4
The Commonwealth Discovers How Strong It Is
THE
by the RT. HON. L. S. AMERY, CH.
the need for moro HE Conference of Com- convinced of
measures for monwealth Prime Minis- effectiva concerted
defence by all members of the has Commonweallii.
tors and Ministors which
the
been meating in London may The urgent problem of economic
31
recovery in Europe. in Britain, well prove to have been
the Commonwealthi อ. n most fruitful of practical results and in whole, of any in the long series of
This problem intorlocks closely with the last. these conferences which
goes back over 60 years.
now
FOUR-YEAR PLAN
Even since the first World
Only effective recovery will create War mon's thoughts have been.
which will enable dominated by the illusion that the resources peace could be preserved only Western civilisation to hold its own defensively and, if possible, without
wir, worldwide organisa- netuol
against continuous by some tion set up for that purpose.
DISILLUSIONMENT
aggression.
Fallure to recovet means the Com- spread of the revolutionary munist Fifth Column everywhere,
Here the conference approved I general terms the four-year plan of recovery laid before it by Sir Staf- ford Cripps.
On the economic aide the United States have tried to per- suade, lf not coerce, the world, and the nations of our Common- wealth in particular, into accept- So far as that plan is based on ance of an economic world or a vigorous continuance of the policy ganisation based on the out-of- of promoting inter-Empire trade and dollar pur- discrimination against date, nineteenth-century prin- chases by all concerned, as well as on with Canada, ciple of "non-discrimination" special arrangements and the elimination of all pre- it is essentially sound, ferences.
SUCCESS
In spite of the outstanding the Ottawa pre- of fferential agreements in saving us from the great world de pression of 1931, the Govern- ments
Commonwealth of the have, under misguided leader- ship from here, gone far to wards committing themselves, at Geneva and Havana, to- wards acceptance. of that principle.
cess
In the last two years the pro- of disillusionment with worldwide solutions has been it with rapid. Russia started her veto.
first But the
constructive rejoinder came with Mr Chur- chill's Zurich speech urging European unity.
to
Mr Marshall promptly replied by offering American help
Europe if Europe would get together to help itself.
MAKES NONSENSE This of course, made nonsense of non-discrimination. For the whole point of it is that the European nations should give. priority to their mutual trade over their trade with America and the world outside.
It makes equal nonsense of the elimination of Imperial Preference.
We have, in fact, been com- pelled to make nonsense of it already.
25
Such recovery as we have made tras been almost entirely due, Ministers have admited, to the mast drastic discrimination by the Com-. monwealth sterling countries against dollar purchases.
ог the
We are oll, in fact, whatever we may profess publicly, abandoning world solutions for "regional" group solutions, aiming at building up, in the interest both of pence and of economic recovery, of stable nation
on groups based mutual co-operation in defence and trade.
Europe is one of these groups.
Commonwealth The British
is important even more
another and
It is no less sound if. as a secondary alm, It is concerned with European recovery.
The European market is of at least as great no importance to the Dominions as to ourselves.
For them, Indeed, It is essentlaily complementary, as a purchaser of primary products and a furnisher- supplementary to ourselves and the United States-of capital equipment. What is wrong with Sir Stafford'a plan is that it is a four-year plan and not a 30-year plan.
The
THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH; SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1948.
"The US Air Force now has a bomb with a magic eye in its nose. The eye is linked by electrical devices to
movable fins which steer the bomb according to direction given by the eye.
THE
Technicians say
John Pudney tells the first full story of
"OPEN PRISON'
NO ONE TRIES TO
2
The Professor Dives At Dawn
....
By Chapman Pincher
ROFESSOR, Auguste Piceard has made his first
Pexperimental dive in the ocean aboard his
Bathyscaphe,
The professor made a dive lasting 18 minutes off the Cap Verde Islands to a depth of 23 metres.
He is scheduled to begin shortly midget submarino dives two and a half miles deep into the Atlantic. Half a mile is as deep es any man has ever gone before and lived. What will Piccard seat
Is the
If all goes well-in my view the expedition most hazardous ever planned-this is what Plecard and his one-man crew will see as they peer through tho six-inch-thleic window of the bathyscapho.!
As they aret submerge, the 'green water will seem disappointingly empty except for floating sprigs of sea- weed--life. near the surface of the open tropical seas la meagre.
