News From All Quarters

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 7, 8 January 1916, Page 15

News From All Quarters

"WAR DEPRESSION" MALADY. "I hope this is not a ntew disease," remarked Judge 'Roberts at Clerkenwell I County Court, London, when a man handed < up a medical certificate stating that lie » was suffering from "war depression." £ r : ! i WINTER CLOTHING FOR THE AXXIES. A. War Office contract for 600,000 sheets and 100,000 blankets is now toeing filled in Canada. The amount of toe contract is about £200,000, and the supplies axe lor the winter campaign in Flanders. The contract -was placed in Canada by the International War 'Purchasing Commission in iLondon. The Italian -winter campaign in the Alps will necessitate heavier clothing than its generally used by the troops of that country, and Canada will be given a chance to do its share in providing supplies. LABELS FOR SHALL CHILDREN. A suggestion that all children under five years of age should wear a small medallion wrth their names and addresses suspended from-the neck under the clothes is made by Mr. Frank L.'Emannel, a special constable in iLondon. "About 395 children were found wandering in the City of London last year, and some such figure is recorded annually. If we take all the police districts there must be thousands of lost children taken charge of by the police in a year," said Mr. Emanuel to a "Daily Mail" representative. "These little ones give the police a great deal of avoidable work. Often the children either <Jo not know wfcere they live, or are too frightened to cay." SURVIVAL OF THE UNFIT. i■ — £ Chicago was deeply stirred by the case of a baby born recently in a hospital which the surgeon said should be allowed to die, though an operation migh.t have saved its life. "I did," says the doctor, "what the parents gave mc an option to d O . I allowed nature to take her own course. If I allowed a defective child to live I might be guilty of a crime against the race." Miss Jane Addams, the prominent Suffragist, denounced the doctor as an enemy of the I human race. She declared, "Every infant is born in this world -with, the inherent right to have a chance to live." The mother of the infant said, "Dying now i» better than living with a crippled brain and body. The jury at the inquest exonerated the doctor from all blame. INSIDE THE SHARK. A most remarkable document was filed in connection with the trial at.New York of officiate and employees of the HamburgAmerika Line, who "were charged with /having attempted to send coal and provisions from United States ports to German warships when the war began. This .affidavit describes the attempt of the capjtain of the steamship Maria Quesada, from (Newport News, and ostensibly bonnd for Valparaiso, to avoid ..giving-Information to the Brazilian authorities at Pernambuco, where the vessel put in, having.failed to find the German cruiser she sought. The captain put' the ship's papers in a bag, and threw them overboard, but later the bag and its contents were found by some Brazilians in the belly of a shark which they caught, and the real mission of the vessel was discovered. Millions of dollar*, the United States Government asserts,. Mwe been spent in chartering and supplying ships for work of this kind on both the Atlantic' and Pacific. THE NEW EUROPE. The Earl of ; Bosebery, Chancellor of the University of London, presiding at the first of a series :of Rhodes Lectures to be delivered by Professor J. H. Morgan, Professor ot Constitutional Laws in the University, on "The War and the Political Unity- of the said: —"I am sure-I am only expressing your views when I offer to Pro : fossor Morgan our warmest thanks for thft fascinating address to -which. <we have just listened. I completely agree with his thesis as I understand it that the old Europe as we knew it has disappeared never return in ■ its present shape, and that at the conclusion o'-tbe war, whatever may be the form that it will assume, it will be nothing like the form .with which, we ■ have been familiar. There is one obvious reason for this, which is that in future it will be. quite impossible to take note, of treaty arrangements between great Powers .without obtaining some material guarantee for their observance. (Cheers.) Of course, it is a truism to say that the signature of Ger' many, or, I »lKmld rather say, Prussia, to any instrument of any. kind will have lost all value for any measurable dlstlnce of trme which ive can contemplate. When the arduous efforts of the i Peace Congress are complete, and when the task which will He before the. plenipotentiaries is over, there will appear beyond the mountain, summits the almost gigantic task of > reorganising the British Empire (Cheers.) We have not hitherto been very elastic in our constitu- ■ tional dealings, but we shall have to clean a good deal off our slate before we begin to i write reorganisation upon it God grant I that wisdom and power'may, be given to our ■ statesmen on that day, 'whenever it may 1 come, and that patriotism will be shown as 1 much in those bloodless. councils as it has ' been, on the fields of the Dardanelles and of Flanders. (Cheers.) - •••:

