1948-06-26 — Page 4

HE'S A GOLDEN

MAN IN

A TOWN

James Cameron's

Column

OF SHACKS..

ODENDAALSRUS (Orange

Free State), Juno 10. TRAIN, rolling slowly over several thousand million pounds' worth of gold, crushed a detonator, broke an orange tape, and officially launched into the world's consideration its nowest, strangest, drabbest, and possibly vastest treasure house.

Here, hugely marked out on the enormous dun-coloured end- lessness of Africa. is the Field of the Cloth of Gold, the new strike, gold mining's centre of the future and the new South Africa's Insurance against a hard and maybe hostile world.

At the moment it is trifiing, forin- less, cheaplock, ridden with the architecture that is South Africa's crude, eye-senring corrugated-Iron blow at all art.

Now shafts oro machinery is going compounds, ollices, water-pipes.

being Bunk, up, buildings, power lines.

Many years yet to go, many mit- lions yet to be spent. But 70 years ago Johannesburg, that prosperous, clanging, sky-scruping, excltobic monument to money, was just as Odendaalsrus to now. Things move fast in this ageless land,

Odendaalsrus, realising this fairly shrewdly, put on its best store clothes for this week's show. It unit its song, hung its banners-no Jncit, which is seen but rarely in longer, it is fair to note, the Union

the Union today-and gathered 10 listen to a good solid session of Afrikaans speechmaking,

The Lifeline NOW this rallway line, said Paul

Sauer, proudly slapping his new Ministerial acquisition, one day will be the lifeline of the Free Slate.

This week lins seen the opening of Odendaalsrus-200 miles south- west of Johannesburg-the 'maln link with the outside moneybags.

Two men watched the Golden Train Tive-Sir Ernest Oppen- helmer, the Golden Mon, premier Industratist of the Rend, firm cup porter of the vanished Smuls, and Never, cald Oppenheimer, has 门 Poul Sauer, Afrikander, new Nation- goldfeld been proved by such n tlist Minister

drilling programme of Transport, deep huge political enemy of Smuts and all he

On. Odendaalsrust

Thus will the great new mines represents,

They

smiled, posed,

come to save the Union of South mado speeches, shook hands, for polities Africa's economy at the moment of

ALS are politics, but gok! is gold.

crisis.

Retrograde Ideology SOUTH Africa, torn by dissension

Just now, threatened by a des- pairingly retrograde ideology, is still based on the samo told quartz foundation as ever, a thing Oppen- helmer and Sauer very well know, in English and Afrikaans.

per ton than they can on the old

year.

more.

The

as this.

For at this moment of Nationalist exuberance, of Insistence on South Africa for South Africans, South 14 on the same economic tightrope as everyone else.

Her

Africa

THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH,

A B

SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 1948.

Giles, the famous cartoonist, is in America. For the next few weeks his brilliant draughtsmanship and good humour will be stimulated by the American scene. Here it his first cartoon from the Queen Mary.

"Lady, don't koop tolling mo you think wo'ro boing followed by submarines-toll the captain.”

Last of our German

slaves

LONDON.

TOW is your conscience? If

go

by

home

JOHN

their final release three years

Each will

three years. or released for voluntary civilian kitbags weighing not

of

115

work early next month.

more

PREBBLE

men

Crisis After. Crisis-But Paris Is Gay

By SAM WHITE

Paris, June 16. OR the past two weeks Franco has been

classic of its kind. Some of the lasues Involved have been comprehensible only to Frenchmen.

The first issue involved what French political dictionaries call, with refreshing candour, "The politics of the clientelo"; in this case, how to sack 150,000 redundant civil servants who form a solid block of voters for one of the partners in the Coalition Government.

After long negotiations, a masterly com- promise was reached. The civil servants would be fired only to be re-employed immediately in other civil service jobs,

STATE SUBSIDIES

THE

THE next day a fresh crisis broke. This time the lasue was graver, involving as it did the anti-clericalism of the French Left wing.

The Catholic Minister of Health had issued

a decree allowing for State subsidies to parents who could not afford to keep their children at school.

Immediately opponents pointed out that some of the subsidies might be used to send children to private Catholic schools instead of to State secular schools.

