1948-02-14 — Page 4

M

Come to think of it.

It IS rather

THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY, 14, 1948,

CONTOUR PLOUGHING

like the zebra

Y hrother, who is an agricultural engineer, called on me the other day to ask if I'd any old swords. When I inquired what he wanted them for he said: "To turn into ploughshäres, of Course."

I didn't have a sword beemise we never usedl them in the R.A.F.. but I nsked him to tell me more, and this is what he said:

Unknown to most townsmen, there is a serious famine in Britain just now famine in plough- snares. Ploughing is being held up all over the place because farmers can't get shares. It is worse than the shortage of razor blades during the war.

The drought has made the plough- ground so hard that

shares are wearing mit. twice na fast as they should,

Instead

of insting several days they are often done for in a few hours.

"That's where the swords

114

You

IT'S FUN FINDING OUT” by BERNARD WICKSTEED

In." my brother said. "Fellow like myself are doing something that

must partion me for refer- would have been laughed it before it to Americans so often, but you the War. We are repairing worn can't escape from them when you out shares by welding on bits of write about ploughing, in the last old motor-ear springs and anything hundred years or so they have be-

rome the world's greatest plougher uppera.

else we can find

"Swords would be ideal. There is ennugh Koul steri in one sword to rebuild "half a, dozen plough-shares

u make them better than when Hey were new.”

the

אן

DUST BOWL

1820 they ploughed up 30,000,000 Today the figure

A

I hope he gets his swords. tie will is 350,000,000, (Great Britain 18, In the same class as the 500,090.) At one time they were M former at Heston, Lines, who has crazy about ploughing that they Lolt himself an eight-furrave ploughs ruined milles of acres that should Sun fel Sherman tank, It's have been left as they were, the Nobel Peace Prizu

IT CAME TRUE THE orodnal prophecy that men would one day beat their swords auto ploughshares was made, if you remember. by Isalah. The Ameri- vans say that it irst came true at Grand Detour, Illinois, in 1837 when a retired major Otted a sword to his plough beruse the ground was too hard to sluft with a share made of wood.

This may set you wondering whe invented plugghs in the first place. Archeologista hellove they were Piought of somewhere in Central Asia, and the first ones were drawn by oxen but by people,

not

We've advanced a lot since then.

I 1937 a farmer ut Woodbury. Termesser, hitched his wife to plough, nad his outraged neighbours lad him prosecuted. That's

centenary the Americans won't celebrate.

With two Körtes alí a singles furrow plough a man can do about an acre a day. With a tractor and

a three-furrow plough an acre un

haur is fair average.

a bigger scale.

This is in England. In Americ, as you'd expect, fly the things on There's a man called Luther Browder, in Texas, who has nightmare apparatus that makes 78 furrows at once and turns up 14 acres an hour.

The result was the famous Dust Howl, which you'll know about it you've seen or read "The Grapes of Wrath" Land that had been held-

together for centuries by the grass that grew on it crumbled into dust when it was ploughed,

The

Americans

might think.

Inat's contours,

They follow the ani-

I don't know what good this doen to the zebra. Perhaps it helps out the camouflage. But when the same principle is appiled to ploughing it Vonserves the mulature and enveks Prosion.

unce.

I did some ploughing loughed a hundred acres of Austru

I

There was an advertisement

for a ploughunat in the local paper. Il never done any ploughing before, but I thought it looked easy and as was the only person to apply for the job I got it.

The plough I had to use won't the best type for a beginner. It made ten arrows at once and was mne horses. At least, pulled by they were supposed to pull it, but none of them would do what I told them. They spent must of their tire getting tangled up in the plough enains.

When I'd Anished the farmer sald he could have done the job better and quicker himself with a spade.

REMOTE CONTROL

TTOWEVER, the days of that sort of ploughing are numbered, new era wat ushered in at Potters

A

In fact, there is the American who petrol, no biting

back; of the neck. Just an easy

SIDE GLANCES

By

Galbraith

"You go down and toll thom how lato it is-1 'remember I used to go home wishing I could take a sock at your father!"

