In the rough over golf ...
QUESTION Did a game of golf lead to the fall of the French government after World War I?
Aristide Briand (1862 –1932) was the socialist Prime Minister of France during the French Third republic on six separate occasions between 1909 and 1929, heading 11 separate governments.
in January 1922, in the wake of the Treaty of Versailles, Briand was at a conference in Cannes with British Prime Minister david Lloyd George, considering how to deal with Germany’s inability to pay reparations.
Briand and Lloyd George had had a thorny relationship, but meetings that January had been cordial and resulted in agreement to resolve differences over German reparations, to draw up a defensive Anglo-French pact and to convene a conference to promote european trade. Bizarrely, the entire agreement was derailed by a game of golf.
After a particularly trying session with the German delegation, Lloyd George suggested lunch at the resort town of Mandelieu. Briand agreed and expressed his wish to give the ‘ridiculous game’ of golf a go.
Lloyd George offered to give 60-year-old Briand his first golf lesson and, in the company of Lord Wester Wemyss and Lord riddell, the group made their way to the first tee. several correspondents and a film crew followed the party.
on the first tee, Briand addressed the ball with an attitude of contempt and, to his great astonishment, his swing propelled the ball only a few yards. A laughing Lloyd George retrieved the ball and the French premier tried again with a similar lack of success.
The game lasted only a few holes before Briand gave it up in disgust. Film footage of the period shows that Briand’s swing was hardly fit for purpose.
it was a trivial incident, but Briand’s enemies made great play of the story. some members of t he government t hought he had succumbed to t he influence of Lloyd George’s magnetic personality and rumours spread about Paris that he was about to come to an accommodation with Germany.
Photographs of Briand walking out to the tee with Lloyd George were exhibited as proof that Briand had forgotten his duty to France in his infatuation for the crafty Lloyd George.
on his return to Paris, Briand tried to chastise his detractors, but was forced to resign, leaving French foreign policy in the hands of the reactionary raymond Poincare and the agreement in tatters. Briand went on to champion the newly-created League of nations and established a reputation as an international pacifist. determined to foster Franco-German reconciliation, in 1926 he was a co-recipient with Gustav stresemann of the nobel Peace Prize.
Sandra Gillingham, Southwell, notts.
QUESTION Are the Chinese still planning to build their own version of the Panama cCanal going through Nicaragua?
in June 2013, nicaragua’s national Assembly approved a bill to grant a 50- year concession to f i nance and manage a 176-mile pan nicaraguan Canal to the private Hong Kong nicaragua Canal devel o p ment investment Company (HKND Group) headed by Wang Jing, the head of the Xinwei Telecom Technology Group.
shortly afterwards, Wang announced he had successfully attracted global investors to raise the necessary £35 billion. That december in Brito, nicaragua, Wang and President daniel ortega inaugurated the canal’s construction.
The plan was for dredgers to enter the Brito river in the west and excavate their way i nl and before entering Lake nicaragua, Central America’s largest lake. They would then cut their way through rainforests and wetlands in the east, until they reached rio Punta Gorda, on the Caribbean coast.
The project was slated to be completed in 2020, a highly ambitious timeline.
There are many critics of this canal project. some point to Wang’s secrecy, despite claims that the project is privately funded no accounts have been forthcoming, and there is speculation that Wang is merely the frontman for a state-supported extension of soft Chinese power into an area once dominated by the u.s.
others poi nt to t he potential environmental problems, particularly on Lake nicaragua, one of the most diverse freshwater ecosystems in the world.
The project has recently hit two major stumbling blocks. According to financial news service Bloomberg, Wang’s personal fortune has declined from £7 billion to £700 million thanks to China’s volatile equity markets. Wang i s notoriously secretive, so his current position on the project is uncertain.
officially the slow pace of work on the canal has also been attributed to waiting for the environmental and social impact assessment. This was published in June 2015 and was largely favourable, but instead of ramping up work, the company said in a statement: ‘The construction of locks and the big excavations will start toward the end of 2016.’
it seems likely that the condition of the Chinese economy this year will dictate whether the project goes ahead. it will certainly not be completed by 2020.
Dr Ken Bristow, Glasgow.
QUESTION Is it true that men and women see the colour red differently (making lipstick shade irrelevant)?
FURTHER to the earlier answer, i was a magazine printer for many years, and quite often customers would arrive on press to approve colour matching to proofs or photographs. if both male and female customers were present, approval would generally take longer as they would view colour differently.
if i felt the approval process was taking too long, i would inform them t hat each i ndividual sees colour in different ways and each person even views colour differently through their own left and right eyes.
To prove this point i would ask them to look at an image containing a range of colours such as a country view or beach scene, then alternatively open and close their left and right eyes to see how completely differently colour can appear.
This simple test would illustrate my theory on colour perception and convince them that it was, in fact, a subjective process. This usually speeded up the approval procedure, after which they would leave us to carry on with the printing of the magazines.
Leighton Hughes, Lithographer, rhondda, South Wales.
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