The damage done by the British military's early ruling that there should be "no politics" among the

They

prisoners is incalculable. would not accept the principle that there could be a genuine political deserter from the German Army.

of

This attitude made the work re-education when it came all the harder, As late as last year some P.o.W.s still believed that Hitler were was alive and that German-speak-

la

This

time another compromise affected--instead of saying that the subsidy would be used for

child's

word education, the "upkeep" was substituted.

IL

FEAR OF GERMANY THE next obstacle in this per

petual hurdle

concerned France's intense fear of a revived Germany.

תק

race

eagerly

awaited But, In

Six-Power on the statement

Germany, London Agreement on General de Gaulle did little more than write an essay along classic- French lines

the Prussian menace.

on

which ing British officers were in reality When it came to positive sug-

Anglo-American

to

it is a little lighter now.it may be because you know The Inst of the supermen will

To guard these 158.-a-week quay (excluding that the last batch of the shuffle down a Harwich foreign trade

there to bourers last August gold) deficit last year was £134,494,377 German PoW.8-some months one week and two

two 10,500 British troops, of 000,000. With gold, the deficit was held in Britain since September after VE Day.

days the ratio of oMeers to £42,000,000. Her

was Nazi sptes sent to test their loyalty. gestions, all he could advise was Imports

carry one to six.

failing When through economic necessi- | that, doubled in the past

have 14, 1939-are to be repatriated 5lb. of hand-baggage and three Three-quarters of the P.o.W. ty, the prisoners were put to work, acceptance of the French vlew, Till now the balance

than worked on the land, the rest were the authorities were

should continue

ad- surprised to France payments ap

n total 50lb. has been closed by: capital

on hire to the Ministries of Fuel, and them bored, docile, and willing minister her zone in Germany in movements, especially imports of

Work, Transport, Supply, and Food. to work.

isolation. They Why September 14, 1039? Becauso currency from Britain. And gold.

will be taking precious

Still At Liborty

This would leave Franco even When fraternisation was allowed Half South Africa's exports are on that date 36-year-old Kapitan soap and odd clothing which they

Gerhard

An average of Glattes, fished have legitimately acquired. Rationed

ono in cold,

Other countries produce gold, Leutnant

every in December 1940 the public, dis-more defenceless than she already and unrationed food they tako other country has its entire from the Atlantic, and

hufdred prisoners mude an attempt covering the prisoners to somewhat

be, for is, while at the same, lime putting But to escape. not allowed to exceed 15lb. economy based on goldmining,

surprised at having had so short a

Lately they have been. the most part.

on the French mild, reasonable additional burdens will whatever its weight it Which

be escaping to avoid repatriation, Britain. troublesome in that, war, was landed in

Ho

young man, were surprised.

taxpayer. gold in Germany. though South Africa, in common was 38 when he went home.

Still at liberty in Britain are 104, the rest of the world, has

The bus conductors who refused Since the day of his capture,

hidden by women perhaps, or lost to carry Germans, the From

Hook the

TRIALS GO ON to pay 100 per cent, more for when women spontaneously barri- special trains will take them to the for certain to have

councillors Rot

in crime. Only two are known who objected to them in the public everything she buys from America, ended their windows against his or final

renched the America still will not pay

demobilisation point more his comrades" escape, we havo never Munster Lager.

at Continent without recapture. '

libraries, the bewildered ex-soldiers TRIALS of alleged "collaborators" than

where

continue to be daily front-page the pre-war price for

Cahill. Four In every hundred prisoners who fought them in dance halls, all

educa- went wn before public opinion. news in France. gold-gold to sell, gold miners.

of the Irish Guards, has been sign Passed through the model

and The Gnans were all right,

Dericourt, who Captain Henri though! them tax, so that farmers may be

all ing thousands of release paper this tional school at Wilton Park,

of in- 40' sidised and appeased.

Lately we have plled them year, they will draw

marks we hope are mentally and morally

No one realised that had these was acquitted on charges as slave labour.

all the botter for it. We have been apiece and go out into

their men been granted

condi telligence with the enemy, had s

in

French the half-right and half-wrong

lonal liberty fifteen months earlier brilliant record the as civilians. time.

of British Intelligence section during the war.

In

of Holland

There,

Obviously South Africa needs more been entirely happy about having Sergeant-Major P. K. W.