There will be few brightly coloured fish. These belong to the coral beaches,"
WHERE ESCAPE
on
The
and doing construction work.
of them are working for the farmers of Kent.
st
They go out every day in three partics arranged by the County Agricultural Committee. At present most of them are working on the harvest, alongside civilian labourers
Four hundred feet down the scientists will be able to rend
a newspaper by the sunlight still getting through..
Even in the dark blue water 200 feet deeper, the light will still be strong enough to make the searchlights useless.
Until the water gets com pletely.
black the scientists must depend on the natural' light of the deeps--the luminosity of the creatures living there,"
Most of these are fishes-many of them grotesque, and all carnivorous, for below the 600ft. level the light is too weak for plants to grow.
Carrying
coloured scarchilights which they can switch on and off at will, they move silently in search of prey, often much bigger than themselves.
BLIND FISH
Some of these fsh are blind. Nature has doomed them to carry a light useless to them which gives away their position to their enemies.
It is unlikely that any of the crea- tures seen in the first 1,000 feet will be much more than a yard long. Among these will be cuttlefish with the power to squirt out a baffling luminous cloud when threatened.
At 2,000 feet the scientists will turned on the searchlights cut a
on
open-necked shirt Aldington (Romney Marsh). Since the farm prison camp and an
THAT sort of day did at Aldington opened in July the stops of the farmhouse.
you have, Joe?"
1947, 98 prisoners have been "We use the word men, and we HOW TO SUCCEED
"Very good, indeed, discharged and there have been speak about the community. sir. We were on the thresh- no failures. These men have The community consists of of policy
Commonwealth
taken back their rights as about 60 "stars" and "ordin
a and even volunteer holidaymakers, have development and expansion can only ing machine again."
citizens, and they have gone arles." It is staffed by achleve full success if it is based on
He gives the Governor
officer, An officer is attached to each party to concerned of the assurance for all
straight.
principal. governor, permanent mutual support in trade, direct look, broadening into a
The Community a storeman and a works en- but, in such widely dispersed work narrow exercise beam in finance,
transport and grin. Then he clumps off to
Individual supervision,
through The farm people, on whose land the jet- migration.
his evening meal, pausing only YOU go down a country lane gineer. There is a small holds this, he is not able to
until you find a notice board ing of ground and several acres For the moment the
Common- to pat the little mongrel dog,
unanimous In praising the high|
water. wealth Governments may feel them-
standard of their work.
Outside. Pattison's Farm. There is no the road. selven obliged to keep up the Whisky, who has run out to on your left, bearing the legend of rough woodland bordering prisoners have been employed, are b
gate to the farm. There is
It is a full day's work-7 hours the pres During the war, Pattison's pretence that our Empire policy is greet him. only a stop-gap, and that our real
to indicate farm was a POW camp and the at harvesting or potato-lifting. But sure
which the spherl- alm is that laid down in the Geneva He does not look like a chap nothing anywhere Trade Agreements and in the Havana who has forfeited his rights as that the old building, amid the boundaries were closely wired there are two sides of it Chorter.
prison observation visitor. These men tire on' But that cannot
Public a citizen. It is difficult to be- huddle of Army huts, is one of in. Now there is not a sign of cannot fail to disturb the admiring cal steol We barbed wire. In the gaps of diet (rations are little different from chamber
with mine, but
more will be nearly 9001b. to the square opinion throughout the Common-lieve that he is serving a term His Majesty's prisons.
They do not get the inch. see to it wealth must
that our of imprisonment down here never use the word prisoner the wood which border the road yours or
of here, as a matter of fact," says there are a few notices, facing starch). Governments come out frankly and beneath the ample skies
of their full day's work. wholeheartedly
the Governor, sitting in slacks outward, to warn off picnickers agricultural workers' ration, in splie autumn in Kent. polley of mutual aid.
(who constantly ignore them). There are no notices warning Open Visits the inhabitants to stay in.
During the course of quite a THE other disturbing fact is one which no doubt could only be detailed visit the only signs of shifted by a prodigious exercise of locks and keys which I noticed legislation. The men are paid only were those guarding the hens 9d. a week, though the farmers who and the onions- precautions by no means uncommon in the English countryside in these days.
ко оп.
for D
permanent
BERNARD WICKSTEED, touring at random, goes over the edge this week.......
He's Ankle Deep
in
Sea
Food...
