RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 185, 2 May 1940, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights On Current Events (By Kickshaws.) Brass door handles in Germany, it is stated, are being confiscated. Beer handles, we understand, are next on the list. * » • The diet of the German people, it is stated, is inadequate. In contrast the Japanese Diet has become somewhat sweeter. # » « Traffic experts, it is stated, are considering whether motorists should park tail in or tail out. A solution that produces detailed results is required. * $ * Seven officers and 138 men of H.M.S. Keith are reported to be sharing a salvage award of £3,000 arising out of the rescue work performed for the steamer Argos Hill last October. The Navy is not usually considered a money-making profession. Nevertheless, in the good old days, when prize money, apart from salvage, was distributed for captured ships, an attractive means of making a small fortune was available. For example, it was estimated that Admiral Lord Rodney, while in command of a British Fleet operating in the West Indies during 1780-82, received £435.000 in prize money. Moreover, on May 21, 1762, two British frigates, Active and Favourite, captured the Spanish ship Hermione off Cadiz. She was from Lima with a valuable cargo of silver and gold. The cargo realised £516,695, and the ship £3,010. The captain of. the Active was awarded £63,053, aud the captain of the Favourite £64,872.' Five officers received £13,000 each, 15 warrant officers £4,330, 36 petty officers £lBOO each and the crew £4BO each. Some members of the crew seem to have spent their windfall in a curious manner. One hired three post chaises to travel a distance of one mile. In one he put his oak stick, in the other his wig and in the third he drove himself to an inn where he bought a frying pan and fried his watch. ♦ ♦ »

Unfortunately .for the Navy, the system of distributing prize money among officers and men taking part in the capture of enemy ships was abolished at the outbreak of the Great War, in 1914. It was felt that the system was unjust to those units undertaking important duties outside the normal trade routes. A system of gratuities was instituted to replace prize money. At the end of the war, admirals received £4,000, which was graduated according to rank, ending with seamen who received £33. Salvage, of course, is distinct from prize money, and opportunities for the former occur more frequently in war time than in peace. Nevertheless, there have been some curious instances of easy money for salvage, but not for the Navy. For example, in 1935, a vessel was granted a salvage award without even seeing the ship she saved. The steamship Newfoundland picked up an S.O.S. from the steamship Tower Bridge, caught in an icefield. She was directed by radio into safety. The Admiralty Court awarded the Newfoundland £11,500 salvage, the master getting £2OO and the crew £3OO.

The go-slow tactics adopted by the trams of Auckland is a reminder of the curious situation in which the little town of Tourettes found itself. This little French town has a population of about 600. When citizens were ordered to vote for a municipal council, not one of them was prepared to do so. When the prefect ordered an election, not a single voter went to the poll. Moreover, there was not a single candidate for whom to vote if anybody had voted. This reduced go-slow tactics to a standstill. The inhabitants decided that they got on quite well without a mayor or a council. There were, however, disadvantages. Without a mayor nobody could get married or born, or even die. The real complication, however, arose over the problem of getting born. A person who is not officially born in French legal eyes does not exist. He cannot therefore get married because a woman cannot have a nonexistent husband, however attractive the proposition. On the other hand a person who does not exist cannot be taxed. Citizens of Tourettes were prepared to waive the rights of official marriage for the very great benefits to be derived from no taxation, and, of course, immunity from arrest.

Go-slow tactics in order to gain a point are by no means new. The method has many variants. Five hundred taxi drivers in Santiago, Chili, for example, were annoyed at the petrol restrictions. They attributed this state of affairs to the Government which had failed to understand their problems. The drivers, therefore, drove their taxis into the maiu square and abandoned them. Traffic was completely blocked. Confusion reigned until the police had laboriously pushed the taxis out of the way, a task that took many hours. A very similar protest was made a few years ago by French lightermen. As a protest for various grievances, they tied up many hundreds of lighters and barges in the Seine, blocking all traffic. The confusion was complete, and it required hours of work to sort out the mess. Moreover, in one country, motorists decided to protest against the ridiculously slow speed limits. Hundreds of motorists spent the whole day meticulously keeping to the speed limit round the town until traffic was completely chaotic.

A somewhat amusing method of protesting was discovered by an employee of the French telephone system. Iu Normandy some six years ago this aggrieved individual evolved a particularly disconcerting scheme. He made a tour of the whole of the Caen district armed with so-called official papers. He enlisted workmen, aud ordered them all along the main route lines to cut wires and join (hem up to wrong circuits. In a very short time thousands of telephone subscribers were talking to perfect strangers on wrong connections, and the district was in an uproar. Housewives wanting to make short local calls to the buteijpr suddenly found themselves talking oh trunk lines and ordering a joint of meat from the President of France. Important officials, anxious to make an urgent trunk call to headquarters found themselves connected to outlying farmsteads. Indeed telephone girls iu Paris adopted a similar method to put an author in his place who had made disparaging remarks about them in a book. He was rung- up at all times of the day and night, only to listen to a female voice pouring insults on him. Every outward call was diverted to a wrong number and every inward call was the wrong number. Doctors were rung and told he was ill, and when he tried to tell them he wasn’t he found himself talking to a pastry cook or a hotel proprietor at the other end of France.

“When visiting Land’s End” on a trip to Britain,” sayS “JiM.W,” “I had an argument as to the distance from the shore of the lighthouse. One party claimed it was seven miles and the other that it was not more than a mile. Would yon kindly let us know the correct distance as the sum of £1 is involved in your decision.” The Longship Lighthouse is situated 1.1 miles from the coast.