1948-03-20 — Page 4

THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH. SATURDAY, “MARCH 20, 1948,

Tempers toughen

on 49th

A

Parallel

NIAGARA FALLS. THOUSAND feet of packed ice and the cost of the Marshall plan divide the twin towns of Ningura Falls, Ontario, Canuda, and · Niagara Falls, New York State, perched on either side of the international gorge.

The ice will soften with the spring. But I have to report that the feeling between the towns is hardening.

Here on the border, Canada is getting resentful at being mistaken for the Poor Relation...

by JAMES COOPER

But he would like Mr Hous and the other U.S. citizens to realise it.

worth about 32s. 6d. One Saturday morning Mr Bennett

counted tho care outshlo one Canadian grocer's At one time there were 34 with the -orange licence plates of New York State, not one with the royal blue plates of Ontario Province.

*Discount'

21

☛RIEVANCE No. 3 is the discount on Canadian dollars. Once a Canadian dollar was worth 90 cents U.S.. but now the two are officially ot

A U.S. dollar in Canada is par worth 100 cents. But

toko Canadian dollar into Niagara Falls, N.Y., and every shopkeeper deducts 10 percent.

sald the girl in the "Discount." elaar store when she gave me 22 U.S. cents for a Canadian 25-cent plece. I wanted change to use tho threepence-an-bour

parking

meter.

car

Says Canadian Mr Bennett: "It makes us feel like poor relations." Says U.S. Mr Hous: "We have a grievance, too. Our tourists grumble when they come back from Canada And get only 00 cents for any Canadian dollar they got in ex- change.”

High-handed RIEVANCE No. 4 is what Mr Bennett's businessmen member of the call the high-handedness States. Nearest the border they fool

Three hundred miles north, in Canada's capital of Ottawa, ex- ternal affairs officials admit that

Mr Bennett, as nearest chamber relations between Canada And

of commerce official to the border. the United States have de- finds that most people he meets from teriorated since the war.

the US. know nothing of Canada's It is still a far cry from the days contribution, and some of them even when a Canadian election was won think that Connda fought the war on the slogan "No truck or trade on Lense-Lend. with the Yankees," but there is Across the 1,450-foot Rainbow come animosity along that invisible Bridge, built six years ago, I went line of the 40th Parallel. In the to the United States to talk to the Defence Transport in Washington,

side.

know

about Canada's

it first.

They are still sore at Colonel Monme Johnson, of the Office of

Canada over

The ban Inde

that the people of the States in the Marshall plan, but I gucas White House s

Then

the

U.S.

WHERE MR GAITSKELL

DISAGREE.

W

twin towns of Niagara il crystallises man in the street, Policeman 100, who banned U.S. coal wagons going & HISTORY

the Canadian Las arising from the Marshall plan. Clifton James Smith, stopped into with the grievances on the Canadian chewing gum when I asked if he National Railways tatil August be- i's contribution cause, he said, empty wagons were Canada's share

to the Marshall plan. He said: "But not being returned quickly enough. was lifted when Oltawa that's

purely U.S. project.

to the "We are

protest" RIEVANCE No. 1 is a feeling A man with a cigur said:

nil

Even

Department of are becoming arrogant in believing Uncle Sam foots the bill." that they alone are the raviours of Mr Hous, in the chamber of com- Justice issued subpoenas calling on Canadian newsprint companies to George Robey Can hin raised Europe and do not realise that, man merce,

of produce records for the inquiry into nt the proportion

laws. for man, Canada has done and is eyebrows

share, and asked to see alleged violation of anti-trust doing much more. Take a quick Canada's

U.S. newspapers joined in, calling it look at the figures.

newspaper cutting to prove it.

Hn insult to Canada and a breach of her sovereign rights. Finally the withdrawn, and the department said that in future they would first ask the help of the Canadian Government.

By the end of 1946, Canada gave and lent more than £500,000,000 10 Britain, France, the Netherlands,

At the grocer's HTEVANCE No. 2 is based on Belgium, and Norway. On a basis the worldwide shortage of

To conserve U.S. dollars of 12 people in the U.S. for every dollars. one in Catinda that would equal Catiada has barred the imports of

from

U.S. many U.S. goods; put heavy taxes £6,000,000,000

and import quotas on others.

Bill Bennett The result is that

a trip can bring nothing back from

about

the

Actually the U.S. granted and tent £2,875,000,000, or less than half of the comparative Canadian Bure.