BRIXHAM, Devon.
for X7ELL, for goodness' sake, one. It is worldwide, it has W greater undeveloped resources, and, what are we up to now?
effective co-operation.
above all, it already exists, and has the "know how" of informal but We're slithering about on the deck of a bouncing little Brix- ham motor trawler, up to our ankles in wet fish.
THE REAL ARBITER
For the first time, then, for many
You want come warm clothes it years, the Commonwealth conference you're going to join us out here, 15 miles from land (latitude 50deg.
has had to take itself seriously as
to have done so.
the real arbiter of its own destiny. 21min, north, longitude 3deg. 13min. And it would seem, by all reports, west) because the wind is pretty fresh. But the day is sunny and The three most momentous issues cleur, and what a view of the Devon before the conference were!--
coast!
this expedition is The point of The actual constitution of the to see how fish gets to the front of Commonwealth itself. Do the the fish queue, and the rendezvous new Dominions of non-European with Bill, the skipper, was five o'clock race, like India and Pakistan, wish in the maming on Brixham Quny. to remain in titt Commonwealth or Have you ever arranged to meet not?
anyone at five o'clock
in
time there are only six others be- side ourselves. And it is mostly due
to the wrecks,
From the Ashes' point
of view
Maladjustment
a properly shot trawl is like & THE men who come to Aldington
belly
employ them pay, I believe, at the rate of 28. 3d. per hour.
the
The
If the window caves in, the ex- plorers will not be drowned. They will be shot dead. The first jets of water forced: in at that pressure, would have the penetrating power of bullets.
layer of treacherous ooze.
WALKING ON OOZE
It forms at a rate of about an Inch every thousand years as the shells of microscople animals. rain down from the surface layera.
Below this depth the water tem- perature is constant at three or four degrees above freezing point. There are no currents, save for an indis- The social amenities in this open cernible seepage from the Polar seas. prison are largely home-made. There Since time began there have been no is a room set aside for reading and lays and no seasons, discussion groups. There is fret-1-Plecard reaches the sea-bed--. dom to roam in the evenings. Every one of the objects of the expedition- tored by the Governo carefully fes- he will find it covered with a thick horrible marine monster that creeps are mainly selected from Maid-
Open vialts are allowed, at the scheduled times. I saw wives of along the bed of the sea at two stone prison, which itself is a trala-
strolling through miles per hour devouring all in its ing centre to which men are sent
The Prisoners after screening at local prisous, The grounds with their husbands. path. The gaping ever-open mouth is 20ft wide, and slithering along Governor usually drives them down principal officer, a man of long ex-
its 30ft. behind it comes
to the farm himself, and their first parience, who happens to be the Prison Officers' experience is to be taken for a stroll chairman of the bloated with fish.
round
the boundaries of the camp. Ascociation, was undertaking all the Everything that comes in the All those gaps giving on to the road correspondence relating to the in-
In engulfed leviathan's way
surance of one of these visiting re- that awful maw. Among the things are exhibited. The Governor leaves
it at that.
latives. Not one man has ever escoped. we dragged up beyond the Undine
The tragic separation and Japse and half "We never discuss that question," of normal married lite which is still were a beer mug
How is all this known? Because, hundredweight of coal covered in says the Governor. "We never even the chief weapon of society against
weird sea when ever since 1860, go so far as to threaten them with its convicts, is being subdued being sent back to a conventional such on atmosphere of confidence
creatures were found clinging to a
hauled about cable haul 'By mitigating their anxiety
for repair, scientists up Statistics show that the men who the family outside, prisoners are have been probing the secrets of Prison if they don't behave.". come to this open prison range in helped over the bridge from prison the great depths.
Dredging has been carried out to age from 22 to 57 years. A large life to normal citizenship.
American con- n depth of four miles. Incidentally, neither casual proportion of them are married men,
ΠΟΣ searching inquiry zoologists led by Dr William 'Beebo most of them have been in the versation
complaint have been down half a mile in a Services, and many are the product could wrest a word of of demobilisation maladjustment. from the local inhabitants about the bathysphere-a steel ball let down
barnacles.
Is
We used the coal in the galley stove to make a cup of tea. It came they say in from a torpedoed collier, and when- ever the trawlermen are short of fuel they make a drag beside it.
Trawling was invented at Brixham. At least that's what Devon. On the Thames they say it was Barking.
Finding the way
sub- "JUST going over a sunken
marine now," said Blil, when "You can't see anything." I sald. we'd been a couple of hours at sea, "So how do you know?"