The Boom Days

more them.

to

At first wo sub-thugs.

oll

13

Are

Germany

In Wrong Ship

British women have married 766

of them.

it would have been a different story, Working hard, political officers had broken down arrogance, suspleton, and Intolerance. They had secured a second German capitulation.

of The prisoners' way thinking which in 1945 reflected that of came German civilians, had by 1940 come

the nearer to the British.

The arrival of the first train on tho new £500,000 ling was the algnal that the new Orange Free Sinte goldfield, first

Struck two years sen, was on the map.

It will be, sald Sir Ernest Oppen- no heimer,

fur

more valuable than anyone has so far hoped. Excellent drilling results have been obtained outside the original

with area, as no doushit

everyone here or in

Britain with a financial finger in the gold ple as known for long enough.

They can get much higher yields

Rond.

Until now they have spoken of field, 20 miles long by a proved seven miles wide, which would yield £50,000,000 worth of gold a

Now, they say, they will get ND thus Odendaalsrus, which is

A looking forward to the latest Now the majority of

More than 30,000 prisoners have asked permission to stay in Britain Mayor of Odendaalsrus, boom days in its so far Inconsider thoroughly sick of the whole dis-

as workers. It has been granted history. They came to the able

cheered all creditable business. We aro

Even those kind

whose desperate

to 23,058. to see the last of Alto diamond attempts to anticipate liberty pro-

They will stay for a minimum And outside the ceremony, on the marked backs.

vided enough material for a hun-

Most of them period of a year. remote

The perimeter of this stirring,

people of one Lincolnshire dred escape novels.

hope it will be for ever. golden gathering, a handful of the village will no longer protest that

ours These prisoners of Men like Hernian Langer, who left esser breeds." of the solemn and prisoners do not give way to them his camp near Cambridge and board here with fixed ideas

about subdued 2,000,000, the Africans on the footpaths,

expecting to be man- And the three.. youths who were ed what he thought was a ship to British, ing, township..gimcrack and hideous themselves...stood and watched.oned for spitting and swearing at Haniburg. He was dragged "ex="handled~or~even- -exterminated:---

Gold comes and goes, but life

were fanatically ready to be Same goes on. There's no black gold so Germans may now rejoice to and austed from the hold at Haija in Sout

For a year they were kept idle on the streets of Britain an obscure him

When the prisoners Arst appeared to trial recently, the case against collapsed in an afternoon. Or dispirited and hungry Kurt despite frequent suggestions that shamefulness in the British nature There was not, a shred of evidenco Schmalz, who walked into a Grave- they were a moral, and

against him. political made them welcome. send cafe and gave himself up for a problem vitally important in the

He had spent 18 months in prison cup of tea.

rehabilitation of Germany.

A Spalding cinema-queue had a And Richard Christ, who escaped office when it was suggested that the price of admission.

Objections

without and used his savings to pay for his came from the War whip-round for prisoners

Another defence. from an Angus camp and worked as educational work should begin.

at a Welch a waiter in London.

prisoner presided This wartime attitude of the mill- Eisteddfod. But not Hans Josiger.

Unlil re- Had all the prisoners been sent away from his camp at Frome one tary became a habit. winter's night and was found dead cently one camp commandant still home last year Britain would have kept his guards posted with steel had great cause for satisfaction on the railway line to Westbury.

The story of their captivity was too secret to be told during the war. But it should be told.

checks puffed out, ciculing microphone and spoke light. warmly of Johannesburg, their satellite town

One day this, could be, probably will be.

Odendaalsrus, small veld farm-

as only such African towns can be, is the nucleus of this tremendous mining venture.

far.

their English lanes the cleaner.

The women are

the silent

USED to like Sambo, my wife's grey parrot, but since our small daughter learned to squeal I wish he was back in

his old Uganda home.

A parrot's automatic and senseless re. petition of sound-known as echolalia-can be fun. By repeating "Psittacus erithacus" I almost trained Sambo to be the first parrot

to know his selentifle name.

But the speech of a seven-month-old child is also echolalia. So when Sambo lets

out un car-piercing screech the

baby imitates it. Then Sambo

imitates the baby, and so it goes Or it used to until I applied

on.

a little science.

Because its

eyes

are specialised

for sight in tropical sunshine a wlid. purrol cannot see well enough to fly in bad light. So it plays safe by keeping quiet in the dark.

And Sambo's jungle Instincts are to make him still strong

enough shut up when I put a black bag over

.his cage.

