Around the World

Signs Publishing Co. · Melbourne, Victoria · Jul 12, 1920

FromAustraliasian Signs of the Times, Vol. 35, No. 28.

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Serbia has decided to reopen diplomatic relations with Germany.

Only one book may be bought at a time in Russia owing to the shortage of paper.

King Alfonso of Spain has offered the Palace of the Prado to house 500 Viennese children.

Last year Canada obtained from the United States 21,000,000 tons of coal at a cost of £14,000,000.

Arrangements have been made by the French Touring Club for 35,000 new road signs to be set up throughout France.

British Guiana’s war memorial is to take the form of an obelisk, which will be erected in Georgetown, the capital.

Up to the present the Belgian Government has distributed 1,141,000,000 francs (nominally £45,640,000) in payment of war damages.

Bills have been passed by the New York State Legislature providing that landlords shall not be permitted to increase last year’s rents by more than twenty-five per cent.

Within the next few years the Government of Jamaica proposes to expend £100,000 on the erection of additional Government school buildings and teachers’ cottages in the colony.

A reserve on Kangaroo Island, South Australia, is to be set aside as a sanctuary for flora and fauna. Numerous types of native animals, likely to become extinct, will now be preserved.

A contract has been concluded between the Belgian and British Governments by which Belgium will receive from Australia 240,000 tons of raw zinc to be delivered within a maximum period of two years.

Experiments carried out on the canal at Saint Denis, France, recently with a heavily laden barge fitted with a ten horse power motor driving a six-bladed aerial propeller, proved the practicability of this method of propulsion.

The Japanese estimates for 1920 have recently been published, and the Navy vote is 185,500,000 yen—nominally £18,550,000. The United States Navy estimate for the current year is 542,000,000 dollars, nominally £108,400,000.

Great dams have been built during recent years, but the highest in the world is planned on the Sutlej River, in Northern India. A wall is to be thrown across a deep gorge, more than one thousand feet wide. The dam will be 395 feet high, and as it is built on the rock, the water impounded during the summer floods will reach nearly that depth.

A new scheme for the arrangement of guns has been adopted on the latest American submarines. These are large craft, with a submerged displacement of 1,500 tons. They have a cruising radius of 5,000 miles, and are over 230 feet long. The big guns, instead of having to be lowered into hatches when the craft submerges, remain in position, and are ready for instant use when the boat comes to the surface.

To keep milk at the required low temperature, when in transit, an American dairy company uses a huge glass lined steel tank, built like a vacuum bottle, and mounted on a powerful motor truck. The tank, which holds 900 gallons, is filled with milk, which is hauled from the collecting station to the factory, ten miles away. The motor truck makes two, and sometimes three, trips daily, and the milk remains cool in the hottest weather.

A novel idea for watering the road has been adopted for the wooden floor of the bridge over the Mississippi, near St. Louis, which must be kept wet during the summer, but on which the use of water-carts interferes with the ordinary traffic. A four-inch pipe has been laid along the side of each roadway, and jets of water are squirted across the road, so that every bit of the floor surface is covered. The bridge is seven thousand feet long.

Aeroplane manufacturers have found the X-ray exceedingly useful in their work. With a special apparatus they examine all timber used, the X-ray penetrating through wood as much as eighteen inches thick. Internal knots, resin pockets, cracks, and grub holes can be easily detected. The X-ray is useful also in ascertaining the purity of insulating materials for electrical use—small metallic specks in fibre or mica can be readily detected.

During the German retreat in 1918, the Chief Command often had much difficulty in communicating with the different units after the front lines had been broken. A novel device was adopted of firing messages from guns. The message shell, on alighting in the supposed vicinity of German troops, announced its presence by emitting a dense cloud of smoke. Directed in this way to the spot, and protected by the miniature smoke screen, the German soldier identified the shell by its brilliant colours, picked it up, removed the bottom, and pulled out the message container, which occupied the space usually filled by the explosive charge.—Stead’s.

Poland is confronted with “the worst typhus fever epidemic in the history of the world,” according to a cable message received by the American Relief Administration from Colonel Gilchrist, United States Army Medical Corps, head of the American antityphus expedition.

“Unless blotted out at once,” he stated, “the present epidemic will threaten all Europe. The Polish Government is doing its best to meet the emergency, but it is crippled by lack of money and sanitary supplies.”

Upon receipt of this information the joint distribution committee for all American Jewish relief funds instructed its representatives in Warsaw to expend $100,000 for coal to be used in starting disinfecting plants in the typhus zone.

It is interesting to read the views of the medical men of Ontario upon the influence of alcohol. Mr. George B. Wilson sends the following significant figures: Three hundred and ninety-eight think a total abstainer has an advantage over a moderate drinker in immunity to disease, 72 differ on the point; 88 think he has an advantage in better chance of recovery in sickness or accident, 45 think otherwise; 25 think the regular use of beer is conducive to health, 420 disagree; 51 think beer drinking harmless, 371 think otherwise; 391 think beer injurious, 38 disagree; 387 are of opinion that Prohibition, under the Ontario Temperance Act, has been beneficial to the health of the community, and 59 think otherwise.

“Burbank it was who said that the greatest benefactor to the human race would be the man who could make one grain more grow on every ear of wheat. Although he has not yet accomplished that feat, Burbank has done much to increase the yield of American wheat fields; so, too, have others the world over. The recent plant breeding work done by Biffen at Cambridge, in England, for instance, promises to have far-reaching effects. The new wheats developed have been grown over extensive areas in Eastern England, yielding crops of fifty, sixty, and even seventy-seven bushels per acre. The average yield in England is thirty-two bushels. The new wheats are less liable to disease, and make better flour than the ordinary English wheats. It is estimated that the Pusa wheats developed by the Howards will soon be grown over an area of 5,000,000 acres in India, and are expected to increase the value of the wheat crop in that country by £5,000,000 annually.”

The once-powerful Ottoman Empire has been greatly reduced by the Allied Supreme Council through its decision so to restrict Turkey’s future frontiers that they will contain a population of only 6,000,000—less than the population of Greater New York—as compared with Turkey’s pre-war population of 30,000,000. Territorially, the Turkish sway, formerly extending from the Danube to the Red Sea, is now limited to a small corner of Anatolia. At the same time the Sultan, titular successor to Mohammed the prophet, will exercise his caliphate from a circumscribed area in and around Constantinople, under the perpetual menace of British, French, and Italian naval guns. The warships that are left to the Ottomans will either be scrapped or apportioned among the Allies. Only a few revenue cutters will be allowed to fly the crescent. Turkey’s monetary indemnity has not yet been fixed. A commission will investigate the Ottoman finances, and its report will be made the basis of financial reparation.