NEWS BY MAIL.

Hokitika Guardian, 10 June 1921, Page 3

NEWS BY MAIL.

STORY OF A BRIBE.

NEW YORK, April 20

A murder story which heads the list of unsolved crimes in the United States is revived by the alleged confession of a youth, Roy Harris, that he was paid to murder Mr Joseph Elwell, the wealthy bachelor, card and racing expert who was found dead in his house in New York with a bullet wound in the head, last June.

Harris was detained at Buffalo yesterday at the request of the Canadian police on a charge of forgery. He then, it is alleged, made a signed statement declaring that he and another man, Bill Durkin, were standing outside a New York public-house last June when the driver of a richly appointed motor car whom they knew told them that his mistress wanted them to take a ride with her.

During the drive, Harris is said to have declared, the woman offered each £IOO to kill Elwell, wjth £IOOO more each when the deed was done. They accepted, and she gave them, the key of man’s head.

Elwell’s house. Harris described how lie and Duckin hid themselves in Elwell’s library, waiting for him to return from the theatre. When Elwell had fallen asleep in a, chair the ..two men came out from behind the curtain and Duckin fired the shot at the sleeping The Buffalo police, while inclined to believe that Harris invented the story to escape extradition, are impressed by his knowledge of the details of the crime. The large number of women who had keys of Elwell’s houso is a feature of the case, and the police hold to their theory that the motive of the crime was jealousy.

RADIUM AND PARENTHOOD. PARIS, April 20 A profound impression has been caused among Paris surgeons by the warning contained in a communication to the French Academy of Medicine yesterday by Professor Tuffier, tho great French surgeon. lie pointed out that radium has so injurious an effect upon the genital glands that it has been found by several American institutions that even the women employed in laboratories to clean out glasses that have contained radium solutions eventually become subject to affections of the ovaries, with the result that the same women cannot be kept in the laboratories for long. .. “We do not know why or how radium acts upon the genital glands of men ami women,” Professor Tuffier told me to-day. “1 alii ill fact making tluit i\ matter of research at pre sen •. “It causes no pain and leaves no marks, but- its effect is definitely sterilising. Radium is selective in its working,"choosing certain tissues and leaving others. The genital glands are especially subject to its influence In all operations where it is desired to preserve the reproductive powers in the ovaries of women the use of radium is to he avoided.” Discussing 'Professor Tuffier s statement to-day, a scientific man pointed out the grave danger of the abuse » this quality in radium. Government control of the mysterious mineral is absolutely essential, He says. It is suggested that unscrupulous persons might he onlv too ready to employ radium for tho treatment of women anxious to avoid conception. VENGEANCE MYSTERA.

PARIS, April 20. “Remember whnt happened II yea » ago!” shouted Police-Sergeant Mary, J drawing his revolver, he shot dead Oob nel Fougeres, a retired gendarmerie officer. This happened at 4 p.m- >'J terdny on the high road outside the v.l lage of Port-en-Arvcntre. lieaL Renn.v in Brittany. . Colonel Fougeres had just arrived by train on a visit to his brother. H’S nephew had met him at the station and the two were walking along the roue when they met the police-sergeant an I a gendarme. The sergeant stepped in to the colonel. •<,\ r e you, Colonel Fougeres? 11“ asked abruptly. “Yes.” replied the col onel. , . At this the sergeant killed him an returned to the police station, where lu remained, calmly carrying on his duties until he was arrested this morning.

U.S. TERRITORIALS. NEW YORK, April 20. The * United States Government intends immediately to florin citizens military camps for the training of a Volunteer Reserve Force. Recruits are invited from two classes: Youths Ivotween 16 and 21 with no previous training, or who have served as Boy Scouts, or in School Cadet companies, and Young men over 19 who have had previous training in any branch of the Army. '['he Citizen Reserve System, as the now organisation is to be known, will be under the supervision of General Pershing, the former United Stages Com',ma, ndejr-in-Chief -on she Western front. The object is to create by voluntary methods such a reserve ns will prove sufficient foi- any emergency and thereby avoid compulsory military service.

drugged children.. NEW YORK, April 20 Charges by a schoolmistress that mnnv foreign-born drug-takers have been giving their children ether on sugar to reduce their appetites are being investigated at Westfields, New Jersey. Lhe mistress says that children ha ve been arriving at school in a half-stupe-fied condition. When she gave money to a little hoy of 7, as a test, she add -d, and told him, to go to a dentist’s shop and buy ether, he was supplied without demur. The school superintendent has been told that some parents are threatening, to heat and even to kill their children if they answer questions about the prevalence of the ether habit in their homes. Most of the foreign elemeitt at West-, fields are Poles.