Heart beat

ICHARMAN PI

About the House

sex

At about 30 years old Sambo has not laid an egg yet, but as a grey parrot has been known to live to 03 there is still time.

ducts

After one of his

with the

baby I casually suggested that we should give him a chance to get airborne in the garden.

"Wild

High flier

are

grey parrola

high fliers and can be trained to home Bike pigeons," I said. My wife re: plied that she understood an escaped Parrot would be quickly pecked to death by wild birds.

Palestine.

The

He ran

prisoners lived in 188 camps

helmets and rlies,

Complete Mistrust

Made-Welcome

were

He was responsible for operating the most Important air СкСара route out of the country. Not ona of the many important people, in- cluding French Cabinet Ministers, whose escupes,he organised, was caught by the Germans.

WOD

Eighteen months ago...he arrested. When he was brought

twing.

PARIS SEASON

and Д

Paris season is now in full

than it has now.

Then the better elements

On June 27 the Grand Prix de work Longchamps should provide both anxious to take part in the

exciting racing

dazzling While the people sang "Don't let's of rebuliding Germany. In Britain; some of which were be beastly to the Hunt" the prisonerg But in a year their morale had fashion display. excellent, some shocking. The main themselves had a complete mistrust sunk so low that they deluged the Numerous 'public balls have been- body of them came after D-day, far of their captors. Until almost the authorities with letters asking for arranged for the next few weeks. close with a The

season will great open-air ball and fair centred on and around the Eiffel Tower.

Meanwhile the tourist influx la man the

greatest since prewar years, and a vacant sulle or room in any who of the luxury hotels is a rarity. Americans account for up to 40 percent of tho visitors. Smaller hotels, however, are doing com- paratively slack business.

many

more than was ever expected.

last day of the war the majority civilianisation rather than repatria- Nearly a third were

transferred were blindly convinced that Ger- tion. from Canada and America.

close The

win.

Britons who have been in Nazl N.C.O.s ran Americans, they said, had told them

since prisoner some camps contact with the effectively and

without apparent 1944 say that today he is a they were being sent home.

Silly of them to think that opposition.

From such a situation without hope for the future. America sold them as cheap labour arose murders and suicides. Even

man He regards himself as

to Britain, but the longer their re- these barely shook the ballot of has been used as a slave patriation was delayed the deeper some commandants that the Nazi soldier's pay.

OJ

a

ixed became that conviction in heel-clickers were the best prisoners His dislike for Britain is political,

I countered this by quoting their minds.

experiments In which o scientist

put a stuffed parrot out in a wood

and watched 1 for hours. The 孔, though they

attacked a stuffed owl.

Nature has provided female birds ignored parrot with free cosmetics. The tips of special feathers on the neck and shoulders flake of us a fine powder, giving a bloom to the whole plumage. But this has nothing to do with sex- appeal, for the male has it too.

There are

limits to what a cock

as was

brain,

Foot grip

parrol's foot 18 also

to hold authority.

But it is there. not human.

"DINNER AT MIDNIGHT, BREAKFAST 5 A.M."

over

to

But I had unfortunately told her that parrot tastes like snipe, and she

thero aro

beverages A producer at a table nearby is ganisation. The BBC has 41 can- and 14,000,000 remarked that

THE nerve centre of the Bri-

(ico, with some of teens for its staff in England, Scot- coffee, fruit and other non-alcoholic retired big-game hunters in Surrey

tish Broadcasting Corpora- going over a play who would probably know this. So

the BBC Repertory players and an land, Wales and Northern Ireland, drinks.) "This varies according to Samba is still safe in his coge. tion, according to the experts, outside star who may be, and Before the war there were only the season," says Mis Robinson,

designed for "More people cat in From the evil looks ho gives me is not the studios, the probably in, Sir Ralph Richardson. four official canteens,

nor

BBC restauranta parrot will put up with in the way of you would think he knew what had microphone, nor the transmit tables away is talking to a visitor, The wartime Increase in staff from March-than

Another Repertory group a few artists and night staff in London, in the cold quarter-January

at any other time; Before our friendship ended he let make-up,

shown when a been in my mind. But his brain 1sters, but the canteens.. For the as like as not Dorothy Sayers who 3,000 to nearly 13,000 at its peak, there's always a big drop in the me listen to his heart with a stethos- scientist adorned a female with too small for that.

