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- France Dusts Off Her White House, 'Art Exhibit War Tenant By Egyptian . Waits for First Post- PARIS, Nov. 16 -- France Is al to sweep six years of cob- -and decay from her White =~ the palace of the Elysée -- but nobody knows yet phe first post-war tenant . } Desmarets, inspec- tor general of France's and the man in charge of -clean-up and decorating pro- can't complete plans for private apartments in the palace (it will make a big differ- ence whether the-new president is married or single). : But Desmarets cla he can't do very much to the ce, /any- way, with what he has to spend. A .of $50,000 was given him in June, 1945, and upped an- her $25,000 since then. At the time, he says, costs have risen 75 per cent, and the budget "will only take care of urgent re- pairs and supplies. Moth holes or not, the new 2 president will have to be con? tent with a cleaning and repair Job on the tapestries, carpets and draperies. e French White House has 500° windows, and the $12,000 bill for new curtains and sun blinds won't leave anything over for frills. And where, Desmarets wants to know, is he going to get the 80-feet-long fine linen table clothes for the great banquet tables in the palace? Thus far, he has been success- ful in having a couple of new bathrooms installed in the palace, which was bulit in 1718 at a cost . 'of 'nearly four million dollars. . *x Another two milion went for re- decorations to the taste of Mad- ame Pompadour when Louis XV bought the Elysee for her, It became the official residence of the presidents in 1845, . * Shipbuilding Lead Held By Britain Tonnage building In United Kingdom shipyards during the «first three quarters of 1946 was about five times the U.S.A. total. Northeast England yards alone had nearly three times as much work as Sweden, the leading Con- tinental shipbuilding nation. These striking facts are revealed In returns issued by Lloyd's Reg- ister of Shipping on October 23. Merchant shipbuilding through- out the world totalled about 3,- 570,000 tons of which Britain con- structed more than 52 per cent {approximately 1,875,000 tons). The U.S.A, follows with 352,000 tons and Sweden Is next with 241,000 tons. About 20 per cent of the United Kingdom total is for overseas countries compared with 14 per cent during the pre- vious quarter. In addition to the $ 464 vessels actually undér con- 7 struction, the United Kingdom has on order no less than 1, 000,000 tons of shipping. 4 * British Aircraft i Refuelled In Air- 3 £4 PERT over another fuelling sta- 'The famous Halifax aircraft of "Britain's Coastal Command are now being fitted with new ap- {paratus enabling the aircraft to *be refuelled in the air. The im- portance of this new fuelling "device should not be underesti- mated. If a Halifax can be sup- 'plied with fresh fuel from a fanker aircraft, this means that "its range will be sufficiently in~ .creased to enable jit to reach an sirport situated much further afield, or to be able to refuel EA without having to make a "landing for tule Dutpose, Tue present range of e ifax is 1,600 miles. Its future will depend on where and ¢ how often mid-air refuelling can take place. * » Great Britain's Aluminum Houses * of 20 coun- Ho! 1 : trles have made enquiries about 31 aluminum 'prefabricated houses-- Britain's latest ond 1s, the housing shortage problem. Now being made at 5 wartime shadow factories: at the rate.of 5 hourly, February they will 'be fe R3E3R ge : ] HE i have all weather cluding being frozen, hav- pumped into them and to an 80 miles per J produced by Beau- aust, : £ i § A sop . By Rosette Hargrove THE PALACE of the Elysee: For new curtains and window blinds for the White House of France, $12,000. Since June, 1940, when Presi- dent Lebrun left the palace to go to Bordeaux, the only official resident has been the janitor, who went to work there in 1912 and refused to leave when the Germans came to Paris, The Germans never tried to move in. Admiral Darlan was the last to have an office there under the Vichy regime, and after his departure, it was unoccupied except for a few '"maquisards" who were hidden in the servants' ' quarters from time to time, The staffing of the palace is as big a problem as refurnishing it. The pre-war domestic staff con- sisted of 12 men servants and 10 maids. New working-hour sched- ules for this type of employees have increased the staff to 18, but the big job is" to find servants trained in the finer nuances of protocol in handling distinguished guests. What the presidential suite will look like will wait until France decides whether the post-war resident of Elysee will be tough, Communist