MEWS BY MAIL.

Hokitika Guardian, 1 March 1922, Page 3

MEWS BY MAIL.

DEAR VIENNA SHOPS.

VIENNA, Dee. 24

Never lias Vienna, in these terrible years since the war, presented such remarkable contrasts as now, when shops are offering their choicest wares in profusion and there are very few buyers. On the Sunday beiore Christmas, Golden Sunday, it lias ever been the custom for the Viennese to buy Christmas gifts, and all shops remain open all day. Even last year they were thronged, but yesterday the big stores were almost deserted, and there were often more sales-peopie than customers. Prices have risen so high that the Viennese cannot think of buying anything but essential food and garments, nnd even wealthy foreigners find that the prices asked offer them no particular inducement to buy.

CHARGES AGATNST U.S. OFFICERS NEW YORK, Dec. 24.

Charges that American soldiers were hanged without trial in France and that officers murdered men in cold blood were made yesterday by witnesses before Senator Watson, of Georgia. If; was alleged Hint the heads of the Wfifi ’Depin'timuit were tnvnre of the illegal pxm,ilrioriH find deliberate))' falsified its

records to prevent their becoming known. An ex-soldier testified that lie bad seen 12 men hanged in one camp. Another described how he had seen two comrades shot down by a battalion commander, one of the men being a hunner who had refused to show the contents of a message addressed to another officer. DEABEIt DIAMONDS. CAPETOWN, Dec. 22 Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, djeputyehairman of the Consolidated Diamond Mines of South-West Africa, states, in an interview, that the company’s policy is to control the output. A change of policy would lead to a collapse of the industry.

Arrangements had recently been made, he said, to prevent, stones from being forced on an unwilling market. Instead of a decrease it was essential that there should be a steady increase in price owing to the steadily increasing costs of production. The world spent only a certain amount of money each year on diamonds. That amount would not be increased by cheapening the diamonds

On the contrary, the fewer diamonds supplied the more stable would be the industry, and the longer the life of the mines. This year the United States bought £6,000,000 worth of diamonds from ‘ sources outside the regular producers. Fortunately the former supply is impossible of replenishment.