summer holliday The eyes take up so much room canteens are worlds in miniature has been sitting in on a rehearsal and their dispersal round the coun- No matter how

quarter July to cope. It beata about 320 times a rainbow confciti. minute, which is not so high con- much the hen pleaded, the cock bird in the skull that they have inter- where you may see and hear of one of her thrillers, Elsewhere fryside, brought about the other 47. September-and over public holidays

in the canteen the knowledgeable They are run as cafeterian by a such as Easter." Eldering that a canary's pulse rate is would have nothing to do with her. fered with the development of the people of every race and colour, indies and gentlemen who make up entering staff of 070 with Miss Nan 1,000.) And once he obligingly

people who aro a fair cross- "The Crities" programme ora con Robinson as head,

Running 51 widely scattered cafeterias talked while

listened-in

To us, however, the sexes of grey to

Bection of the diverse countries the teacups, or it's that man agail subsidised by the BBC and not in austerity conditions is a formidable

tinuing their sparring match

on a 24-hours-a-day, porrols look exactly alike, so we are

BBC restaurants his syrinx. His what? Is syrinx.

are seven-days-a-week service under that Sambo is a male.

renched by BBC transmissions. The syrinx is the bony gadget, at not sure the bottom of the windpipe whitch When he got the bad habit of pluck- peculiar than it seems. Two of the a turban or a bright sari asa

more Your eye may be caught by refreshment.

Tommy Handley-in person taking tended to make a profit. They offer business. People grumble, and the enables him to talk. We speak with Ing his feathers out a little while ago four toes point backwards and two

a variegated menu day and night, customer is alleged to be always And there are the men and women serving linners between midnight right. Provisións are ralloned, and the larynx at the top of the windpipe, rny wife suggested he was doing a

forwards, giving

strongest Moslem from Pakistan discusses of the BBC's European and Over and 1 a.m., snacks before midnight it takes some ingenuity to ring the WGS striptense net and A pass with

Inrynx too, but can

probably female. But

of on the perch. This some point, with a group think possible grip

sene Services who handle round-the- and from. 4 a.m., and only

breakfasts changes on them - also enables the parrot to use ita Hindus from India. Or you clock transmissions in 31 languages, from 6 am. Odd thing is that we breathe out Sambo in too docile to be a hen.

Miss Robinson says: "The menus foot like a hand for all the time wo are speaking, but

holding,

cilmbing and may see a sprinkling of Pales experts in Albanian and Afrikaans, Flickr

nightly clients are the look attractive enough on paper, ú Female can talk while they

parrots are

but wo just can't get the ingredients parrots

Ilbrarians, engineers, In spite of thele short legs parrota tinians and Arabs, for a time nt Serbo-Croat or Siamese, breathing in as well.

pugnacious and completely dominata

It is a deventh henven for the typists and messengers who handle to make them tasto really nice," Though

BBC staff harking back to the their screeches sound the males in the jungle, except in the can run, but they would be no good least on common ground. The

they seem to lack the man behind you in the queue cartoonist with an eye to the con- the European, Overseas and Monitor- alike to

a male

nesting season.

trast between the clean-chaven men ing parrot

Services One test of a young for racing us

A scientist once catches your car quoting T. S. in formal and, occasionally, morning visitors

and the celebrated prewar days of unlimited meat and rocognise a female by her voice. parrot in to let it nip your finger. A competitive spirit.

trained parrots to

from many lands who the one penny teas of walnut cream female gives a stronger bllo.

and the pair Eliot in a beautifully modulated sults,

bearded When a scientist gave a hen parrot

men in broadcast to their

cake, near-eggshell china and peoples In the burnished silver teapots, wistfully slacks or "New Look" skirts.

women corduroys, the

in saris, night watches.

breakfasts agree. They average 3,000 because the faster bira negro from Africa or the West

But this animation and colour week. Tho general world. waited for his rival to catch up.

average con Indica.

cumasGages a great

deal of or sumption of meals is 112,000 a week,

has a

it.

us,

ore

Lan

therefore

T

more

A

nuts.

iha

run in

through a model of the Hampton I also think Sambo talks too much Court maze, but they always dead-Southern English voice; he is

a New Look by dyeing her feathers, her husband was baffled at first but to be a female. The women are the hented recognised her as soon as she spoke, silent sex in the feathered

announcers,

-MARGARET

MacCALLUM

C