Maurice Thorez, bourgeois Vincent Auriol, or . aristocratic, gray-bearded Fran- cisque Gay. Meantime, Desmarets has or- dered a six-year accumulation of dead leaves cleaned out of the fish pond, and is shopping around for some shining new carp to put in it. : Political Hula-baloo x kh hk Kk & kk kk * & & Ukeleles, Dancers Take Spotlight On Campaign Platforms in Hawaii oO HONOLULU, Nov, 16 -- The candidates who can sing, strum a ukelele, and have a couple of good hula dancers on their polit- ical platforms are the ones most likely to win on Election Day in Hawaii, Electioneering in the islands, which had a vaudeville touch long before stateside candidates began campaigning with hill-billy bands and crooners, is in full pre-war cry, and the desecendants of Poly- mesian' warriors shout their war chants atop soap boxes, The candidates add to' this equipment of ukeleles and hula skirts by adopting the Hawaiian equivalent of their first name (Sam becomes "Kamuela") and many speak a few words in elth- er Hawaiian or pidgin English to impress voters that they are "ka- maianas" (long-time residents of the islands). That is, if they ever get a chance to speak, Just as a campaigner starts his speech, the musical troup he or his party hired is likely to break into a Hawaiian tune. Whe that stops, the girls may hegin the undulations of a hula, and the candidate might just as well be talking to himself, The next time he clears his throat, the interruption is sure to come from the audience as wom- an admirers rush forward to place flower leis around the candidate's neck. By the time an extra 'pop- ular politician finishes a speech, he looks like a Kentucky derby winner. There are serious candidates too, who campaign without bands or dancers, and get elected. But who wants to pass up a good free show? THE TWITCH AND the itch crowd out the speeches in Hawaii's political campaigning. The hula dancer above is stand- ard electioneering, equipment; the dog just came along to see the show. OF THE feather lei on man's hat at left shows he's a long-time resident (kamaiana) of the Hawaiian Islands. Hat is worn when the candidate wants to get in a few digs about the "Malihinis," or newcomers. LONDON, Nov. 16.--An exhibi- tinn of tings and engravings by the Egyptian artist, All Nur, is being held at the E; fan Ine Gardens, . stitute in Chesterfie London. Ali Nur has become widely known, particularly in the Middle East, for his illustrations and car- toons in the Arabic Listener. As well as being art editor of the Arabic Listener from April 1940 onwards, he made many wartime addresses, Ali Nur came' to England from Italy, where he had been study- ing at Urbino and Florence with a scholarship awarded him in 1933 by the Royal House of Egypt for his illustrations to the life of the Khedive Ismail. In 1939 he held a one-man exhibi- tion of drawings and e: vings in London. In August, 1939, for an exhibition in Cairo he dis patched to Egypt a collection of over 200 etchings, together with the original plates. The ship on which they were sent was sunk during the first few days of the war. A few prints from the plates thep lost are included in the present exhibition. Despite the sombre tone of some of his work, Ali Nur is a cheerful and humorous personal- ity, and tells some amusing stories about his troubles with the English language. "I love England," he says. "I like being here and I like the people. My only difficulty is the language. My friends call my English 'pic- turesque.' Other people cannot understand it and say so. My wife is French and we met in Italy and so our language Is Italian, My three small daugh- ters speak only English. Most fathers are merely embarrassed by their children's questions; I have to ask what they mean be- fore I can even be embarrassed." All Nur"s first battle with the English language came when he arrived, new to London, at Vie- toria Station In 1938. He asked his way of a policeman In French, Italian, and what he thought was English. Failing in all three he cursed him in Ara- bic. "Don't you talk to me like that, sir," replied the policeman in Arabic. "I was a cop in Port Said for seventeen years." ' * Research Centre Aids Car Industry o Increased Pensions fo Ww 3 It is the intention of the Brit. ish Motor Industry Research Ase sociation (M.LR.A.) to establish a r rch centre, the equip- ment of "which will. benefit th entire British car industry. Not only will the research centre with its first-class laboratory, contribute towards the solution * * » 8 'Flea Market' enn) SCARCITIES HAVE made a seller's market of the famed Parisian "Flea Market," but the buyers still are finicky about what they hope wil