THE NOME NUGGET
Published Monday. Wednesday and Friday by The
NOME PUBLISHING CO.
Nome, Alaska
Telephone: Main 125 P. O. Box 618
W. A. and EMILY BOUCHER .Editors
$1.50 PER MONTH S16.00 A YEAR
Entered as second class matter October 14. 1943, at the postoffict
at Nome. Alaska, under the Act of March 3, 1879
Monday, May 17, 1948.
BRITAIN TAKES IN DISPLACED PERSONS
1 )URING MAY another 5,000 displaced persons
from Europe are starting life again in Britain. They
have come to join the 40.455 refugees and displaced
persons to whom Britain has given sanctuary since
July 1, 1947, twice as many as any other country in
the world. Belaium is the nearest runner-un with
17,001. The total number of refugees to whom Brit
ain has given sanctuary since the war began is
325,000.
These thousands of immigrants from Central Eur
ope. Poland, the Baltic. Yugoslavia and the Ukraine
are settling down in Britain quickly.
The first who came are billeted in camps and
airfields near Yorkshire mining villages. When they
arrived they wore a hotch-potch of British and Amer
ican uniforms and could manage only a few words
of En'glish. Today they are a part of the community,
no longer labeled "The D.P.s."
All of these European Volunteer Workers enroll
in Germany.
Some, are filling manpower gaps in the mines,
iron and steel works, others in textiles, agriculture
and hospitals.
Large-scale efforts are being made to accustom
them to the British ways of life. From the transit
camp at Harwich they go to one of five instructional
centers for an eight-week course where they leain
the currency and customs of their adopted land.
All nationalities are mixed in classes of 18 or 20.
They must speak only in English, and lessons are
conducted by instructors picked from among them-;
selves.
The man in charge of this high-pressure school
ing is Bertram Lewis Vulliamy, Director of Studies
for the National Coal Board. He taught English in
Finland, Czechoslovakia, Russia and France. He
has only a scanty knowledge of his pupils' tongues, j
but he regards this as an advantage.
Vulliamy has spent 15 years evolving his system
of teaching English. He calls it the "Natural Meth
od." Since the courses started early this year he
has turned out 160 instructors and 800 students.
A young Yugoslav who could not say "yes" two
months ago can now talk at ease and write coher-j
ent, correctly spelled letters. A Ukrainian who knew
only his own Cyrillic alphabet mastered the Eng
lish alphabet in one week. • ,
Refugee students get 30 shillings ($8.00) pocket
money a week at instructional camps, for cigarettes,
movies carfare ,and other small items. When they
pass on to the technical training centers, they get
an allowance of 90 shillings ($18) weekly.
Basis of instruction in the British way of life is
political, administrative and social. Students take in
sessions at local police courts, attend the theatre,
play games with local sports and youth clubs.
At technical centers where the newcomers train to
be coal miners, only two of the lessons are taught
in their own languages. One gives them a working
knowledge of some 300 or 400 British mining terms.
A second deals with the social order they are to
enter.
During the v;ar many of them worked in German
factories, mostly as forced labor. Many were pro
fessionals in their own countries—engineers, doc
tors, chemists. Others were highly skilled agricul
tural workers, dressmakers and hairdressers. Some
ere iuct turned 18, others are in their 40's.
Britain is playing a major part in the support
WHAT THIS COUNTRY DOESN'T NEED
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and rehabilitation of these people displaced from
their homes by the war. The job of re integrating
them in world society as useful, happy citjzens is
a costly one.
Since the war, Britons iiave spent £ 129,300.000
(about $519,200,009) to make homes for the foreign
nationals unable or unwilling to return to their point
of origin.
Yet the job is not half-way finished. Another 900,
000 D.P.s—mostly in European camps—are still a
waiting homes, according to the International Ref
ugee Organization. Of these, 17,300 have their visas
but are held up by lack of shipping space. Another
157,000 will soon join the waiting list. . . . they have
been selected for resettlement overseas but are not
yet through all'the formalities
Recently, the interior department, made the pro
posal that selected D.P.s be colonized in Alaska.
This dates also back to wartime when the same de
partment tried to make a penal colony out of Al
aska by putting the undesirables to settle the terri
tory. Other proposals have been made from time
to time but it took the British to get to the bottom
of the problem and work out a system of rehabili
tation for the displaced people of Europe.
