NEWS BY MAIL.

Hokitika Guardian, 18 June 1927, Page 4

NEWS BY MAIL.

SHIPS UNDER HILLS

MARSEILLES, April 27

Al. Doumergue, the President of the Republic, will formally open to-morrow the 41 miles long Rove Tunnel Canal, which connects the port of Marseilles with the large inland salt-water lake known as the Etang do Berre. Marseilles is thus brought into direct water .communication with the River Rhone, and by means of the great French canal system with the Rhine. The extension of Marseilles harbour through the Rove Tunnel to the inland lake increases the capacity of the forci most French Mediterranean port, ten

times over. It is anticipated that it will result in the growth of many new induxtries on the shores of the Etang

do Berre. and that it will draw towards Marseilles much of the traffic which formerly went to Hamburg.

By means of the canal, which Js pierced through the Rove Hills, seagoing vessels are able to proceed to the Etang de Berre. It lias taken 3.000 men. mostly Italians, 15 years to bore the tunnel, at a cost of £12,-500,000. ft is the longest canal tunnel in the world, it is 47ft. high and 70ft. broad, with a navigable breadth _ of .50lt Driven in a perfectly straight line, with not a foot difference anywhere in height or breadth it is possible, to see from the Marseilles end of the canal, a faint glimmer of sunj light in a half-moon shape at the exit in the Etang de Berre.

HANGING AMID FIRE

LONDON. April 27

A man who saw flames issuing from the living quarters over a bakery m Kendal. Westmorland. hist night. . rushed through the shop and up the j stairs to find the owner of the hake- ; house, George Rentes, aged 50, hanging by a rope from a brass bedstead, with the bedding in flames around , him. A paraffin lamp which had been overturned and was the cause of the I fire lay near by. ; j Neighbours helped to put out the tire and threw bedding and other artiI eles from the window into the street. I Among the articles thrown into the street was the burning rope which had been around the man’s neck. The fire call ennue when the fire briI gade were practising, and the chief constable rushed a section of the bnI gade to the scene of the fire in motor cars. AY lien they arrived neighbours were trying to revive Rentes, hut he I was already dead.

CHASED BY STAGS. LONDON. April 27. Two 1.5-yea.r-old girls Irene Brockhank and Aland Burrow, who live in the village of Bnekbarrow, near Newhv Bridge, at the foot ol Lake AV indemerc, relates that while gathering daffodils in a. lakeland wood on the hillside above their village, six or seven wild red stags suddenly appeared and moved down upon them in a very threatening manner.

The girls fled, hut being unable to escape their pursuers, they climbed into a forest tree. In this lonely spot their cries for help were unheard, and they were kept imprisoned for three hours by the stags, which surrounded the tree. When the animals ultimately moved away the girls crept down, and, dodging from tree to tree made for the hiclnvav. The stags, however, saw them and resumed the pursuit. Fortunately the girls gained the road ahead of tho stags, and they reached home in a. state of collapse. The, stags, it is thought, had come from Martindale. Forest, on the shore; of Ullswater Lake, 20 miles away.

MR BALDWIN ON SAINTS. LONDON, March 2. Mr Baldwin, tho Prime Minister, at last evening’s St. David’s Day banquet at Cardiff, referring to the Monmouthshire colliery (*fsasler, said: To-night, as so often happens in human affairs, .our happiness takes place at die same moment as a visitation nf profound grief has fallen upon your fellow-countrymen. While 1 wish a happy and successful evening to the gatherings of Wclsh-men throughout the world, our deepest sympathy and thought arc in a certain valley, and we pray God that he may comfort the wife, mother, and the child. “ You have given me an opportunity of paying you a return call. IL is 500 years since you last visited Worcestershire under Owen Gleudowor. You burned a portion of our cathedral, and Owen Gleudowor just before the last invasion by Wales came on a hill overlooking my garden, and looking down the Severn Valley sang a song with his men which lias been handed down in tradition. It goes: Mountain sheep are sweeter, But Valley sheep are fatter. And we therefore deem it mooter

To carry off the latter. (Laughter.)

“A gathering of that kind showed how their lives, however modern they might think themselves, .were in reality rooted in the past.

“ The life of Christendom in every country had been enriched by memories of saints. In the early days the four component parts of the British Isles each had its own saint.

“ England had a militant colonising saint emblematic of her future. Tho Scottish saint was concerned principally with loaves and fishes. (Laughter.) T 1 le Celtic people chose for themselves saints whose story of miracle and wonder working exceeded those of any other. NATIONAL POSSESSIONS.

“ When St. David preached to the multitude, we are told, tlie ground rose under him and formed a hill so that he might address himself to crowds who could neither .see nor bear him if they remained on the flat ground. Tt is true that in Wales an extra hill or two makes no difference. “ But how glad many a modern David would he if that miracle might he wrought to-day. (Laughter.) “ The Saint lived in Cardigan and lived on milk and water, and it has been suggested that the Welsh dairymen in London, in providing that beverage for the Saxon, are really paving homage to the memory of their patron j

saint. “You have a beautiful country in

Wales, he said. Do not let strangers spoil ft for you and do not spoil it yourselves. Educate public opinion in that respect.

“Why should not these beautiful districts of Wales be converted into, national possessions, which can never lie disfigured or built over, and where I may he able to go in niv old age without listening to the blast of a steam whistle or the hoot of a motor-. ca r ? J “Properly envisaged love of country was the purest and finest spirit of man. It is not only a deep instinct, but a universal instinct. Men who denied that great spiritual heritage in exchange for a vague and watery cosntopolitnnism became less than men. | They starve and dwarf their own personalities. They become political units. No nation can live to itself alone to- ] day less than ever.’’ : 1