be bargains, whether it's a gun, a painting, or an old fiddle, ... PARIS, Nov. 16--The days of Paris' picturesque "Flea Market" are numbered. No longer is it a place where dealers and collect- ors can rummage among the in- credible bric-a-brac dumped into packing-box stalls and turn up rare antiques, or an occasional genuine Reubens or Rembrandt for a song. The world's shortages have made the "Flea Market" a seller's market. Dealers refuse to bar- gain; they fix their prices and are content to wait because they know that eventually a customer will pay what they ask, They have learned to evaluate their "junk." Prices ace high, some- times even Aigher than those asked in regular shops. Syndicates control most of the dealers. Rentals for the "stands" run as much as 15,000 francs a month--nearly $125, Seventy years ago the area where the Flea market now stands, was a wasteland within the city, inhabited only by rag- pickers living in miserable hov- els, These scavengers sorted the odds and ends of the city's trash cans and eked out a bare exist- ence selling the pieces of junk they retrieved to the poor: A few second-hand dealers began com- ing to the district to buy. Fin- ally a Parisian named Robert Vernaison built some wooden shacks that he rented to the more prosperous dealers, Today the Flea Market operat- es only over the three-day week- end, During the rest of the week the dealers comb the provinces for attic remnants which are the market's stock in trade. Once all they found was sold in the mar- ket's stands. Today any item of value finds its way directly into the more swank antique shops. "With the present scarcity of household goods--old and new-- and the tremendous rise in val- ues, many of the dealers have stocks valued at thousands of dollars," says Rene Antoine, as- sistant to the mayor of the dis- trict, Demand for stands has in- creased a thousand-fold, Since the liberation the municipality has received more than 2,500 requests for stands that it has been unable to fill, Antoine says. Fortunate possessors of the stands available sometimes sublet three or four feet of their holdings to smaller dealers, Despite municipal supervision, the Flea Market even today is a hangout for thieves and fences, card-sharpers and black market dealers, That is probably the reason why the city has decided, despite the tourist attraction of the mar- ket, to reduce its size and purge it of the undesirables, By next year bulldozers will sweep most of the area clean. Over the old market Parig will build a school, a playground and more respéct- able covered stalls, * & Kk kk kk * * KF Kk * & * r 4,120,000 * hk kh hk hk * MANY BENEFIT UNDER BRITAIN'S NEW INSURANCE ACT By L. E. Sessel o- Many civil pensioners in Brit- of scientific and technical prob- . @in--the aging and the old, lems, but it will provide all kinds widows and blind persons, have decir: gor example, (FOUSh benefitted with the introduction roads on which to springs, a track for p nged high-speed tests: and durability "*ot new pension rates. Some 4, 120,000 people at present in the trials and so forth. With the ap- categories named are to receive proval of the government, con- sideration is being given to es- tablishing the research centre at one-of the many airfields in dis- use since the war. It is also intended that motor-car motor bicycle races would organized on the test track. and * Planning London's Fourth Airport * J 3 At the moment London has three airports: at Heathrow (London Airport), Croydon and Northolt. The uninterrupted in- crease of air traffic has caused the Ministry of Civil Aviation to select Bovingd as London', fourth airport. Bovingdon is 21 miles from Central London and has three runways all more than 1,300 yards long. Not only is it to become the terminus for aircraft to and from the Middle East and West Africa, but dur- ing bad weather it will serve as a relief airport for the three others, * New Type Diesel Engine Installed * A new Diesel engine suitable for the use of lower-grade fuel oils has been installed by Messrs. Hawthorn, Leslie & Co, Ltd, in their new motor-tanker "Auri- cula." Very satisfactory results were obtained from the first trials carried out with the 3.- 200-ton tanker. The use of the cheaper oil in the "Auricula" which on completion of her trials is to undertake her maiden voyage, will effect a saving of 33% % in running costs. : Money In Butterflies -- Cotton Industry Sets New Records *, Last August, despite the holi- days, new were set up by the United Kingdom cotton Indus- try both in cotton cloth and ray- and mixture cloth production. average weekly output of * more than the previous peak ed in May this year, when there were no general holidays. The rise over August, 1945, was as much as 28 per cent. LONDON, Nov. 16.