NEWS BY MAIL.

Hokitika Guardian, 28 February 1924, Page 1

NEWS BY MAIL.

GF.It.MAN CONTROL OF AIRWAYS

LONDON. December 19,

The greatest airway scheme yet promoted is to he launched next year hv the enormously powerful r lratts-lvuropa Fit ion. four of the seven combined companies in which are German in origin

ami control. The Gorman companies in this group, which seeks nothing less Gian an airway control ol Fall ope. are t;.c Aero-Llnyd, [lumpier, Junkers, rid Bayerishcr Luft-Lloyd. The tiirco oihers are the Swiss Ad-Astra, the Austrian Ocstcireicliische l.uftverkelir, aim the Hungarian .Acre-Express. This combine, in which the Junkers i, up predominates, aims at the control of something like 12,000 miles of Kuro- | can airways. Stretching from Archangel ill the north to Athens and Smyrna in the south, and from Liston in the south-west to Xishni Novgorod. Tiilis. and Teheran in the oast. The ieohnically-drnng Junkers’ firm, , i,lilting by the researches of I’rofessor Hugo Junkers into light-weight metal alloys proposes to supply these great airways with a .standardised type ol passenger air-express lot both day anil night flying, and also with slower, higher machines for the transport, of goods.

Not only would such a great atrv.av licet, find innumerable tasks in time ol war—acting, for instance, as bombers ami troop transports—hut their eoustri.ctinu will also during times of peace In tog life-ldood and paying work- In the German airernit industry. thus keeping it in readiness lor war.

GIRL'S .ME-MOIMF.S OF RUbSfA. LONDON, December 19. Mis;- Merriel Buchanan in her “RocoPvctions of Imperial Russia” is most interesting when site is recalling bet or. n impressions and experiences, not when she is giving the public dithyrambs on the subject of Russian ltist: iv A.s the daughter of the last Brii i-.li Ambassador to the Russian Court she had singular opportunities, and dv hi 1 .-' the insight and literary shill To make the ho-t of those opportunities. What struck her most when she first crossed the Russian frontier as a girl, uas the smell it win made up ot high leather hoots, of hotp. l.in coats, of cigarette smoke, of cabbage soup, 'ltd of sunflower oil, which war. extensively used for cooking. I’etrograd in those days was St. IVtersburg, and ol it she says as site saw it first in December:

There seemed no light or colour anywhere. The broad spaciousness ot the streets somehow intensified Ibis genen'l sense of magnificent dreariness. Au curly snowfall bad melted and was tinning in yellow slush. If was better when file lull'd trust am! deep snow came, but Always, even on the most sunny days, there was a sense of tragedy, a shadow ,hal was indefinite and intangible, but that seemed to creep up behind one ,;ka some evil, haunting spirit, stretching out a claw-like, threatening hand i ver the gulden domes, flic gay stucco houses, and the great palaces along the

.I cays. Now it knows no more a Court which was perhaps the most gorgeous in the world. The flag of a slavery that is wor.se than death flies above the palaces v here once gathered all the culture and rank of Russia. There are tragic photographs in the 'look- which show that i'Vtrogi'ad "as ami what it is. now that under the Bolsheviks it lias become a miserable city of decaying mansions and slums. BOLSHEVIST DUNGEONS. To the spirit- of Bolshevism Miss Buchanan devotes one of her best chapters. She reminds tho world that when Lenin was let loose on Russia simpletons asked “\\ hut harm could ;hiso wild men do to the great realm of Holy Russia?” She chronicles the steady deterioration of Russian lile ind happiness:

Never down the wide grey streets did one hear the echo ol a laugh; always one felt with nn indefinable sense of oppression that one was in the prescni e of death. I lie growing filth ol the streets. . . That was early in

BEB. The two years that followed wore rears of such nightmare hideousness as the world has seldom seen.

Darkness, cold, hunger, pestilence—these were the guerdons that Russia received from her Communists; and alv- :. -.- there was and is in the hackg:( uud the Chewa. or Russian Inquisi-

The ghastliness of Bolshevik prison rannot he described; the swarm of vermin that covered the walls and thing themselves on each new arrival, crawling over him in a few seconds in one riming mans; the link ol space, the m peakr.lile dirt and -mell. ’lnc hook deserves t.i he read, and it- conclusion to he pondered --that the long subjection ot the Russians to such brutal conquerors as the Mongols ha* left them without the energy re,.!ii; -1 to react against the present despotism of alien Bolsheviks under which the? groan.