Smoking

Four doctors listen to the heartbeats of 48

people in ambitious does-it-harm-me test

TNTIL

recently doctors ments of medicine on 48 men asked for an ophion on and women smokers have pro- the effects of smoking duced the first detailed record-

are now slowly Har the other day when they plough-have had to rely on the evidence ings of the heart under the winning the Dust Bowl back. One ed up a feld by radio,

in scattered reports of expert influence of tobacco fumes. of the methods they employ is the

All the ploughman did was 10 #vstea known as entour ploughing.

ments with nicotine on animals. The smokers' ages ranged sit in the control

con van, and

press! Now their advice can have a from 16 to 71. Twenty-one of It is really as old as agriculture

butions. No horses, no smell of itsell, but a lot of them think it new,

them were specially chosen be- winds down the Sotinder hacking.

A team of American doctors cause they had weak hearts. Jako to have mvented it after hair and a lot of knuba. staying the stripes of a zebra,

has now reported on a full-senle All of which brings us back to inquiry into

The system the effects of # you happen to have zebra where

a

we started the peaceful

tobacco on the human body. handy take a look at it and you will employment of weapons of war. For see the telen.

radlo set on The stripes are not the

the plough adwaya Straight up and down as you adapted from one used by the R.A.F.

1:5

Four front-rank physiologists using the most modern instru-

THE GIRLS IN THE BACK PARLOUR

THERE aren't many areas

left in Sydney now where you can't find the girls in the back room" - the women who drink in dingy hotel lounges, alone or in groups,

Another American development throughout the metropolitan

is a built-in radio un the tractor area. to relieve the monotony, and a hot- water system to keep the ploughi- man's feet warm.

JESTS AND. JEERS

A lady is a woman who makes

It's one of the city's oddest social angles and one of the strongest indictments of absurd and dangerous drinking prac tices in Australia.

It's a cult already becoming! common among all classes of

women.

There are the

sophisticates

and suburbanites, the

well.

it easy for a man to be a gentleman, groomed women with plenty of

The New Look's caught un in Hongkong. material!

money, the down-at-heel house- wife or factory girl who has to

far hasn't scrimp on necessary things for It isn't her moments of tawdry plea- sure with a glass or two of beer in a ladies' parlour, or a "fourpenny dark" in a wine-

The only people who like others | bar.

are the handkerchief makers. +

ton way--where claims with some A man doesn't buy his wife a furto dispense the best draught ale coal to keep her warm but to keep in Sydney.

to stick their nose into their business There's a hotel out Padding

her pleasant.

The world is full of willing people-some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.

It has uny ladies' parlour always overcrowded, always thick with snake. There's scarcely room to get between the tables.

The established "regulora"

are

carried out with the smoker lying on a couch in the physiology labora- tory of New York's Columbia University.

EACH test was

1948 Is China's Year Of Destiny

THAT is

WH

BY BERNARD DREW

the background five is the highest in the

picturé to the gigantic world.

experiment In Western dle- Yet Dr Borcie, who has spent mocracy that is going on in many years in the East study- Chinn? Will it work in the Ing disease, believes that Chinn midst of civil war?

can be freed of plagues in 16 years, given help.

Since the Japanese invasion in 1937, China bus accumulated 50,000,000 homeless and over 2,000,000 war orphans.

Foreign observers there any economic and medical aid to China is as important as the inilitary equipment for which the Nationalist Government is asking.

An SOS for. D.D.T: has been sent to Britain. So has an urgent request for 500 glass eyes.

During the war Britain sent her aid to Cling by air over "The lump." Today it goes by the lonker sen route,

What is Britain Bending?. Milling. drilling. and testing machines. lathes, these form the basis of Industrial uid-to-China cargoes now on the high seas.