The proportion

share

be

summonsen

were

Viewpoints

AYS Canadian Mr Bennett: "It is this way of taking us for granted

HEN Mr Gaitskell, Minis- ter of Fuel and Power, confessed publicly that he never has many hot baths and advised the people of Britain to follow his example, he really did make history.

For that was the first time for 3,000 years that any law. giver told a people not to bathe Clean contrary ure the in- junctions of Maniou, the law- giver of the Hindus, of Zorons- ter, prophet of the Persians, of Moses and of Mahomet.

a hundred All these and others bade their people bathe;

FOR WOMEN ONLY?

1

FAR back as I go into the his

to the States. Even the usual that makes Canadians sore."

U.S. Mr Hous thinks rather that

He seems likely to Customs allowance of 200 cigarettes

smiled, pay it is thoughtlessness. so that he has to continue. Canada estimates that her is bannedian price of 15. 9d, for 20, "It's the old story. Our Niagara and bathe in warm water.

will the

Canada's of the Marshall plan compared £750,000,000,

with while Ralph Ilous gets them at the Falls has 90,000 people,

But there is no 20,008. The States has 140,000,000, Canada 12,000,000. And the little £4,500,000,000 for the U.S., or £82 U.S. price of is. 10s. for each Canadian, £31 55. for ban on the U.S. side. cach American.

tory of man, I find adjura- Sandy-haired Bill Bennett, director Canadian groceteria and buy up to big guy."

Mr Hous thought of only one Falls 258. worth for each member of his

all Canadian Niagara of the

complaint to

the tions to the bath that purifies He sold: "Because we the body. Chamber of Commerce, who served party,

With Canadian butter at Ss. 6d. Canadians. does not ward, overseas In both

with the US, are more populous, more prosperous, the Canadians mind

as much as a pound compared paying twice Ralph D. Hous, his opposite number,price of 4s. 6d., and other groceries it tends to make

25s, chienper,

becomes over-sensitive." a milu away

across

Mr Hous can motor a mile to a fellow is always suspicious of the

the gorge similarly

POTATOES HAVE

A HISTORY

L

ET'Stalk about potatoes. In the ordinary way they are something you take for granted, but when they're scarce, as they are in Britain, they suddenly become interesting.

It

We'll start with the name. comes from the Spanish patata, umi the Spaniards got it from the Indians in Haiti, who pronounced 1 batent. The interesting thing is that batata does not and never did, mean the potato we now know.

It means the sweet potate, which was discovered first and is quite n different vegetable, as you will know

ever had

Han one. The

by BERNARD WICKSTEED

It's fun finding out.

answer

brigin? Nor does anybody else for certain, but there Are several theories. One is that it was derived from "Spud Murphy. But as far us I can see It's just as likely that the Murphies got their name from the spuds they ate as it is that the spuds, got theirs from the Murphies.

Spud was also an old English word for a baby's band and it is possible the meaning come from that, or it may be a corruption of "pudsy," which means stumpy,

"Moths. Sir Edward, MOTHS!”

THIS BUSINESS OF HAVING A BATH

• By GEORGE

the

EDINGER

Some helleye that the early Chris- with the applying of sond to borly (soap was not rationed then, tian Church frowned on baths be nor was hot water) removed a pro- enure the public baths at

ancient testive rind upon the human body Rome had become very disreputable that kept out micrubes.

Nov Clement. the old lady at Ec- eletechan. Sir Almroth Wright and a

Mr Goltskell can point out that

number of people died because they enjoyed their baths,

WAS

places.

When

Gregory.

thirsty of the French revolutionaries, it was right to have a hot bath on

In this she won better served than her successor, the Emperor Francis Joseph (he died in 1910), who never linda bathroom but was content with the hip bath carried to his bedroom.

That was the custom in Victorian London and in several Oxford and Cambridge colleges up till the 1914- war, when the War Omee took them

༄སྨཱ།

They probably were. But it is not true that the early over for cadets and installed baths.

But the East, unlike the West, nd- Church pronounced against the ball. hered to its batha without a break,

nskcd SI somebody

THE JAPANESE WAY carly greatest of the There was King Herod and there

Marat, quite the most blood- ropes, in the year A.D. 500, whether N China and Japan the bath was

I always essential.

baths The Japanese have their and

the Sundays, he said that the bath as a

luxury and an indulgence was no less with all the family assembled in

any communni tub. It is arguable that if these ladies permissible on Sunday than

had not gone

but that a man who want other

Sometimes they stand up to day. lived ed a bath to get clean had as much neck in wet sand while hot water their baths they would have and gentlemen

ght to have it on Sundays as right

is poured over them.. much longer.

weekdays.

