HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1962-11-29, Page 2WEST U.S.S.R.
ICBMs (over 2,000-mile range) 450-500 75-plus
MRBMs (1,700.2,000-mile ran o) 250 700
WEST-EAST POWER IN '63
011111111/11011111/110.
Long-range bombers
(over 5,000 miles) 630 200
Medium-range bombers
(over 2,000 miles) 1630 1400
3
Battleships Ondjcarriers 40
Nuclear submarines ?
12
Orso`ilia*l'eI4
Conventional subrnoeiriee
Cruisers
Eecart vessels (Figures hi
p arenthesis, in reserve)
Tenks (Figures
obsolete types)
212 (48) 445 (50)
20 (10)
842 (256) 124 (365)
Y 6, 18,000
ttti ttl
Mobilized manpower B`rliill on ii ilillion
INDESTRUCTIBLE — It's old, but still runs, The battery never fails and the tires never,
go flat, This 1925 Chicago truck used daily by workers at a St. Louis, suburb has no
battery. Tires are solid rubber, No body rust because the body is mode of wood,
InAliej311.00 MeVOA,
A Boat Overland •
At Mavisgrind, in the Shea-
land ,Ialands, I Waited for an
liour to watch young Roald Han,
een, a fisherman, Moving his
boat overland from the Atlantic
Ocean to the North Sea, Re car-
ried out the operation in a few
aninutes, with the help of his
friends, and se m e greased
boards, and by doing so saved
himself a voyage of forty miles
through exposed and, dangerous
waters. It was the most remark-
able marine short cut I have
ever come across, a microcosm
of Suez, without the canal.
Mavisgrind is a low—lying
neck of land between the pariah-
es of Delting and Northrnavine,
en the stormy western' side of
the Shetlands near the island of
Illuckie Rae. It isn't much wider
than the road which passes over
it, but it separates the Atlantic
Ocean from the North Sea. And
here I record the curious fact
that the level of the see on the
Atlantic side of the road is three
feet higher than the sea on the
opposite side ol the road. The
difference has been noticed for
centuries, but I have never read
an explanation of the phenoin-
anon.
Roald Hansen lived, at Mess-
leank, near the bottom of Yell
Sound, and if he had not man-
handled his boat, the Madelini,
aoross the road, he would have
faced the long and highly clan,
serous voyage out around Esha
Ness, then up and around the
Point of Fethaland, with the
grim Ran-ma Stacks spurning
wrathfully over his left shoul-
der, and then down through the
criss-crossing rip-tides of Yell
sound,
He had been fishing around
Muckle Roe. His boat was
beached on the Atlantic side of
the road, at the bottom of an
incline. I got my camera out
and waited. sniall. van came
down the road at last, and out
of it leaped ten men, Without
wasting any time they laid
greased boards on the ground
*head of the Madelini, then took
their places along a rope and put
their backs into' a big pull. The
boat slid over the greased
boards. Another pull, and an-
other. The boat moved up to the
road, completely blocking it for
a minute or two. Another pull,
then it was eased downhill into
the North Sea.
The fisherman was just around
the corner from home. All he
had to do was start the engine,
AVID AVA
In Rome, the Mirisch Film Co.,
reported a casting problem with
"The Pink Panther," which takes
its 'title from the nickname of a
etupendous diamond stolen by
international jewel thieves. Set
to play the female lead was 39-
year-old Ava Gardner'—until she'
allegedly made "excessive de-
mands." Among them: A villa on
the Apple Antica, a chauffeured
limousine around the clock, and
a personal secretary fluent in
both Italian and English, Pro-
ducer Martin Jurow sought
French actress Capucine for the
role after telling Ava: "It's been
nice knowing you."
sit back and Steer the Matielitti
up through the sheltered waters
of Stilliern Vee around
Min Ness to, the old pier at Moses
bank. There was really nothing
to it when he .could call on tele 4
hefty fellows to haul his boat.
across that neck of land at
Mavisgrind,
William Sutherland, a native
of Yell, was with me, end he:
was greatly pleased with what
he had seen,
"I've edwaye known about this
crossing, but I've never seen it
until today," le& Said, "I'ns glad
you had the patience to wait for
it.'" •
So was I, for it was the sort
of scene that makes our north-
ern islands. unique,—Frorn "The
Charm, of Scotland," by John
Herries
A Remembrance Of
Marconi's Mother
What she told me seemed in-
finitely :remote, I found it lm-
possibleto 'believe that she was
talking about herself and my
father. Rather, these were char-
acters out of a dream. Sitting in
the gray light of a London after-
noon, she carried me back on the
soft cadences of her speech more
than thirty years to a summer
night in Italy.