Dr Boreslaw Borcic, of the

Hull's gift of two ambulances has World Ilenith

been followed by two from Sheffield, Organisation. now being repainted. They belonged Shanghai, recently said that to the A.R.P. service previously. 5,000,000 lives would be anved Other bales contain from safety in Chini yearly if sufficient pins to operating tables and portable

X-ray apparnius. supplies of D.D.T. could be ob-

Eight hundred working parties inined. Fighting disease in working for the British United Ald Chinn is a heart-breaking job. to China Fund have made und There is only one doctor for despolched 515 miles of bandages,

Today the fund, with headquarters every 40,000, and China's mor.In London.

has 170,000 individual children under subscribers tality rate for

and over 2,000 Arms maklog regular subscriptions.

YOKED TO PLOUGH With 80 percent of the population farmers"We have been farmers for 40 centuries," any the Chinese- China 18 practically devold modern farming machinery.

3 Smoking

promotes emotional stability in many people.

of the

02

Men are yoked to the plough In many places because the cattle were devoured by the enemy. As well as farming machinery, Britain is rend- ing out many kinds of seeds,

A recent seed consignment Included cabbage, pen, bean, lettuce, parship, turnip, sugar, corn, celery, beet, leck, parsley, tomato, radish, and onion.

On a long-term busis the British United Aid to China Fund plans to set up a scholarship trust which will ennuie scores of Chinese students to study here for a year and more as teachers, doctors, nurses, midwives, agriculturists, and engineers.

This has been made possible by the collection of £130,000 at cinemas throughout the country in the past year. The fund will be made up to £200,000, yielding an annual income of £0,000.

But Britain's greatest nid to China has been in grants. Since the fund was started in 1942 these total £1,500,000. More than 700 Chinese Institutions, from orphanages to hospitals, have benefitedand cry out for further aid.

In return China's exports to the United Kingdom have been little nore than token-a little grain, oll, slik, and come bristles, totalling in nin few thousands of pounds.

RICHEST MARKET

But China had been described as the richest potential market in the world," for experts as well as imports. Europe desperately needs her raw materials.

Great efforts are being made to

Full-strength tobacco has no greater effect on the body than tobacco from which most nicotine has been removed.

In healthy smokers the first eiga-bring stability to the countryside, refte increased heartbeat by CIT] average of eight and a half beats a

minute Blood pressure rose

The con percent by the heart fell by

amount of blood leay The second elga- retle_hnd no further_effect.

Connected to him were in- 'struments for making

tinuous records of blood pres- sure, heartbeat, and the power than two percent. output of the heart muscles.

The British Government has just given 200 radlo receiving sets to Chinese schools and universities.

In some provinces, a In Fukien. and Kwangsi, radio stations are be- Ing established for social education. Front-Nanking daily-go out broadcasts in civies, law, and public health.

Says the report: "These changes, The test was in three stages.

which

45 usually insted 30 to After a rest, the instruments were minutes, were less than those pro run to give check records of the

slight smoker's heart. For the second duced by gentle exercise or

emotional disturbance." stage the smoker puffed at an unlit

There was no evidence of sircet tobacco on the heart muscle or on the vital blood vessels

Edward C. Aspley jealous of their privileges. They sit cigarette while more records were

on a probe of Sydney pubs

made.

smoked.

Finally two cigarettes were action by

When you make Inquiries you will To cut out posable Interference feeding it.

with

No worse

NE of the "guinea pigs," a 43- year-old man with heart disease,

heart were

Chinese Government's task in con- Some icen of the magnitude of the trolling the country can be gathered from the number of provincial, county, town, and village councils.

According to the Government's directorate of autistles they number

139.034.

YEAR OF DESTINY

have to water.

at the same chairs, before the same tables, usually with the same cronies.

the recordings by muscle move- hear a score of reasons expressed for this strange and swift-growing ments, each cigarette was held near

With the few railway lines being cult which seems at least from my the sinoker's mouth by a clamp. own observations of many countries Several brands of cigarette were had smoked 40 cigarettes a day for almost daily blown up by sabbteurs, abroad-to be something peculiarly used-one nn especially mild make the past 13 years, inhaling habitual-communication in China is an difficult Australian.

from which 51 percent of the nico- 19. The effects of the test on his, as it has ever been. Yet the Chinese

Most nt Barmaids often get to know the time had ben extracted.

little more severe than "regulars." They have bitter antas the smokers inhaled throughout the those on a normal heart. gonism towards some→→"she's an old testș.