In the 14th and 15th centuries baths in there were many famous

the murdered brides of notorious Mr Smith.

into

THEY HAD TWO BUT there are also people whose

lack of baths made them live a much shorter time.

It

WGS

were smitten with

in ury.

on

10th cen-

D

the

In South Germany and Hungary people bathe in radioactive mud, at Droitwich they bathe in brine,

Europe.

Hamilcar, the Carthaginian leader, The first tourists who journeyed to would wallow in milk of almonds hot Switzerland were attracted not by but Napoleon always stuck the the cold snows, bul by, the hot baths. waler. noted throughout

He worked out his strategy in hla Middle Ages that while the peoples

The decay of the bath in Western bath and when he went to St Helenn Governor, It was a grievance of the

that he should Sir Hudson Lowe, want to stow in bath every day.

Stew every day? Yes, certainly the warmth and not It was always

that mattered. the water

But now, alas, in modern Britain, warmth has become a luxury rarely of attainable.

of the West leprosy (and there were few chances Europe dates from the

for most men of a hot bath medieval Europe) the Moslems of the Middle East who adhered strictly to the precepts of the Prophet tree from that disease.

were

Two things were responsible. When the Protestant Reformation split the Western Church, both sides tried to outdo each other in ascetic fervour.

So both denounced the evils

But I must add that 1,800 years ugo there was a very saintly gentle man in Alexandria called Clement who sald that baths were only It is true that till the middle of last

which is necessary for women;

century most working men In Britain pretty much what Mra Galtskell told had only two baths, one the day that a reporter when, trying to help her they were born and one the day that bathing (with many references Incautious husband out of his they died, and it was not until 1840 Susannah and the Elders in troubles.

that the first Act was passed to Apocrypha). establish baths and washhouses

th, comfort, and welfare the health, populous towns."

Within 30 years it happened death rate dropped from one in to one in 45 of the population.

That, of course, may not have been altogether because of the hot baths. Still, it is striking that the last of the great plagues that nflicted

was. Britain, the cholera epidemic of 1849. never followed by anything the hubit of hot comparable efter baths became general.

Mahome! Inid down that his fol lowers must never offer up a prayer up to the elbows, and, were there any dirt on their bodies, taking a bath (the Mos- lem offers his. prayers five times every day).

without Arst washing

NEVER HAD ONE

ALADY at the Court of Louis lived long enough to tell a friend in 1840 that she never took a

તા

bath till she was 50 years old.

Twenty years ago, an older of Ec- The brightest suggestion I have dup up is that it comes-from-the-clofechas avowed that he knew.

never had a bath initials of the Society for the Pre- lady of 90 who

since she was born. vention of Unwholesome Diet.

There was an eminent Edwardian doctor, Sir Almroth Wright, who set out to prove how too many hot baths

Spuds And Weight

RE potatoes unwholesome? Some

A people say they make you fat, but

in America at this moment there is a Miss Potato Blossom who is tour- ing the country saying they don't. if you have,

She eats a baked potato' every day Spaniards found the real potato, the

and keeps her weight down to nine socl you.queue up for some time

stone_two later when they pushed through to

There are now several thousand

Palatoes are probably the only the Pacific coast of South America..

had of potato and the vegetables that have sorts

You will find They brought it back to Europe different around 1500, and to distinguish it people who develop them are not named after them.

growers but potato all about it in any history book. from the previously known sweet called potato variety 1 was called the Bastard breeders.

Potato.

a war

it was fought in 1878-0 between the

In Britain, potato breeders take Prussians and the Austrians, and got

1011 a any real fighting, each side" spent Matthew most of the time trying to stop the

he other lot from getting anything to

For a long time in this country their work very seriously and hold its name because, instead of doing it was called the Virginian Potato national field trials. In and Sir Walter Raleigh is supposed Scottish breeder culled to have brought it over from there Wallace was knighted because and introduced it

to Ireland. This bred such good potatoes, and Donald eat. can't be true, because neither he nor McKelvic from Arran get the O.B.E. any of his men ever went to Virginia, in 1943. for the same thing.