The air was sweet with the
scent of drying hay, she told me,
alive with the 'chirruping of
crickets, wrapping the Marconi
house in a cocoon of sound. The
long twilight had given way to
heavy darkness and the large
rooms and wide hallway; their
stone floors bare, were cool and
silent. It was close to midnight
and my grandmother was asleep.
She was waked; she remember-
ed, by a hand on her shoulder,
shaking her gently but urgently
and the light from a candle her
younger son held in his other
hand.
"Mother?" he said and, sehs-
ing the urgency in his tone, she
got up quibkly, pulled on a Warm
dressing g9wn and followed him.
4 The top floor of the big, four-
square white house had been
GugliehhO's to use as he pleased
for three months. In his hands, it
had become a laboratory. The
family, his dictatorial Italian
father and his poetic Irish mother
(the old woman in the high-
backed chair who sat facing me),
his adoring older brother Alfonso
and his half brother, Luigi, the
gay cousins, Italian and Irish,
all knew about it and responded
to Guglielmo's scientific myster-
ies in their own fashions. I see
now, there can never have been
the slightest doubt in his mind
which of them he wanted with
him that night in 1894,
Guglielmo led his mother up
three flights of shallow, stone
steps into his inner world, full
of jars and instruments. As she
watched, he bowed his blonde
head over a telegraph key set on
a workbench under a window
and tapped it delicately with one
finger, ,
From the far end of the long
double room came a gentle, in-
sistent sound. A bell was ringing,
little louder than the crickets but
with concise, wakeful clarity, Be-
tween the transmitter under his
hand and the tiny tinkling lay
nothing but air. — From "My
Father, Marconi," by Degna.
Japanese Writer
Recalls Early Days
October, month of cloudless
blue and golden ricestalks, is
called "kannazuki" — month-
without-gods—in most parts of
Japan, According to ancient
folklore, the patron deities of the
island empire's 60-odd provinces
are all absent from their homes
during this month. All, that is,
except one—Okuninushi, ruler of
Idzumo, It is to Okuninushi's
home, the Great Shrine of
Idzums, that the other deities
corne,to hold their annual tenth-
moon conference,
A tourist in bustling Tokyo,
riding escalators in, Ginza depart-
ment stores or gaping at subways
disgorging crowds of smartly
dressed office girls, may wonder
how persistent such superstitions
may be. Yet.it is still true that
in all Japanese provinces except
Idzumo, October is considered
an unlucky tune 'for marriages,
while at the Great Shrine of
Idzumo, it is ,the month of
months for young couples to
plight their troth.
I do not defend mythology, but
Idzumo is my mother's native
province, and I must confess that
the story of an eastern Olympus ,
stirs a kind of local pride, Be-
sides, Okunineshi is supposed to
have been a benevolent and
laughter-loving ruler, who sur-
rendered his lands without dis-
pute to warlike Jimmu, the
legendary first emperor of Japan.
Despite the improvements in
communications that modern
times have brought, it still takes
a day and a night to go by train
from Tokyo to Matsue, capital of
IdzumO. This represents, of
course, a fabulous speed-up since
the millers days of the 1860's,
when my Grandmother Watana-
be spent a whole month travel-
ing by rapid sedan chair from
her home in Matsue to the Sho-
gun's minted palace in Tokyo,
then called Yedo.
As a child, I never tired of
hearing Grandmother Watanabe
tell of those faraway feudal days
when topknotted, two-sworded
samurai, strode through the nar-
row streets of Matsue below Lord
Matsudaira's many-tiered keep.
The castle, which still stands
guard over the city, is now a
public park, with paths where
camellias perfume the air as win-
ter yields to spring. No angry
wars were fought underneath its
walls, for it was built in a period
when cannon imported from Por-
tugal were already making stone
battlements obsolete,
Grandmother was already a
married woman when the Meiji
Restoration of 1868 toppled the
Shogun and "the feudal system
and, catapulted Japan into the
era of the steam engine and the
gas light, But though she lived
on almost into the threshold of ,
the atomic age, She always fold-
ed her feat decorously together
underneath her knees, even when
traveling on Western-style traine,
and she taught my mother that
the tastiest way to boil rice Was
neither by gas nor electricity but
in a heavy-lidded pot With a
elow-burning wood fire
Her speech was always gentle
and well-mannered, but I do not
like to contemplate what he
would have said of the automatic
electric rice-cookers that came
into vogue some years ago and
that even farm wives now de-
mand,
Grandmpther Watanabe loved
the tea ceremony and the sweet-
sour plum cakes peculiar to
Idzumo that waist with it, At
dhe seine time .she Was a marvel-
ously efficient, housewife who
could lay her halide on a spool
of thread or` a ball of string at
the very moment husband, chil-
dren, or grandchildren needed a
button sewed or a package wrap-
ped.
