LATE CABLE NEWS

Hokitika Guardian, 22 June 1931, Page 7

LATE CABLE NEWS

PRISONERS’ TASTES. SHAKESPEARE AND SHAW. LONDON, June 7. Few men with hobbies are ever gaoled, says the annual report of the prison commissioners, and the greatest need of prison inmates is a hobby. What women convicts especially appreciate is lessons and classes, because they give the women something to do besides gossip and scandalise. Shakespeare and Shaw are the most favoured authors with prisoners. The men are unable to understand Galsworthy, Sheridan and Goldsmith but seize readily on the broad humanity of Shakespeare’s heroes and villains, and understand and enjoy Shaw’s characters. Poetry, not necessarily of the narrative type, is also very popuiai. NEW “RADIO CITY.” REBUILDING NEW YORK. NEW YORK, June 11. They have started tearing, down the city to build a. new city in the heart of Munhnttan. Four great steam shovels are biting great chunks out of the brownstone houses, which formerly comprised the most aristocratic section of the city, to make way for a .£50,000,000 radio city, sponsored by Mr John D. Rockefeller, jun. About 240 buildings, some modern, some erected in 1875, are being razed. It is expected that the demolition and construction work will occupy ai least three years, by which time, it is expected, television will have reached a commercially practicable stage, The most advanced type of< broadcasting equipment and studios will be included, with ample provision for television transmission, and a movie theatre and another theatre will be included in the group of buildings. Those behind the project plan the eventual establishment of some 800 “local” broadcasting stations in the United States, under the aegis of Radio City. REAL “GATE-CRASHER.” WOMAN IN MALE MONASTERY. PARIS, June 12. Mademoiselle Marvse Chois.v is the first woman to live among the 800 male pilgrims at the Mount Atlios Monastery, overlooking the Aegean Sea. They would have ejected her had they suspected her sex. Describing her experiences, Mile. C'hoisy said: “They will not admit any female, explaining that if they allowed even hens, ewes ( and she asses would follow, and it I would require only a single step to admit woman.” Mile. Chois.v, who gate-crashed in male attire, added that the monks, some of whom are healthy centenarians. sleep only three hours out of the 24. They subsist on vegetables and figs, and clamber goat-like over the rocks. “THE COMING WAR.” HAMILTON ON LUDENDORFF. LONDON. .Tune 11. Field-Marshal von Ludendorff’s recent book, “The Coming War.” in which he predicts an outbreak of hostilities in May, 1932, unheralded by j any formal declaration of war. is criticised by General Sir Tan Hamilton. Von Ludendorff’s prophecy regarding the methods to be used in the u°xt world war, General Hamilton thinks, completely misses the point by treating tanks and aeroplanes as mere auxiliaries to huge masses of half-baked, heavily-armed infantry, who will sink underground, and resume the static warfare of 1914-18.

“How,” be asks, “can such masses be maintained in action by a side which loses the air mastery? All the same, I am glad to find that the good old English. Scottish and Irish foot-slog-gers (the last ordered by the Pope to join up) will go down, as heroes should, with their backs to the wall.” General Hamilton recalls interviewing von Ludendorfr, as a fellow-soldier, at bis private house in Munich, where, at the foot of the garden, was ‘User rolling rapidly.”

Von LudendorfT, lie says, demonstrated that Bulgaria’s defection was an irremediable disaster to the German cause. General Rawlinson, with the Western Army being then at the end of his tether, and far from treading on the heels of the Germans.