"Easy," answered Bill. "It's half- way through the trees."
There wasn't a tree within 15 miles, but that's the way they talk in a trawler. The trees are on a hill above. Scabbacombe
Sands, and when a white building comes in line with the middle of them you
the know you are over, the submarine.
can't see the trees? Simple,
If they do, are they prepared in morning? It sounds all right in the Supposing it's misty and you some form or other to recognise the bar of the Rising Sun the night common Crown which has been the before, but not when it's time to get symbol of our unity in the past? Or
up.
has
Mr Nehru.
Wrecks ahoy
Bill, you use a lead line.
It is a great thrill when the net is hauled up and the catch disgorged on the deck, but to anyone not used to such sights the slaughter is rather depressing.
Fewer than half the fish that wo caught had any commercial value. For every one of saleable variety.or size a dozen others sacrificed their lives.
What they oarn ROM the slithering mass on the deck the flahermen plcked what says they could sell and shovelled the rost into the sea. By that time most You put grease on the lead, and of them were dead, and those that when you haul it up after taking weren't seldom survived the dive- the depth there's a samplo of the bombing gulle that followed.
There aren't round in hundreds many places where the depth of sca-bed slicking on.
Rand on the baliom are exactly the same. so the water and the you should know where you are.
་
sald Bull.
us
Now for a quick survey of the Our economies of Inshore fishing. day started at 5 nm. and wo tied up at 8 pm. The total catch (platee, whiting, and ray to be cold to fried fish shops. as skate) was worth about sho
is there any compromise by which mutual loyalty and responsibility can be maintained in un organic association outside the bond of the BILL has a crew of two. One of them in his brother, who used Crown?
All we know is that Canada, to be in the Navy, and the other Australia, and New Zealand raised plays a cornet in the band of the this issue with Eire, whose attitudo Brixham Salvation Army.
The place we are going to fish.
Trawl overboard been intransigent, and that friendly talks in search of an agreed is "beyond the Undine." You won't solution have been going on with find that on any map, but a Brixham "AW a floating mine when I was
Out of that, Bill and his men had Asherman knows where it is as well out in a fog once." as a London busman knows his stops "Took a sounding and found pepper to pay is, in every. E. ns sales.com- and salt at 20 fathoms." (Sand DANGER ALWAYS
on the Edgware Road.
The Undine is n wreck in 30 with black and white grains at 174 mission and 3d in the £ towards
feet.)
the cost of the 80-year-old Brixham The so-called "cold war being fathoms of water (180 feet). There with no more information than breakwater. On top of that their
.that Bill was able to give the oll cost them £1 128. woged by Communist Russia are 280 other wrecks in a radius of
The balance they split Info 04 against Western civilisation not only 30 miles from Brixham-German Admiralty the position of the mine submarines, liners, tramps, and air-
as if he had shares one for each man and 3 in Europe but all over the world.
for the upkeep of the boat and gear. used radar. The danger of its blazing up in a craft. All of them have names and almost as accurately
As soon as we were out of the So their 16-hour day earned them goneral conflagration is there all then good fishermart carries the position
of each one in his head."
clear wood-and
CANAL days of the unseen about Da. 44. oach. time.
Because you may lose your trawl submarine 180 feet below Bill "Of course, we got.
than this," said Bill.
Somotimen (cost £40) and your towing warp and his crew shot the trawl..
nautical term for
15 or 10 quid ench, and (£28) If you foul a wreck, they That's the
the
overboard, that thing colour the whole industry of Inshore, lowering
great This has to be done with
But over a year they may average would care, because
¡doesn't little more than £200mor £4TMn If the net a couple of hundred spread properly as it sinks, you week per man. Would you do it?
I'd rather queue for my fish
The conference heard Mr Malcolm MacDonald's vigorous exposition of the Communist rising in Malaya, and Mr Bovin's statement on the European position,
fishing
nud you Forty years
It would seem to have endorsed the British Government's action on have seen
all these issues and to have been trawlers out'on'o' fine day. But this won't catch anything.
we un heart to go on"
building Pattison's Farm, about a dozen of them work in the behaviour of their neighbours camp, cooking, cleaning,
Sole Agents
U. SPALINGER
York Bldg.
YOU'VE
by
Walking on this coza on still-like legs are blind shrimps and sea- spiders. Burled da it are milieus of shark teeth and the earbones of dead whales.
at
on a cable.
.
(Continued on Pare 14)
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