Perhaps something can be worked out for these
peoples of fhe countries from which many of our
forebears came to make homes in the land of the
free.
i
BRITAIN ACCLAIMS THE ERP
(The Times, London) ,
§l
. Even the sight of the actual cargoes which
will soon be leaving American ports for Europe will
be no more heartening than the demonstration of
how quickly democracy can act in emergency—and
the evidence that the United Stated now conside s
her interests to be bound up with those of Europe
and the v/orld. Even a few months ago there were
still dangers that this generous and imaginative
gesture might be defeated by inability to compre
hend the magnitude of the need, by the natural des
ire to safeguard the interests of American consum
ers and avoid the return of controls, and by the im
position of terms which would undermins the econ
omic and political foundations of cooperation. . . .
. . .The task now is for the countries of Eur
ope to respond with an equal courage and vigour.
Whether the answer will be given, as it can now
be given, with achievement and conviction, de
pends upon the will and the ability of the sixteen
nations to work together as one and with wisdom
in giving fresh life and a new shape to the mater
ial and spiritual resources of Europe. If the Mar
shall Plan founders now, or the Communist wreck
ers have their way, it will be Europe^s fault."
30 YEAR ANNIVERSARY
U.S. AIRMAIL SERVICE
On June 14, 1910, Represent
ative Sheppard of Texas intro
duced a bill to investigate the
practicability of an aeroplane or
airship mail route. No action
was taken.
During September 1911 an ex
perimental air mail service pouch
was dropped by Postmaster Gon
e:al Hitchcock from a plane pi
loted by Captain Beck of the U.S.
\ rmy.
In 1912 a recommendat on was
made o Congress that $50,000 be
mpropria'ed for an experimental
. a vice.
In 1916
riiaole, but there were no b l
ders.
On May 15, F’U the f . * .
"rhl route vras c : b! id
m N ■ ■ Yo : and
ton, D.C. v a Phdndel ohia. The
ti i 1 vel to be succe fol and
a S 1920 th fi st 5 a ss
r •ntine.;‘.;il mad r p \ a. made,
t• ven v-tw i tin »:•.-• ah d of the
: 'n schedules.
a 1935 the first irons-Pacific
a’r mad service was inaugurated
•r een San Francisco via Ha
vrai to the Philippines. Four years
1 ter a trans-Atlantic service was
established from New York to
Marseilles. France.
PuMng 1945, the present five
cent rate was established in the
United States and the territories.
Mexico and Canada were also
given the same rate. Today the
air mail rate to the countries of
V
i'urope is 15 cents a half-ounce,
twenty-five cents to Afrca and
' ia and ten cents a half-ounce
'o Central and South America,
exce; Cuba which is 8 cents per
half-ounce.
Today it is possible to send
air mail packages to 23 foreign
countries at the same rate as
letters. It is only a matter of a
few years when the entire globe
vv:ll be encircled by air mail car
riers, shrinkng the world to with
in a few hours from any given
point.
To us here at Nome, the air
mail service means a great deal.
Many of us can remember not
so many years ago when mail
was brought in by dogteam and
mail was very seldom less than
a month old compared with 18
hours from Seattle and four times
a week, even regardless of wea
ther. Today, even to the remotest
village of the second division the
plane delivers and takes out the
m l an i the dogteam mail sleds
nd dogs have become an age in
the history of the territory.
The first mail brought into
Nome was by Noel Wien during
1928 and in 1932 Bill Graham and
George Laiblin completed the f:rst
Star route contract f-om Unr.l i
kleet to Nome. The following ye r
the Pan American Airways bid
and obtained the contract to car
ry mail from Fairbanks to Nome
It was a weekly run which was
later increased to three times a
week.
Today Nome is served by four
mails a week from Seattle; name
ly, Monday, Tuesday, Wednes
day, and two mails on Friday.
Although parcel post is restrict
ed from the outside during the
period from October first to Ap
ril first, air mail packages up to
70 pounds are accepted at the
rate of eighty cents a pound. And
this means from any part of the
United States, and furthermore,
at the same speed ♦is letter air
mail.
Even though some of .the vil
lages in this division are quite
remote from Nome, thanks is due
to the “Bush Pilots” that they all