This was generally true for all the ralban"

"rudest woman I've

heart-affected smokers. Their ever known!”—and they have deep

average increase in heart-beat was sympathy for others.

nine and a half beats per minute.

Sunming up the tests, the doctors

little szy there is

evidence that smoking is harmful in any way "10 the vast majority of men women.

"smokers heart exists it is very rare.

Gentlemen, you may smoke.

Four facts

disclose four important faels.

For there are also "regulars" for THE doctors claim that their charts whom the ladies' parlour is he last refuge from frustration, loneliness, squalor, or-often enough-somme wirtime tragedy involving divorce or death or ʼn husband crippled,

Smoking does not materially

increase the work of the heart even if the heart is weak.

Cigarettes have ΠΟ cumula- tive action. Chain-smoking I and misfits; gregarious women cigarettes has no more effect on the 'who just don't have enough to heart than one cigarelle.

occupy their minds.

THERE are confirmed alcoholics 2

There are the thousands uf. women who "Just got into the habit" | during the yours of the war when male companionship was lacking.

to 0.

4

and

Chapman Pincher

inken to air travel like ducks It has become the only means of travel over long distances. Young American and Chinese pilots are saving the country from complete stagnation. Mostly old war planer nre in use,

This is China's year of destiny. Within the next 12 months, nc- a British visitor, "We cording to shall have witnessed either the beginning of China's rise to the status of a manjar stabilising force In world affairs, or the beginning of the end of China is 1 ordered entity."

LARGEST STORE OF URANIUM

H

wrote

Let us take a quick look al a few

The measurements will be con- other places.

cliffs, previously unknown, We can visit Manly,

HE world's largest untapped store naring

tinued in the Pacific Ocean as the where shopping baskets and string- And, of course, there are plenty of uranium is being measured were found.

"The

moves inces- Albatross works west. bags in hotel lounges are almost as

who genuinely "like their couple of by a Swedish deep-sea expedition

depth curve

An equally novel method of beers, and who are just as much led by Prof. the licensee numerous as pieces of furniture.

Hans Petterson, of santly up and down," Pettersson re- entitled to have them as their bus-Goteborg.

purted.

"Generally the movement sampling, the sediment itself was. Dr Double Bay, where there is a justification

A hollow core of metal Is by gentle undulations, but quite undertaken.

distinct was lowered to the sediment and o well as a rather claustral ladies after work.

The expedition, aboard the 1,400- often it rises or falls by " bright and cheerful beer garden an bands are to have their schoopers

fle, core of oaze extracted from the sea Albatross, hus steps, 100 to 300 metres high." ton motor schooner parlour right in the heart of the

Many of the women af, say, Pad-studied the deep ocean and its bed said these elitta suggested long floor. These cores, 10 to 15 metres shopping centre; where sophistication and sonpsuds rub shoulders;, where dington, virtually have nowhere else during a voyage across the Atlantic "faults," or places where the rock long, were sent to Sweden for study. the "old hardn" still.cling tenacious-

and Caribbean and recently entered had buckled and cracked because of

"Assuming the sediment to in-. the ty to the dingy parlour because flig

Panama lateral pressure and one side of the They can find companionship in the Pacific through

crack was raised above the other. crease by eight millimetres in 1,000 beer garden is "Ion new-fangled" the indies parlour, and relief from Canal.

years in the Atlantic Ocean, the Or Cronulla, where feverish faces the unbearable monotony of tiny

a small homes in unlovely terraces.