At one time

Acquitted

most potatoes

Since then wars have been fought: with potatoes as well as about them. had If you pulp them up, mix the mash

if it

can drive

23

and anyway they were not grown knobs on, but breeders have now re- with malt until it ferments and then, thans till nearly 100 years after

a fairly uniform distil it, you can get alcohols. And duced them to Raleigh died.

Nevertheless, there are still from the alcohol you can make high Just to make it more confusing shape.

occasional freaks. At various times. explosives. We did it in the last the Virginians themselves have

Alternatively you always belloved that their potatoes there were potatoes that were alleged. war and so did the Germans..

by their owners to look like Winston care from Ireland, and to this day Churchill, Mickey Mouse, Donald motor car with potato spirit or you they are still known in the Southern Duck and Greta Garbo,

can drink it. The Spaniards and States as Irish potatoes,"

Nowadays a potato is a potato and the Portuguese put it in their wine you eat.It whatever the size or shape, to give it more kick,

One ton of potatoes makes about but just before the war there was an Institution called the Potato Market-10 gallons of spirit so that cleven Tow for a bit of botany. Tho. ing Board, which made it illegal to pounder grown at Rouen had enough NOW

juico in It to drive an 8 h.p. car för. potato belongs to the

potato to the public family of plants as the tomato, weighed more than a pound or mea- five miles. tobacco and deadly nightshade. For sured less than 1 inches in length.

think this reason people used to

In those days if you bought potatoes were poisonous. As a matter good-sized petato for roasting in its of fact the tops of the plant are jacket the farmer who sold it could But times change, polsonaus. But just Intely it's been be fined £100. found that if you treat them with, and he could be Aned now if he re- salt they can be fed to cattle. fused to sell it.

The tubers that you cat are not

America the craze for roots. They are underground stents standardisation has gone so far that und the eyes are buds. foots don't you can buy potatoes from Idaho manufacturers use it in one of their have buds, according to Mr Chapman that are all the same size and each

one is wrapped in tissue paper liko The

Pincher.

same cell a

Odd Jobs

RESIDES using potatoes for eating, ➜ drinking, driving cara and great- ing explosions, they can be made into four. Potato four is often called farina and that in its turn has a wide variety of uses. Cooks

put it in puddings, Lancashire colton finishing processes, and mothers' powder their babies with it.

patterns

hand-printed

mode of raw potatoes. The The civilised soud has become a

oh

The potatoes that the Spaniards an orange. I know this is true be- curtains are often put on with blocks found growing in Chile were about cause I have seen them. the size of walnuts and all those in

arc like that.

Americans

use today werd developed from these. Northern Pacific Railway used to hypochondriac. It has to be treated In 1930 ogardenor at Rouen

in advertise itself as the "fond of the for diseases caused by different France grew a potato, that weighed. Big Baked Potato" and boasted that kinds of virus, fungus and bacteria lib. 11oza., and in 1937 a man near It never served a spud In His dining and it is prayed, un by leafhoppers, Bournemouth had four potato plants cars that weighed less than Zib.

eelworms and the Colorado. bestie.

that went on growing till they wore That brings us to the word, About 60 Colorados were found in 10ft 10ms. high.

"pud." Do

know you

its Britain last year and 75 in 1945,

Are You Sure?

A

Answers on Page 11

1. The muezzin is--

Mohammedan call to prayer; an Arab liquor: the name of a Libyan palace; an animal found in Burma?

2. Can you name a commen British weed from which may

made

be

Winc. coffee, salad, cure for warts?

3. Ally Bloper was-

Steep land, comic character

in newspaper, Turkish migrant,

a large marble?

Noah's Ark came to rest

upon the mountain of

Ararat, Mount of Ollies,

Carmel, Zion?

5. One of these countles has 118 seaboard

Westmorland,

Glamorgan, Hereford, Dorset, Cumberland, Durham

6. If you were to lapidate a coconut you would-

Pelt it with stones, drink the milk, cut it.in pleces, shave it?

7. Tho

railway busiest station in the world in In

London, Chicago, Tokyo, New York, Calcutta, Meit

Melbourne?

8. A cremlcel i

Relle of Oliver Cromwell, prehistoric structure of stone, reddish brown ore?

