It Was Calico: Fine, £25

IN the Magistrate’s Court, Suva, Fiji, on January 22, V. R. Jam was fined £25, on default a month’s imprison ment, on a charge of profiteering. He sold 4,000 yards of calico at 1/4 per yard instead of the maximum fixed price of 1/2.76.

The defendant pleaded that the mater ial had been imported by him not as calico, but as shirting, or sheeting. The prosecution called expert witnesses to prove that notwithstanding the fact that a manufacturer could call his material anything he liked, and that the sample submitted had been stamped in India, “Superior Sheeting,” the material which had been supplied at 1/4 per yard was unbleached calico, according to Lanca shire standards.

Mr. Deoki, for the defendant, explained that the import invoices had been lost through enemy action.

The Magistrate said that he was con cerned only with what the material was called in the Colony of Fiji, and ruled that the material was calico. The defend ant then altered his plea to one of guilty, Mr. F. I. Fleming, British Administra tive Officer at Canton Island, Central Pacific, has been granted a three months’ extension of his sick leave, from Janu ary 9.

Reports recently published from Australian correspondents disclose that steel mats, a kind Of netting, have been used in Papua and New Guinea to make the airfields serviceable for Air Force machines during the current rainy season. This may become a permanent improvement there. It is recalled that in World War I the British, who had to cross the Sinai Desert, between the Red Sea and Palestine, discovered a new way Of using netting Wire. Laid flat upon the surface of the sand, it provided a hard surface upon which men could march.