Emergency In view of the vital importance Reserves f adequate and uninterrupted supplies of raw materials in the prosecution of modern war, and the impossibility of predicting how much temporary dislocation of transport might be caused by air bombardment and ' submarine attack, points out a writer in "Truth," I find it in my heart to wish that Britain had pursued with more vigour the policy of building up emergency reserves of essential commodities. According to the published figures of warehouse stocks, we have less than three months' supplies of cotton, wheat and flour, less than two months' sup-of copper and zinc; and, in relation to normal consumption, stocks of tea, rubber and lead are lower still. It is idle to blame dealers for accepting these buying orders. My regret is that we should have allowed our stocks to fall so low. One is aware that there are large undisclosed reserves of petroleum at the call of the Service Departments; but touching other commodities, if the trade figures tell the whole story, we seem to have been caught napping.
Lancashire Five hundred Lancashire cotton Tragedy mills—200 spinning mills and 300 weaving mills—have gone Out of existence, observes "Time and Tide." Over 18% millions of spindles and 326,470 looms have been smashed up or melted up or shipped abroad or let rust. Over a quarter of a million cotton operatives. are cotton operatives no longer. Do those facts convey any sort of a picture? Or these—that Lancashire's looms are now no more than in 1882 nor its spindles than 1890? That Lancashire's cotton trade, and its exports before the Great War totalled in value more than all the rest of Britain's exports put together is back to where it was fifty years ago? A veritable Moscow of a retreat, Can you see in your mind's eye the lads playing football where factories stood? Or grown men going to the pictures five times a week at tuppence a tine to drug themselves with the product of Hollywood? Or this hideous mess of mills with broken windows, yards strewn with rusty metal and stone which looks as though a war has gone that way; as it has. But there have been sent new industries to Lancashire—gas-masks to Blackburn, aeroplanes to Manchester and munitions to Chorley. We're spending millions in Lancashire on the machinery of war. True enough. This lifeline of cordite has been thrown. The war has wrung a gesture from those who were immovable in the cause of peace. The forlorn picture has had a small daub of vermilion thrust on it here, and there. Think you it's much improved?
Treasure "Treasure Trove" is an expression Trove Which must strike a chord in the most unresponsive imagination, conjuring up as it does visions of brass-bound chests crammed with "pieces of eight" and the fabulous wealth of legendary El Dorado, asserts "Horse and Hound." Somehow one does not associate these things with the quiet country side of England, yet the verdict of a Suffolk Coroner's Court has decided that the collection of gold and silver plate and jewels found during the excavation of a Saxon "Purial ship" at Sutton Hoo shall become the property of the owner of the property upon which it was found. Usually the Coroner's Court is a place of mourning; occasionally the quiet surroundings ut the local schoolroom or courthouse become the setting for a story of tragedy and heartbreak. The lighter side of a Coroner's duty is, however, the deciding of the ownership of the occasional treasures which come to light, sometimes quite accidentally, during building or other operations. This latest find contains massive silver plate from Constantinople bearing the hall mark of {he Emperor Anastasjusand from a collector's point of view is in many respects unique. The Court had to decide whether the property had been abandoned by its owner in such a manner that he intended to part with it altogether, and thus became the property of the first finder, or whether it was "treasure trove" in which case it was the property of the Crown. The jury decided that as the burial had been the property of the warrior with whom it was buried, publicly and without secrecy, it therefore became the property of the first finder.
Looping Watching an aeroplane doing aero-The Loop haties high up in the sky, the layman on the ground may often speculate on the precise degree of skill required. Major Oliver Stewart, who used to be a test pilot for the Government has cleared up some points on Acrobatics, according to the "Listener." When at aeroplane does some aerobatics it looks rather as if the pilot had had a glass of champagne and was overflowing with exuberance and couldn't resist expressing' it. Aero-haties can be an outlet for high spirits, but person who can fly need not necessarily be able to do them, however many glasses of champagne he has had. Some of the ablest pilots have never flown upside down in their lives and never will intentionally. Aerobatics take a lot of learning. They are difficult. And they are rather like playing a musical instrument; the more you know about it, the more critical you become and the less likely you are to be satiated. Take an ordinary loop, for instance. The French pilot Pegoud demonstrated it before the Wat; he was the greatest aerobatic pilot the world has known, That ordinary loop is looked on as the first aerobatic which every club member does directly he has a few hours solo on his log book. It looks easy. Most people—including rany pilots—!hink it easy. Yet it all depends on the standard you require. To go up and pull a machine round in the way one sees every day, may be morris dancing—or all-in wrestling—but its certainly not aerobatics, An ordinary loop is actually a most difficult manoeuvre; more difficult, for instance, than the supposedly more difficult, advanced inverted spin. To get it right every time, the machine describing a perfect circle, and to do so with any machine, takes practice and an enormous lot of it. The general procedure is to let the aeroplane gain speed. If it is a light aeroplane it will probably have its nose put down for a bit. Then, when speed has been gained, the stick is eased gently back and the machine watched intently so as to keep it exactly straight, Some pilots even today look straight ahead as they go round, so that the ground falls away out of sight under the nose and for a time they see nothing but sky. With that method an accurate loop every time is an impossibility. You cannot judge what the machine is doing unless you keep a reference in sight—that's why blind flying is difficult. So if there. are no clouds you must look along a wing and watch the horizon tumbling round. With practice—and lots of it—you learn to interpret the horizon's movement in terms of the attitude of your machine and io keep it exactly straight and on a perfect circle. Then there are loops and loops; the rocket loop, in which the machine streaks up vertically for a long way and then just turns Over on a small radius loop at the top; there is the slow loop, which gives or should give a perfect circle; there is the engine-off loop and there is the inverted loop. Two loops side by Side one ordinary, and one inverted beautiful but rar 4 t rare aerobatic called the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.