WAR TOPICS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 05, Issue 30, 18 March 1942, Page 6

WAR TOPICS

FIFTH GOLURAN

WARNING ISSUED

COXFI OKNC!•: iM i-:X

A warning has been issued by the police to people who might invest in mine shares to beware of three confidence men who have been operating in Victoria and New South Wales in the last few months. Tlieir known victims are a man with big interests in the motor trade, a grazier and the widow of a grazier. These people have been defrauded of large sums.

The trick by which tlicy induce their victims to give them money is not new. Police say ifc has been worked in almost every part of the world. The confidence men, who are well dressed and plausible, book accommodation at expensive hotels. They pick out their victims, and one of the confidence men approaches them at an opportune time and asks whether they have shares in a certain Canadian goldmine, which does not in fact exist.

After he has gained the confidence of the intended victim he says that he had found a man who holds shares that he wishes to purchase because of their money-making possibilities. A second confidence man then appears and after a price has been agreed upon, the third confidence man enters. He offers to double the option price, and eventually the victims are induced to share at the increased price.

The cash is paid over, and the bogus scrip is signed over in the name of the victims. Then two of the confidence men insist on open scrip, and the victims agree to write a letter to the secretary of the goldmine, in Canada. The scrip is en-

closed in letters which one of the confidence men agrees to send by registered pest. The letters arc registered, but later the victims receive them back from the Dead Letter Office, not with open scrip, but "with pieces of blotting paper enclosed. The confidcncc men have replaced the bogus, scrip with the blotting paper before they registered the letter to some imaginai-v address in Canada. By this fraud the wealthy business man was induced to pay 30 £100 notes in the lounge of a city hotel; the grazier paid about £1300, and the grazier's widow parted with £1250.

OXFORD BY POST ] * i STALAG PRISONERS WORK FOR i ENGLISH HONOURS DEGREES ' British j)risoners of war in Germany are working for honours degrees at London University. In all, 1832 of our men there are i noAV preparing for their return to civil life as engineers, accountants, geologists, bcolt-keepers, poultry raisers and for other careers. They are studying French, German, Chinese, Japanese, even Provencal philology. This unique educational departure has been made possible by a feat ii> organisation working from the New Bodleian Library, Oxford, where Miss Ethel Herdman, M.A., of the Red Cross Book Department, is arranging these and similar courses of study for our prisoners of Avar. In a long room lined with tallies are the sections for each prison camp lo which material for study is sent and from which letters have arrived asking for vocational, cultural or educational advice. Engineering is Ihe most popular subject, then modern languages. Wireless is very popular, 100. but books on it have been prohibited.. In ddilion to the arrangements made for prisoners by London I'ni-versi-iy lo work Tor honours degrees, many Iratie am! era;'! irislllule:- are co-opera ii ng ws> h !'o:"!- i! 1 ■ (.o;man's (!<;i !ege. !!;•< ' rn'on '. ' a • Aberdeen. the gro:/e:> ami olbe;-.. 'J'he plan is run through the (lamp Leaders who a.et as general administrators and the work is arranged to enable prisoners to. advance towards specific examination when the Avar is over and they a!! come home.

BLUEPRINTS 60 WHITE

AND HELP WOMEN WAR

WORKERS

The engineer's prints without which Britain could not produce a single battleship, tank or aeroplane 6r even the smallest nut or bolt, are changing their colour. The traditional "blueprint" is gradually being replaced by papers giving diagrams in black, blue "or brown on white instead of white diagrams on blue.

The new prints, made by the dyeline process, arc positive instead of negativq. They can not only be produced much more quickly and in a smaller space but they give a dearer background and a stronger line less subject to fading, so helping the thousands of women and other inexperienced recruits in war production. Moreover, the paper does! not shrink, as does the "blueprint" or ferro paper, and the designs are therefore more true to scale, another advantage to the semi-skilled. A valuable feature is that the surface is particularly suitable for receiving ink lines or colour tints.

Dyeline prints arc produced by two processes. In one, the clry process, the developer is incorporated In the paper itself, and when this is run over a light with the original tracing and subjected to ammonia gas., the drawings appear on the blank sheet as if by magic. In the other, the semi-dry process, a special solution is spread, by means of n simple machine, over the surface of the print. Here again development is instantaneous and the prints dry in a few seconds. Dvclinc papers have been manufactured in Britain for some years past, and in one London works the chemists have been experimenting continuously with them Cor the past If) years. AIRMEN'S DIISSOHBES MADE BY CORSET, STOCKING AND MACINTOSH MANUFACTURERS Rubber dinghies carried by air crews of the R.A.F. in a pack measuring 15 inches by 3 inches are one of the contributions to Britain's war effort made by United Kingdom manufacturers of corsets, silk stockings, macintoshes and so on*. Like the carbon dioxide gas used for inflating the dinghies, which normally goes overseas in millions of bottles of Britain's famous table waters, most of the goods normally produced by these companies are known to shoppers in most parts of tho I world. These rubber dinghies have already saved manj r lives, for in cold weather airmen wearing the "Mae West" jacket who cam© down in the sea coulcl not expect to survive lialf-an-hour's immersion. New, however, even a 40011) man can sit in his dinghy, stop leaks from a pin-prick to a cannon shell hole, projiel it with a pair of rubber-hand paddles (made by people who usually turn out ladies' underwear), light signal flares (supplied by firework manufacturers) and sustain himself with emergency rations supplied by makers of dainty boxes of chocolate.

Stocking Thief A novel way of obtaining stockIn lias been adopted by a woman in one of tin- suburbs of Christehurcli. A woman bad ;iusl iinished her washing and w;i.- J in the Jiou when slie heard a knock at iSic door. Not wishing to J)c disturbed she did not answer, but a lew minute- later, on looking iJiroirJh tb<.' window, :«iv„ fi::w Ihe flolb-.-w '\im cttnie down. .«?!.• went out Hi-1 3d ihne to .see ;> un;3oii.-4ing the r.ih-T from the line. Her explanation v.-,.-- that she '.bought it was tbe house ol a frjen-'J and that she was borrowing t;r. stockings. In a bare-faced manner she tossed the stockings on Ih? yround and n allied cut.