Many lines of research are being "In certain places where the re- lower strata of a core 15 metres long FTERNOONS

the busiest cluster three-deep around are

when The rumour

pursued by the expedition's scient- eord tends to become confused, the should' have ›been' deposited nearly periods; housewives the bulk of serving-butch

by 2,000,000 years ago, or before the spreads that "the beer's going off," It is their club-the only

the bottom appears to be covered place Ists, Prof. Pettersson wrote in the clientele.

"Straight to the pub from, and where most of the women cus where they can find companionship, British scientifle magazine, Nature. small hills or hummocks," he wrote. end of the

Prof. Petterary Lo and escape the tawdriness of their The measurement of uranium and He did not suggest a possible origin was

The fact that deep They famous pointers, of The most

red their shopping, unwrap the parcels tomers generally favour schooners. women are the women themselves.

In colour, One fternoon I saw a middle- Ilves.

inrge of these domes. radlum, made by analysing on the tables, set out their vegetable

he added, would prove that red woman gel through seven

volume samples of ren water laken knives and set to work. Potatoen aged

But the growth of the cull under- from

The uneven surface of the bottom cloys could be formed in warm and Ave

different depths, were are peeled, pens shelled, beans schooners in

lines again minutes.

the stupidity of the directed at discovering a method for of the ocean made the work of water instead of only In the Ico- stringed, meat prepared.

measuring the sedliment thickness at cold water previously thought res- When school

retrieving the elements. comes out,

She loudly expressed her diegust country's drinking customs.

great depths very complicated, he ponsible for it. children arrive. It's a long-standing when the serving-hatch was closed custom.

"Such measurements have become sald. An ingenious method of sound- at 6.35 p.m., and hurriedly sought

or Paris of especial importance owing to the ing this sediment carpet was deve

taken from the Caribbeani The prepared food is wrapped up out a man friend to get her another TN New York, London, Money doesn't grow un trees, but again, given to the kids, with the couple of schooners at the public you can find bars and dingy light they may shed on the fonium loped by Prof. W. Weibull of Bofors, at a depth of almost

interesting stratification, limbs have a way of attengting It..

the expedition, showed bar before closing time!

saloons which are patronised only by precipitation in the sen." wrote Prof. who accompanied necessary instructions:

set off and with layers of limestone-producing "Use the big snucepan

women-but you have to look hard Pettersson. He said this precipita- Depth charges were

occurred at different the slow gns.....couple of pinches

for them, and generally they are the tion is supposed to be responsible for echoes reflected both from the sedi- shells which

and the hard rock levels. This meant that there were "I'll give you twenty dollars if of salt in the water

huppening

posits.

beneath the sediment were recorded. definite periods in the past when file Sydney. degenerates. throughout

By this method it was found that creatures leaving these shells could past-Ave...."

Publicans and barmaids agree that The tragedy for women in Sydney bottom have been taken to a depth the sediment carpet-the

Echo-sounding charts of the sea artist to an old mountaineer.

rock of exist in enormous numbers, And then the women settle down the number of women "regulars" Is Is that ridiculous conventions and

the Atlantic "There ain't no question about to more beers and more gossip until steadily increasing.

conditions inexorably tend to force of 0,000 metres, it was reported. the future-beneath

The expedition ship, once through that," the old man replied. "I was it's time to get their husbands' In some hotels newcomers are the ladies' parlour towards a paral-They showed that the floor of the Ocean is 4,800 metres to 7,800 metres the Panama just wondering how. I'd get the_paint dinners ready. Sometimes. it. col... Anding it almost impossible to get lel with the barswill conditions of Caribbean was much smoother than thick, and beneath the Caribbean it Galapagos Islanrls, its firat port of off afterwards?”

the majority of public bara.

"that"of the Atlanlle. “Many

call in the Pacific.-United Press aub-" is 2,000 to 5,000 metres thick,

Meu can remain Bachelors

keeping out of arm's way.

by

their

un

..don't

on

hour

not

you'll lot ine paint you," salu the forget to take it off at quarter. some degree, the same thing is haunts of specific socint misits and the radium found in deep sea de- ment surface

cides with do'clock.

a soat,

Cores

4,000-metres

Canal, mado for the

1