D. A domino is a→→→

Cloak, hat, shawl, well, fan? 10. Which of these Dickens's characters knew Mr Wackford Squeers--

Oliver

Twist. Nicholas Nickleby, Tiny Tim, Mr Pick- wick?

for of

the 40

HIPPOCRATES SAID....

ancient world the practice If that ancient world the practice

IN

questioned then it has been in our own day-up fill Me Galtskell's an- nouncement, of course.

to

the

And just then the discovery of new seaways to the East flooded Europe and powders, with perfumes, essences, which seemed a much sim pler way of countering dirt than the Jabour of contriving a possibly immoral bath.

The fifteen and sixteen hundreds were the age of fewest baths.

JESTS AND JEERS

Save water-take it neat! A ̈magistrate-has-discovered-more. men in the dock without charges Against them. If the practice con- When the Persian Ambassador ar tinues, Government should charge riving at the Court of Louis XIV. them for bed and breakfast. wanted a bath, the transpetion scem.

skirts for ed so abnormal that special prints of

Longer it were distributed.

countered by shorter glances from

But it is unfrue that King Louis men. XIV never had n bath. He had 20 on his doctor's advice in the August on his de

And he never had another.

A hundred years later the virtues of hot water were discovered again. also

Not only the lawgivers, but the philosophers of the first civilt- sations were insistent on the benefits to be derived from them.

SEE MY FEET

·

氰

women are

has sent General MacArthur Japanese to a Geneva conference, and Dr Soong has hired. n Japancso adviser. Cherry blossoms to you!

.

Overheard on the dance floor: "Why don't you act as though you love me, instead of I love you?"

T the start of the eighteenth cen- fury, when someone told Lady Mary Montague that her bands were away by a busy bee. dirty the exclaimed: "My hands, you ought to see my feet."

Hippocrates, the father of medicine (D.C. 400), was always recommend ing warni baths. Galen (A.D. 180), the greatest doctor the Romans pus

A man's thoughts are seldom on Bessed, believed them "nevesseTY TO "But at the end of It the Irish sur-the level when his mind is "on" the pubile health.

geon, Benjamin Rumford, chiaf medi- curve. Every Roman villa had its bath cal officer in the Bavarian service,

Doctor: and, under Augustus, Rome had 850 wrote: "What an addition it would public baths, some large enough for be to the enjoyment of the inhabl- this morning, 1,000 people.

tants of more favoured countries to Patient: The reason for the fall off in hot add the warm bath of the Russian to all night. baths was economic and political in all their local advantages."

Many a honey bas, been carried

the fourth century, just as it looks Ilke being in the twentieth.

For the Russians, like the Turks, never stopped bathing.

*

You cough more easily

Yes, I've been practising

When the Empress Maria Theresa Air Crews

The barbarians who broke into, the Roman Empire cut the aqueducts, visited Florence in the 1750's n They also wrecked the heating sya- special bathroom was built for her tem, and the art was not discovered at the Pitti Palaco, with a sunken again,

bath of alabaster and golden tapa:

TER SATURDAY RYEKİNG,JOGE,

EDITORS PRERS SERVICE.

"If I should court you for a reasonable length of time," Dora, and eventually: propose, would you marry me?”

Remembered

Yorkshire people will recall the hundreds of Dominion and Royal Air Force bomber crews who were based In the arca during the war, when the, annual memorial service is held at on Stonefall Cemetery, Harrogate, Easter Sunday. The service is spon- sored by the Harrogate Victory Branch of the British Legion.

The 1,000 graves at Stonefall--609 Canadian and the rest R.A.F., Royal Australian Air Force, Royal New Zealand Air Force, the French Air Force, aircrews--are "adopted" by local families, who undertake to care for them and lay. wreathe on appro.. priate days.

The RAF will be represented by Air Commodore B. V. Reynolds, C.B.E., Air Officer Commanding No. 64 (Northern Reserve) Group, who was Chief of Staff to Admirál Har court in the Hongkong D.M.A. follow- Ing liberation.

The High Commissioner for Aus- and the tralia (Mr J. A. Beasley)

Conadian Senior Air Staff Officer, Joint Liaison Committee, London (Group Captain V. H. Patriarche," O.B.E., A.F.C.) will also nitend the Bervice,

It is hoped that New Zealand and France will be officially represented. The Borvice will be conducted by the. Rov. J. F. Cox, M.C., MA., K.B.C., Assistant Chaplain-In-Chief to the Iloyal Air Force,