--There are all sorts of ways of earning a living, but féw people think of butterfly farming. L. Hugh New- man recently talked about his butterfly farm in England. He breeds butterflies and caterpil- lars for collectors, biology teach= ers and scientific research' insti- tutes. £ There is quite a large and steady demand. His smooth-skin« ned caterpillars are bred special- ly 'for cancer research, and thousands of common Cabbage Whites are regularly taken by manufacturers of "insect sprays and washes who want to test their new products on them. The rarer specimens are disposed of 0 -------- in special auction sales every month, and sometimes fetch high prices, as much as £110 for a pair. Each year there are "fashions" in collecting certain species of butterfly. The more' delicate kinds of butterfly are bred in large greenhouses and given s§| ohial food. The more common ds are produced out-of-doors on trees covered by enormous en- velopes of mosquito netting. What seems to mark out the job as a good one, however, is that every now and then wealthy col- . lectors commission Newman to travel or cruise far afield in search of rare specimens for their private collections. Research Institute For Atomic Energy * The problems created by pro- realized in atomie science and technology are, at the re- uest of the British Ministry of us ly, to be investigated in a special research institute set up at Amersham in Buckingham- shire. Among the Institute's tasks are the "manufacture, processing and distribution of radium, ra- don and other artificially radio- active substances used for scien- tific, medical and industrial p ." The work of this In- stitute is to be controlled by a special council which Includes representatives of the Ministry, as well as scientific and industrial experts, * higher state .allowances--an in- crease from 10s. to 26s. a week in a large number of cases, less in others, according to circum- stances and to "other conditions regulating the benefit. The additional payments in- volve a net additional expendi- ture of about £80 millions a % year, which will be almost en- tirely met by a substantial in- crease in contributions by em- ployers .and employed as laid down in a schedule appended to a Government White Paper. Higher costs of living, largely due to war and post-war condi- tions, have weighed heavily on the poor and helpless of every land, and all Governments worthy of the name have been doing their utmost to alleviate the situation in their respective countries. So it comes about that the new British pensions scale is being introduced as soon as prac- ticable--months, in fact, before the general operation of the Na- tional Insurance Act of which it w ® Radar Eye Will Help Air Safety R.AF, Transport Command are to try out a new United King- dom radar development in South- east Asia. It is a radar "eye" which enables the aircraft pilot to see obstructions ahead at night or in bad visibility, The "News Chronicle" Air Correspondent re- ports that the principle underly- ing this new .device---which Is still in the experimental stage-- is very simple. Radar impulses are sent out ahead of the aircraft. The return "echo" appears as a signal on a glass screen which is gridded to give the appsoximate . position, left or right. A hiil shows as a blob, another plane as a large dot and a cloud mass --which can be very dangerous to aircraft--as a fuzzy blob, * Book Exhibition In Switzerland In the spring of this year an exhibition of Swiss Books toured th. British Isles." It was only a few months before British Books paid a return visit to Switzep- land. In order to enable as many of the Swiss public as posible to see what the British ook world and British printing has achieved during the last few years, it has been agreed to show the exhibition in Berne, Basle, Zurich, Geneva and, Lau- sanne, The exhibition, which was opened in Berne at the be- ginning of September, consists ..of over 1,200 books and about 400 periodicals, it *. forms part, and which is based on many of the recommendations of the great Beveridge Report. Two or three examples of the benefits afforded 'by. this out- standing social measure in'the provision for pensions may be given, The weekly allowance of 10s. now payable to an insured man at 65 years of age and to a woman at 60 insured in her own right will be raised to 26c¢, if the pensioner has retired from regular employment, A married woman not separately 'insured will receive 16s. when her hus- band becomes entitled to an in- creased pension if she is only engaged in