HIS Friday, January 27, is

the 200th anniversary of.

the birth at Salzburg, Aus-

tria, of Wolfgang Amadeus

Mozart. Honored by every

country, Mozart has been cit-

’ ed by the World Peace Coun-

cil as one of the world fig-

- ures whose work brings the
. peoples together.

Some of the plans for cele-
brating this musical event
of the year in this country
are listed by the CBC Times:

“Joining with other org-
anizations all over the world,
the CBC: marks the 200th
anniversary of the great com-

CBC fo mark Mozart anniversary

poser’s birth with special
programs of his music. Dur-
ing the next three weeks
there will be performances
of The Marriage of Figaro
on television and radio, and
Cosi fan Tutte on television.
Celebrations will not be
confined -to the week of his
birthday. Geoffrey Wadding-
ton, the CBC’s director of
music, reports that there will
be a planned emphasis on
Mozart’s music’ throughout
1956.”
A new complete edition of
Mozart's works in 110 vol-
-umes, compiled from original

manuscripts is planned by
the Mozarteum International
Foundation, with editorial di-
rection by Ernst Franz
Schmidt. The first five vol-
umes are to appear in 1956,
and the project will take 15
years to complete.

Record companies, too, are
joining in the celebrations.

It is proposed to record
the bulk of Mozart’s compo-
sitions in a “Jubilee Edition.”
By January 27 66 LP’s will
be ready, with 60 more by
1960, to make a total of 430
works, or about 80 listening
hours. *

*

ae

The sea: source of life and means of sustaining life.

SCIENCE.

Science looks to sea as means
of increasing food resources

te just cannot be a coinci-
3 dence. From three dif-
‘ferent sources in as many
. weeks I have had something to
tell me how we can get more
_ from the oceans.

And, in addition, two months
ago. there was a UNESCO con-
ference .on solving “the mys-

teries of the sea” so that its
hidden resources can be put to
work more effectively.

Is there more to. it than fish?

-Much more. But let us deal
‘with fish first.

‘Our ancestors hunted for their
<food. Nowadays we rely main-
ly on controlled stock-raising.
Yet for fish we are still at the
primitive hunting stage.. With
‘-help from ‘echo-sounding in-
. struments man can find the

shoals more readily. But, as the

comparative failure of the North
’ Sea herring season has just
shown, fishing is still very
much a hit-and-miss business.

But can we farm for fish,
sowing the seas, tending the
stock and winning the food as
we do on land?

These are among the ques-
tions raised in a well-written
_ popular book The Sun, the Sea
and Tomorrow, by F. C. Walton
: Smith and Henry Chapin. Des-
; pite a strong American emphasis,
- the book is world-wide in its
* ‘scope.

Every day, the authors recall,
70,000 extra mouths are joining
us for dinner. So while we can
also look to bringing deserts
into cultivation, it is good sense
to look to the seas which cover
three-fifths of the globe’s sur-
face.

We can find similarities as
well as differences between the
cycles of life on land and in the
seas.

The oceans’ vegetable pro-
ducers—corresponding to. her-
bage — are mainly invisible,

_ for

except under the microscope.
The minute plants, called veg-
etable plankton, are grazed by
other organisms — also very
small. These can be compared
with the plant-eating animals,
the cows and horses, but on a
vastly different scale.

In turn, these form the food
for some fishes and so on

through a chain of fishes prey-

ed. on by larger or stronger
ones, some of which arrive on
our tables.

On the average about a thous-
and pounds of plankton yield
one pound of fish, compared
with only tens pounds of grass
needed to produce one pound
of beef. Yet the fish supplies
available in the seas are esti-
mated by all the experts to be
vastly greater than the ameat
supplies on land.

We could, ‘of course, try to
learn to feed on plankton di-
rectly. The men on the Kon-
tiki raft did this with no ill-
effects.
ably not be very popular.

And so far farming of the
more conventional fish has
only had limited success in
shallow-pond cultivation. So we

“cannot answer the question of

whether we can _ economically

- “paise” fish as we do stock.

It is useful, however, that
someone is now putting this
question, showing the need for
research and pointing. to fresh
food sources, instead of sug-
gesting that we have fewer hu-
man beings:

* x ra

e

My seeond source — a recent
bulletin of the USSR Society
Cultural’ Relations With

Other Countries — tells of the
kind of studies necessary to in-
creasing our supply of food from
the \sea.