Arid, of course, she was a won-
derful story-teller, ranging from
Idzumo folklore Chow the irtme-
ttleitie prince, Okuninushi's fathe
er, elow a dragon and found
ISSUE -'4it
BIRTHDAY BOY Viscount
Linley, son . of Britain's Prin-
cess Margaret and the Earl of
Snowden, celebrated his. first
birthday in Windsor Castle.
therein a miraculous sword) to
reminiscences about her own
childhood days under the shadow
of Matsue Castle, writes Takashi
Oka in the Christian SCience
Monitor,
Many of Grandmother Watana-
be's stories had to do with
Grandfather, whom I remember
only in photographs. He began
his career as a samurai and
Confucian scholar in the service
of Lord Matsudaira of Matsue.
Then came the Meiji Restoration,
and changes from top to bottom
in the nation's political, economic
and social structure, The bright-
est young men from all the em-
pire's feudal clans hastened to
Tokyo and even to Europe and
America, there to acquire the,
new skills needed to lift their
country from medieval feudalism
into an industrialized Western-
ized state.
But; Idzumo, that ancient land
dreaming under the benevolent
protection of Okuninushi's' great
shrine, was not iri the forefront
of this modernization movement.
The Matsudairas of Matsue were
one of the lesser of the feudal
lords under the Tokugawa Sho-
gunate, and their samurai sat on
the fence during the upheaval
that led to the Shogunate's
demise. Thus they could claim
no ,great rewards, nor did they
incur any severe punishment,
when the' feudal system ended
and a new military-civilian hier-
archy took over.
Grandfather Watanabe was an
eager student of the new West-
ern learning, and would• gladly e
have gone to Tokyo or abroad
had he been given the opportun-
JAY. Whereas Grandmother Wa-
tanabe stuck to her saber Idmo-
onos, Grandfather did not scorn
to v,,eer the Western frock coat,
particularly on formal occasions.
The end of the feudal system
meant the end of the samurais as
a knightly class and the first
steps toward the inauguration of
a universal educational system.
Grandfather founded a modest
private school in his home, where
the young men of Matsue could
learn English and mathematics
as well as' Confucian. classics.
One early student, Reijiro Wake-
teuki, later became Prime Minis-
ter of Japan,
Lakadio Hearn, the English-
man who became so enamored of
Idzumo that he adopted one vari-
ant, Yakumo or .Eight Clouds, as
his nom de plume, was a friend
of Grandfather's, and ,Grand-
mother sometimes mimicked, for
my benefit, the accented Jap-
anese in which he used to bid
her good morning. But whereas
Hearn had Wandered over the •
face. of the world, from Europe
to America to the Far East; my
grandfather never managed . to
cross. a single ocean,
His life, however, exemplified
the changes that Japan under-
went as a nation frprn the placid
dayg of the Shogunate to the
stresses and strains of modern
nationhood! Grandfather even
had 3t brief fling at politics, when
friends and former students
persuaded him to stand foi. the
• prefectural assembly under the
Meiji Constitution' promulgated,
in 1889, He made nary a
,Beal speech and spent, not a
single sen—a teat that probably
could not be repeated in today's
television age, Yet he' was elect-
ed, and served out his four-year
term,
Neither of my grandparents
lived to, see the greater changes
that came over Japan in the
wake of WOrld War IL In Grande'
father's day, the Meiji' Constitu-
tion, granted by the Emperor
himself and defining the ruler's
position as "sacred and inviol-
able" was accounted a; breath-
taking step forward 'froni abso-
lute monarchy. In. the 1920'si
when 'Granclfathei erstwhile
pupil Baron Walcatsfulti wai ac-
tive 'in politics, univeesal eman-
hood .suffrage Was the , campaign
slogan of forward-neinded parlia-
mentarians.
But after 1945,, when Japan
underwent defeat in war arid a
benevolent Americari occupation,
land reform, labor legislation,
and female suffrage were ac-
hieved with a stroke of Supreme
Allied Commander Douglas Mace
Artbur's ,pen: Most of these ,re-
forins have been permanent.