her household duties. Thus they will be assured of a maximum income of 42s. a week. At the age of 70 for a man and 65 for a woman retirement from regular employment will be assumed, whether the pensioner is working regularly or not. Special benefits are offered to persons reaching the lower pen- sionable ages but continuing to work after the beginning of Oc- tober. These inducements are offered by the Government in view of the temporary shortage of man-power in industry, and are likely to be taken advantage of by most workers in good health and with undiminished working capacity. Widow pen- sioners over 65 years at the be- ginning of October will receive 26s. instead of 10s, irrespective of any earnings they may con- tinue to make. Apart from compulsory con- tributors to State insurance there is a large body of voluntary con- tributors who 'will benefit by the new order of things. The am- ount of their present, and in- creased, pensions depends on the average annual number of cone tributions they have made. A person who has only averaged 26 contributions in a year natur- ally receives only half of what he or she would get if they had regularly paid in weekly, Third class is that of non-con- tributors. At 70 they may re- ceive, subject to other considera- tions regarding income, up to the full grant of 26s. a week. At present a non-contributor quali- fies up to 10s. if his yearly - untary means, after deducting unearned means up to £39 such as gifts from relatives and friends, do not exceed £26.5.0, It is corres- pondingly less if his unearned income is higher. Blind persons (who are exempt from contribuy tions) qualify for pensions at the age of 40, Many of the poorest pensioners now receive supplementary al- lowances to their weekly 10s, but as these will be subtracted from their enlarged pensions' they will hardly be better off, They will, -however, nc longer have to submit themselves to the unpopular "means test"--an ex- amination regarding their in- come before a supplementary allowance is granted. The financing of the new Na- tional Health and Pensions Ine surance Scheme will necessitate higher weekly levies on em- ployery and employed. Thus, eadh party will now have to pay 2s., nearly double the present figure of 1s. 1d., in the case of a man, and 1s. 8d. each as against 10d. for a woman worker. Vol- contributors earning under £420 a year 'will have to pay the full 4s. a week them- selves, and women 3s. 4d.--fairly substantial sums, from which, however, they ultimately profit, as a large proportion of the in- surance scheme payments is shouldered by the State in all the pension classes. The new rates increase Brit ain's total expenditure on Na- tional Health Insurance and Pensions from about £127 mil- lions a year to about £268 mil- lions. Savings on supplementary pensions, however, as indicated earlier, will bring the amount of extra disbursement down to about £80 millions, towards which the new additional levies are estimated to furnish £78 mil- lions. "But," says the White Paper on the subject, "it is not to he inferred from this that the higher rates of pensions are being granted at little or no cost to the Exchequer; on a long- term view the position is very different." in Success From Failure @® (LONDON, Nov, 16-Listening to a recent program in the Afri- can service it was interesting to hear William Holt, one-time York- shire weaver, describe how ine genuity has turned fallure into success in a recently-invented Yorkshire wool process. "Thanks to a Yorkshire' invention, it has been found possible to get through the looms worsted yarn so finely ° 'spun that .normally the yarn would not stand up to the strain of weaving. It is done by means of a "carrier" or supporting thread which is folded or twisted with the fine woollen yarn, giving it the extra strength needed to stand up to the weaving. Then, after the cloth has been woven, this "carrier" thread convenient- ly disappears, dissolving away In the process of scouring. All that EY is left is a fine, light, pure wool- len fabric-like gossamer made of yarns so spidery that, before this discovery, anyone would have thought them impossible to weave, This wonderful carrier thread is made from stuff which comes from seaweed, called Alginates, found on the shores of the Brit ish Isles. Originally, during la- boratory experiments at Leeds University, it was hoped to use this seaweed stuff as a kind of art-silk yarn, but it was found that when washed it just dis- solved away in soap and water, so that it was useless for the pur- pose intended. But then it was realized that this dissolving away . was just what was wanted in a "carrier" thread. So failure