Teams have been sounding the

But this would prob-:

depressions under the Pacific
Ocean where it is no less than
ten kilometres or roughly six
miles deep in the Kurile-Kam-
chatka area near to Japan. They

have investigated, for example, |

the up-and-down movements in

: the complex life-cycle of plank-

ton and fishes.

And my third source — from
the British Royal Institute of
Chemistry — pointed also to the
vast mineral wealth of the sea.
There is more in this than the
well-known common salt.

Magnesium, used in light .al-
loys, is now obtained from the
sea. Bromine — used on an
increasing scale as an “anti-
knock” in gasoline — ,is being
obtained in thousands of tons
per year from the same place.
So are valuable salts of potas-
sium.

Studies — and use — have also
been made of seaweeds but dif-
ficulties were found in gather-
ing them economically on a
large scale.

All of this is only the tery
beginning of what we could
get from the water around us.

There is power to be got from
the tides in suitable places.

Power, too, from the difference

in temperature between the
surface and the bottom of the
seas. The French are making
use of this in'a power plant at
Abidjan, in French West Africa.

A further source of power is
to convert the plankton into
ordinary fuels like alcohol or
petroleum and drive engines.

We have been warned many
times of outgrowing our -food,
our fuel and our mineral sup-
plies.

There is a new world ‘here
to be explored by man. In
peace, with a greatly expanded
research program, we can hope
to do it on the basis of sound

knowledge, cooperatively won.

First novel gives real
slice of miner’ life

A WORKING British miner,
‘Len Doherty,

the story of a Yorkshire mining

family with a rare tenderness

and understanding.

It is his first novel—A Miner’s
Sons (obtainable here at the
People’s Co-op Bookstore, 337
West Pender, price $2.25).

There have been other stories
about miners and the stirring
struggles of the past when the
issues were relatively ~ simple,
and the battle was between
miners and mineowners.

Len Doherty has tackled the
infinitely more difficult task
of writing about the puzzling
complexities of the contempor-
ary scene and, in doing so, bril-
liantly lights up the problems
of today in a way that it wilk
give miners and non-miners a
more profound understanding of
them.

He has done it in a story
that is gripping and interesting
from start to finish.

be bo 53

How very vivid his writing
is. When Ma’s hopping about
laying the table, you can very
nearly see her by you in her
clean pinny and with the ‘fire-
light dancing on the cups and
saucers.

The Communist party branch
meeting, in the newly furnished
front room of the council house
is a gem—I wish I could have
joined in, especially as I violent-
ly disagreed with the decisions
they took!

In some ways this Communist
party branch is the hero of the
book. With its weaknesses and
its setbacks and little triumphs,
it struggles to find its feet and
establish its place in the min-
ing community.

In doing so, it brings a new
hope and a new zest for life to
many of the men and women
whose li a

has written.

: bound up with

coal mining.

Through his sons it helps Mel-
lers, the old miner whose life
has the bitter tragedy common
to many pitmen.

He recalls his own father,
“withering away in the old
armchair,” drawing him close
as,a child to wheeze, “Thou’llt
never be a collier! Hear me?
They'll never use up thy body
and chuck it away to rot on
charity. Promise — promise
me now thou'llt nevet be a
collier.”

But though Mellers promised,
he too went to the pit and now
coughs his life away with
pneumoconiosis!

It puts meaning into life for
Herbert, the younger son, devil-
may-care and wild, but sensi-
tively aware of the dangers and

dread of pit life, yet proud as

they all are of being a pitman,
but wanting more from life
than ceaseless, back-breaking
toil.

Len Doherty is less than fair
to British miners’ wives. He
makes them, as they are, loyal
and steadfast to their menfolk,
brave - hearted companions of
brave men. He also makes
them, as they are not, ponucal
ninnies,

In one way or another, every
woman in the book is with
Jean, “Politics is for men.
They’ve now’t better to worry
7am.”

As a great working-class
novel, A Miner’s Sons, deserves

-its place on our bookshelves

alongside The Ragged Trouser-
ed Philanthropist.

It has the answer for our
times. Not now the individual
rebel, but the Communist par-
ty, with its collective strength,
as the guarantee of a happy,
purposeful life and a golden
future.

GLADYS BROOKS

Eskimo art display popular a i

Here Susan Villaneuve hold one of the Canadian Eskimo
carving from the collection in the National Museum at Ottawa.
The collection, from both the Eastern and Western Arctic, is one

of the most popular with visitors.

A more limited display at

Vancouver Art Gallery last year, obtained on loan pao aaa
collectors in this city, proved equally popular.

JANUARY 27, 1956 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 8