GENERAL CABLES.

Hokitika Guardian, 3 October 1927, Page 2

GENERAL CABLES.

(By Telegraph—Per Press Association.* BRITAIN’S FINANCES. LONDON, Oct. 1. The exchequer returns for the first six months show that the revenue was £323,587,370, and the expenditure £384,757,188. Financial critics regard this position as satisfactory, as compared with that of the first six months last year. The most notable increase is the death duties. RACE RIVALRY. CAPETOWN, Oet. 1. Tearing the Union Jack to shreds was one of many incidents marking a political meeting at Bloemhof, Tn the Transvaal. where the ex-Premier, General Smuts, was refused a hearing. The hall was raided by a large crowd of Nationalists, carrying the proposed new Union flag. A free fight'occurred, tins defenders using folding chairs and tho attackers using sticks and bottles. Tho attackers gained possession of the platform, over which they hoisted the Government flag. Speaking at a later meeting, General Smuts declared that the country was repidlv becoming a little Russia. Freedom of speech was confined to the Nationalist Party. ' This was the second time that General Smuts had been refused a hearing ■within a week.

GREEK CONSPIRACY. LONDON, Sept. 30. Tlie Times Athens* correspondent says: “Those arrested in connection with the Pangalos plot consist-of eight officers and. four civilians, including General Tseroulis, former Minister of War. Part of the aim of the conspiracy was the restoration of the monarchy, and it is reported that Prince Nicholas was proposed to lie made King. M. Pangalos activities generally were not supported by cither the Army or the Country.

FATHER AND SON GAOLED. LONDON, Sept. 24. Joseph Aspinall, 53, a.Londoner, was sentences to-day to four years’ imprisonment, and his son, Janies, to nino months’ imprisonment, for obtaining by false pretences £16,000 from 43 persons in connection with the New Grozny Oilfields, holding oil-bearing land in Russia, which at present are valueless, owing to them having been confiscated hv the Bolsheviks.

The Aspinnlls represented that they held a majority of the shares, and induced the would-heinvestors to subscribe sums ranging from £3O to < £2,000 each to assist a scheme to force up the market. A police inspector said that the elder prisoner had obtained liearlly £200,000 fraudulently in the last 20 years. The police regarded him as an unscrupulous swindler, who had lieen described as “so plausible that he could induce a duck to come off a pond.

FRENCH WAR DEBTS. PARIS, Oct. 1. “ Le Temps” says: A member ot the Chamber of Deputies’ Finance Committee, during a meeting on September 29tli, pointed to the expiry of tlie Franco-American debt agreement, and also pointed out that the FrancoBritish debt agreement expired in June. He asked whether the Government . was postponing a settlement until next Parliament. M. Poincare, the Premier, expressed regret that these questions had raised. He revealed that he was ginning fresh negotiations, stating the French Ambassadors at London and Washington had already received instructions, the nature of which he refused t„ disclose.

AN ANGLICAN INNOVATION. LONDON, Oct. 1. Rev C. Moor, Vicar of Saint Michael’s. Bournemouth, lias inaugurated a children’s church, to replace tho Sunday School. In the church the children provide the wardens, sidesmen, lesson readers organist and choir, eventually electing a Children’s Council to allocate the collections and' other business.

Rev. Mr Moor says that thereby they will be trained in the responsibilities of Church membership.

MOTOR GRAND PR IN. LONDON, Oct. 1. At Brooklands, in rain and half a gale, the British motoring Grand Prix, over 125 laps, equal to 327 miles, was held. Eleven machine started, nine being Fronch and two British. The event was won by the Frenchman Benoist, driving a Delage car. His average speed was eighty-five decimal fifty-nine miles per hour. Both of the British competitors, who were driving Thomas Specials, retired before they got half way. Benoist now holds the Grand Prix of Italy, France, Spain and Britain. MURDEROUS MADMAN. PARIS, October 1. In a sudden fit' of madness, a workman at Marseilles, firing a revolver indiscriminately, shot passers-by from a window, and wounded five. The house was surrounded by the police, who shot the madman just as ho was aiming at them.

TRIBUTE TO THE 2(itti DIVISION. LONDON, Oct. 1. “ There must be something wrong with the scheme of existence when the state, whenever disturbed, devours its own children,” said Sir I. Hamilton, when urging the need for peace, at the inauguration of a sports pavilion in Glasgow in memory of five hundred high school boys, who were killed In the war. He adds: “On hard-fought fields, when fortunes are sinking and rising, tne commander’s mind inevitably turns to the lost legions. Lord French must often have longed for the Mons Contemptibles. How often, in my agony of suspense, have I called up from the dead the beautiful Twenty-ninth Division, standing intact on parade at Alexandria. With that division, at the critical moment, the campaign might have been won within an hour.”