

Parliament. But if something contrary to the Constitution is equiret by headquarters, w The new King, who honoured is forced through both Houses, The DOWN WAIS received with

me with an audience as the wad if the Cabinet assembles widespread joy and acclamation

The under Ahnard Bey Zogu, who has j not because the inhabitants knew Special Correspondent of anything about this particular Daily Telegraph last year, is a tall. been Prime Minister as well as well-set-up and distinguished- President, his is the only voice Prince, or Mpret, as they called kim, but rather because they con- looking man. About 36 years of that counts. Such a policy has age, he has brown hair, a tiny, had its Influence upon Zoguts sidered the appointment of a

none the less Prince er King to be part of the closed-cropped moustache, notic popularity, but he

reputation from the consummation of their indepen-ably sloping eyebrows, blue eyes, enjoys a dence an independence hardly and exceptionally while long-fets that he has maintained complete without the appearance fingered hands. In appearance relative law and order, and that and manner he is thoroughly he is largely responsible for the of a recognised head of the State Albanian, and he wears either a upkeep and extension of the com- After his arrival Prince William

Was

not popular, and his short white and gold fulldress' uniformparatively good roads which now regime, which lasted only from of a general or the more modest exist in his country,

khaki gold-braided tunic designed March until September, 1914, was

for persons of that rank. He dis not a saccess.

plays all the charm commion to his co-nationals of high rank.

Zogu is a bachelor, but for some time he was-and perhaps still is

Demand For a King. But nevertheless, when I was in | Albania a little over a year ago,

Zugu the Man.

I found people who still leaked-engaged to the daughter of an apon him as their ruler; and many Albanian magnale of importance. mare who believed that the In view of the present position it stability of the State would not remains to be seen whether"

}

HONGKONG MEMORIALS.

A ROYAL ARTILLERY MONUMENT.

Topped by a battlemented "fort" from out of which peep miniature guns, and ornamented by cross-guns and cannon balls, the above memorlul, which stands in the cemetery at Happy Valley, was erected by members of the 8th. Battery, 2nd Brigade Royal Artillery, in memory of their comrades who died while statloned in Hongkong during the years from 1804 to 1872.

Unfortunately much of the inscription is now almost un-

readable.

From the external standpoint 1] is probable that Zogu was

not definitely committed to a pro- Italian polley before his departure: from Belgrade at the end of 1924. Nevertheless, the agreements for the establishment of the Albanian National Bank, which is practical-

an Italian institution, and for an Italian Ioan, both made in the following year, gave an early 'impression of the attitude of the then President, and caused great resentment in Jugoslavia, where he ia felt to have been most un- grateful for the earlier, hospitality: and support extended to. him. He may or may not have under- stood the full meaning of these arrangements, but when he signed.

famous Pact of Tirana 1 1926 he must have realised that he was playing Into the hands of country by then using every

the

n

endeavour to regain the position which she had lost in Albania: hi 1920.

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