NEWS BY MAIL.

Hokitika Guardian, 18 January 1929, Page 2

NEWS BY MAIL.

GERMAN FILM BANNED. BTEEL HELM ACTIVITIES NOT TO BE SHOWN. HEIM JIN, Nov. 12. The exliihilion in Germany or the export abroad of a splendid Jilin depicting the activities of the Steel Helms, the semi-military and anti-Kepublican organisation to which tens of thousands for young Germans belong has been forbidden by the Chief Censor of Films. The Chief Censor called in representatives of the Foreign Office, Ministry of Defence, Ministry of the Interior, and of the Prussian Government to advise him. The reasons which the Censor gives for his drastic treatment of a powerful organisation are instructive. He states that the impression that would be given to spectators of the film is that it presented military rather than sporting exercises, whereas Germany has undertaken under the Treaty of Versailles to forbid any sort of organisation which occupied itself with military affairs and military training. “The speculator will say,” says the Chief Censor, “that here things are being done publicly which are forbidden by law, and that the State is doing nothing against these things.” ATLANTIC WEDDING. “POCKET TO MAR'S” SCIENTIST MARRIED. PARIS, Nov. 14. The marriage at sea of M. Robert Esnault-Pelterio, the famous aeronauti cal engineer, to Mile. Carmen do Queiros is rported in a wireless message received to-day from the French liner He de France in mid-Atlantic. The marriage was celebrated by the ship’s captain, Commander Pugent, in the liner’s permanent chapel. The bride was given away by him, while the bridegroom’s witness was Mine Tiller, wife of the director-general of the French line. The ceremony was followed by a wedding breakfast, and this evening a dinner was given in the dining saloon of tbe lie do France in honour of the newly married couple. M. Esnault-PeUcrie, whin recently lectured in London, is o.ne of the pioneers of aviation. In an article which he wrote in the Daily Mail last May be expressed bis belief that in three years’ time “man will fly in a rocket not in an aeroplane, to a height of 100 miles from the earth’s surface.” He also believes that the day is much less distant than many people imagine when it will be possible for a dweller on this earth to reach our nearest neighbour, Mars. WOMAN'S SUICIDE IX LINER. COLOMBO, Nov. 14. On arrival of the Australian Commonwealth liner .Jervis Bay this, morning, on her voyage from Sydney to London, it was reported that*a woman passenger had strangled herself in a cabin. She was buried at sea. COSTLY TROPICAL RAILWAYS If,(XX) DEATHS IN 3 YEARS. PARIS, Nov. 14. Seventeen thousand Negro labourers have died from disease, privation and exposure in the construction of the still uncompleted railway line which is being built through the tropical forest from Brazzaville, on the Congo, to l’ointe Noire, on the coast of French Equatorial Africa. All these lives have been lost in three years and only 87.1 miles of single track railway built, according to M. Albert Londros. the special correspondent of the Petit Parision. who has investigated the conditions in “Black Africa.” The workers on the railway he says carry up every rail and sleeper, and every yard or two of line means the loss of a human life. The Negroes die of beri bori, sleeping sickness, or meningitis. The route along which the line is being built is from the Atlantic to Stanley Pool which was followed by Man-hand on bis great African expeditoin. M. Londros asserts that i'll adjoining Belgian Congo the Belgian authorities in three years have built 750 miles of line, with a loss of not more than 3.000 native lives.