Q. I had occasien recently' to
introdnce a woman of about 25 -
to an elderly man, and I men-
tioned her name first instead .of
his. Was this proper?
A, The warren's name should
be mentioned first a1ways0 un-
less the man is a very important
person,
Birdmen Fly OVER
Their Worries
On a meadow near Cologne,
Germany, a battered Volkswagen
accelerated, pulling a tow cable
tarn, and a slender scarlet form
darted over the gems and Ihent
was airborne, soaring steeply and `e
silently. It rose to 1,200 feet, and
there, as high as the cable could
reach, the pilot performed two
almost simultaneous actions, He
pushed the control column for-
ward to level the craft, and he
pulled the bar at his left to de-
tach the sable,
This was gliding, Ahead were
the hills lof Sieben Gebrige; be-
low, highways clogged by week-
end motorists, Motorless himself,
the glider pilot had only ain cur-
rents, Momentum, his craft's
architecture,, and his own Wer-
t ieg skills to hold him aloft. He
might stay up for hours, cover-
ing hundreds of miles, Or if the
air was light and the gliding dull
he might come down in fifteen
minutes, banking wide over the.
countryside like some huge
chicken hawk, decelerating to 40
miles an hour, gliding downward
over treetops and power lines,
finally skimming the grass of
the airfield, and coming to a halt
with a series, of small bumps.
On weekends, good gliding
weather brings out hordes of
West Germany's 25,0100 licensed
glider pilots, They are a varied
"company: 'Young mothees like In-,
geborg Tress leave their infants
on the ground, where other
members of their gliding clubs
baby-sit for them, and philoso-
phical .plumbers like Klaus Teach
follow the sport because "it's ab-
solutely the best way of forget-
ting all the
has
problems."
Gliding has soared baCk into
popularity in the last ten years,
recouping the good name it had
inethe '20s—when it was,the only
kind of flying permitted Ger-
\ mans by the Versailles Treaty—
and lost in the '30s when the
Nazis took over the glider clubs
and surreptitiously changed them
into the nucleus of the Luftwaf-
fe. Today, a typical glider club
is the Hoffnu;agsthal, near Col-
ogne, which has a $25, initiation
fee, monthly dues of about $1.25,
and a policy of making members
earn their flights by long stretch-
es of work on the ground. Thus
the chief expense of the clubs is
the purchasing of the aircraft;
these cost anywhere from about
$1,500 for "cubs" to 'mere" than
$4,000 for heavier, better-instru-
mented models.
With the perfection of the airs
craft, nearly all ',risk has di.:0p...
peered from gliding, Perhaps be-, •
cause of this, the sport is on the
upswing in other countries,
eluding the U.S.,, where in the.
past five years membershipin
the Sop.Ong Society of America
has risen from 1,200 to 4,000 But
most of the international eompp,
'Wiens are still won by Germans,
though one .formerly popular
event—the endurance contest to.
see who could stay aloft longest .
-has been abandoned, In the
words of Heinz Ruth, the most
famous of the German glider
pilots: "It was too damn cold
squatting up there
Dasement, walls of concrete
brick or stucco can be brighten-
ed by applying a coat of acrylic/
paint..-First wet the surface wiehn
a hose to Pill in the, porous Sur-
fa'ee.. Then apply the paint while.
the wall is still wet. The paint
should he applied with a heavy
pile 'roller such lambswool or
mohair — or a '1". whitewash
brush,'' The water not only acts
as a primer , . it stretches the
paint too!
WATT'S THIS? — This dim
bulb shines with glitter' and
originality. It's a burned-out,
industriol•size bulb, one of
several on exhibition in Lon-
don by artist Isa Miranda.
I '
'it
NUCLEAR FOlttCAST—Detailed, above is how the Muscle
0A the West and East shapes up in this nuclear age, with
,glares projeeted into early 1H3. Data is from en -analysis
elf strategic strength by the lustitute for Strategic Studies.
heriproRt Orgatigatioti. with headquarters in London, Bug,
land, and. close assodationa With NATO sand rooniha goy,
cements: U L the lc:girth Such study in recent years.
COMEBACK TRAIL Gene Tierney stars in "Toys in the.
.:Attic„" the sedorid film she fide Undertaken' since returning'
.hee career, Gene is pictured with Dean Martin, who plays
her son-it-low, despite the fact heg. four years her senior..
Fashion Hint
7 '