turn- ed into success, : sx : . Inflation Comes Even To Mill; Paris Second-Hand Mecca" ions Look For Justice * » LONDON, Nov, 16--The re- cent case of the Indian Rajah, who Jost his memory for twelve years and died 'four days after his twenty-five years legal fight for recognition had ended with a decision in his favor by the Judicial committee of the priv council, prompted F. C. Cowper to give a recent talk about this extraordinary court of appeal. In some parts of the world the Judicial committee of the privy council has a semi-divine pres- tige. A wonderful and true story is told how once a tribe in a re- mote part of India became in- volved in a legal despute which went against it In the courts there, But a holy man told them of a mighty power to whom they could still appeal, a power in. whose hands the King-Emperor was as a child, His name was Judish-al-Komit{ and the lawyer in Calcutta had said that from him théy would obtain true jus tice and the defeat of their en- emies, He was very holy and austere and lived in a small house near the palace of the King-Em- peror. So it was done and the finding of the Indian court was reversed, and that night bonfires blazed on the "hills lit by the people in honor of a new object of worship, Judish-al-Komiti, the eat power that ruled the King- mperor, Four hundred million souls ine habiting eleven million square miles look for ultimate justice to this quiet and unobtrusive court in London, which "humbly ad vises His Majesty" to allow or dismiss their appeals, its juris- diction deriving from the ime memorial right of the subject to call for justice to the King in Jerson. In this court there meet Christian theology and the rites of pagan idols; Hindu and Mo- hammedan, Maori and Zulu, Chinaman and Cingalese, white man and black. Questions from the dominions, the colonies and the mandated territories may turn on the most involved point of parliamentary draftsmanship or the most primitive tribal cus- toms. A cargo of opium in the Wangpo River; certain rents from a village in Madras con- ferred by a rajah on his gods five centuries ago; treasure trove worth £50,000 unearthed in New Zealand; the question of the ex- tradition of nine convicts, escap- ed across hundreds of miles of sea from Devil's Island to Trini- dad--all these have raised probe lems to be laid before His aja ty in council in Whitehall, drafted and documented and printed and and neatly bound in blue covers before the hearing. Experts Leave For Oilfields * fh Machinery and plant used in the Caribbean oilfields was, be- fore World War II, almost en- tirely obtained from America, Supplies to the large petroleum companies in Trinidad, Vene- zuela and Columbia amounted to many millions of pounds sterling a year. Now a technical commission of British experts has left at the invitation of the Caribbean petroleum industry for a three months' tour in or- der to study and examine to what extent British progress can be applied to the oilfields and refineries there. The invitation was sent to the United Steel Company, Ltd. This company was already engaged before the war in special scientific research work for -the production of alloy steels, the metallurgical quali- tier of which were found to be beneficial in the drilling and re- fining of petroleum. Represent atives of other British firms be- longing to the petroleum indus- try, have joined the technical mission in order to demonstrate the latest achievements of the British industry to the Caribe bean petroleum companies in- terested. - Surgeons Restore Blind Girl's Sight What might be described as a miracle operation has been per formed through the skill of British Opthalmic surgeons. Since she was fourteen years old an English girl, Rosemary Swarbrick, had been partially blind and ten months ago bee came totally blind. The skill of British Opthalmic surgeons has now completely restored the sight of the blind girl. The operations were carried out at the Manchester Royal Eye Hos The cornea was removed fram the eyes of two men and gudited on to Miss Swar- brick's eyes. Now Rosemary can see everything without the aid of spectacles and can read the smallest print, sew and thread a needle--in fact do everythinem normally expected of a perc" with healthy sight. * * * Given Training In Fuel Economy * As one of the steps to meet the present shortage of fuel in Britain, the Ministry of Educa- tion announces a scheme of train- ing in the economic and efficient us? of fuel for stokers. Local edu cation authorities are being ask- ed to arrange for suitable courses leading to professional qualifica- tions for which examinations have been framed and syllabuses drawn up.