THE RABBIT TRACT. So great is the demand for rabbits in England that rabbit trains are being run over some of the branch lines in Devon, and Somerset. Dealers have established services of motor lorries to bring the rabbits from the farms on which they have been caught to the nearest distributing centres. In normal times Devon farmers are content to receive 6d a rabbit. Nowsome dealers are giving 1/, for freshlytrapped rabbits. Quaker longevity; " ,JL rf j ■ Quakers have been noted lor the longevity of their memberst and an "interesting example of the continued troth o£ the fact was furnished a few weeks back by an "old age party" at WMttier, California, to commemorate the 106 th birthday of a woman Friend, Lydia Heald Shaxpless. Altogether, seventy-three - persons over seventy were present. Active part in the proceedings was taken by elderly FWends of eighty-eight, eighty-three, and eightytwo; while others present were aged, ninetysix, ninety-four, eighty-six eighty-four, eighty-two, and eighty-one. ■ I UNIQUE CORNISH INDUSTRY. '. The strange experiences of an American schooner which left -Fowey -with china clay for America, and had to put back into Queenstown for repairs, after battling with •the Atlantic lor eight weeks, calls attention to one of Cornwall's most valuable products (says the "Westminster Gasette"). This is the very interesting deposit of disintegrated granite known as china clay, which is indispensable for the making ot hard or "true" porcelain form the production: of which Cornwall has drawn as much as £250,000 per annum before now. Its chief properties -were first discovered, * so' far as this country ds concerned, 3jy one William Cookworthy, of Plymouth, about the middle of the eighteenth century, biit tie Chinese, who call it kaolin, knew all about it, of course, a great deal earlier, and kept the knowledge from the world at large for many centuries as a valuable trade secret , -»« A RARE BIRD. ; The news that New Zealand has" the Belgians as food one thousand and ten black swans, carefnlly preserved and chilled, may remind us that the black swan Is a distinct variety confined to Australasia, observes the "Sunday Times."' Dutch navigators discovered it in 1697, and Cook found it plentiful enough all over' Australia. It has a coral-like bill, banded with ivory, and its black plumage is relieved by whitei wing , feathers. The South American ewan'is a. smaller edition of ours, with red bill: and red feet. Cygnets in England ; were'''once esteemed a table delicacy, and there seems still a swan-pit at Norwich where they are fattened for the tables "In! Elizabeth's days you had to secure a license to keep a swan, and to have your bird distinctively ittarked on the bill. The swan is a i "blid-Toyal."' The King and the Companies of Dyere and. Vintners still maintain their"''"games'* of swans on the Thames, and yearly In August the business of swan-npping requires an expedition, in which the cygnets are taken. up and marked. MILLIONS IN LUXURIES. . The Chancellor of the Excheqner .'ls "considering -whether fnrther steps can be taken to restrict the consumption of luxuries," remarks a London paper. Great sums are still spent on luxuries. The following are a few'of the "luxuryImports for October and. for £he-;ten months op to October 31:—i '• ,•■*... " Imports. ! Pctdberv Off Months Silk goods 0i235,0*8 " 1^306,826 Wme ••--r— 260,628 2,460,935 Foreign spirits--, 2,035^96 Crapes, raw......W 288,9« 47<£77T Pears, raw.. U-J 32,829 236,120 Toys and games.. _, 75567 ' 396J5* Hate and bonnets.. 23,600 423,854 "I estimate that the change of fashion from tight skirts to wider onds Involved, the expenditure of £12,000,000 among; 8,000,000 women," said one of .the officiate of the Women's War. Economy League*. "Apparently the demand, tor silks, goes on*.. nnchecked.". , ,' EVERYTHING EARLIER. ' The new licensing order 'far Irtndon; pn>«. Tides for earlier cloning stiQ—9.3o pjn. an«.. 9on Sundays. Banks are to <*cc at 3 'pjn* The movement for earlier dStng,' eaxtteo bed-time, earlier shopping; uuct theatre-going continues /mabafed.' ' . Earlier business -has a stromy soppbrter) In Sir George Pcagnell, -whose snggeettoa for daylight saving is that businessmhonki / begin and end one hour eailler from* Do* cember 1 to March li '■'•'---. '"It is now a good'time to grre eajiigtre saving a trial," said Sir George to & Mall" representative, "owing to the facts that the only two valid objections whteic, were urged against it-Hfitamj ; In with/ Con« tihental train, servieee and. the difficulty] with the American. Stock Exchange—am now practically in abeyaoctL "In large business hooecs iwir «nj*jyinis so many young girls and boys it is difficult. If apt dangerous, for these young people t« be about the streets at Sight. ' Earßtet business would also make it easier to Te-> emit men of military age, and it wild give more time for preliminary drills. ,, GIRLS IN THE BANK. . Oh,, the litltle more, and how ranch, it Isl ■And We little less, and what worlds awaxl —Slobert Browning, This couplet was quoted Eoad-hnmoumilyi by a London 'bask accountant wJk> -was opening letters of application for posts ot women clerks to fill the places of men wna have enlisted. "They are all Vllling,' he eaia -to a "Dally Mail" representative, "trustworthy and reliable," -with ""unquestionable, references," and all have been' "well educated"; but the fact remains .that ihey do not.know, much about accounts. An N elementary knowledge of these things would make them most valuable. As it is we Siave to "train them on. -, "Women clerks on the whole arc very good," said the. accountant. ' "On the 'correspondence desk' we find many openings for women in writing 'acknowledgments,' .'overdraft reminders,' and other things of a more or less routine nature with' a common form of wording, but we still find that more particular letters have to tie dictated by men clerks. For the hankers' clearing we employ some women in preparing tha different bank lists of cheques, and "we have one or two who are wonderfully expert on the ndding machines. "For the rest of ronttae hank work I do not doubt lihat our women, clerks will very soon be efficient. We have one or two excellent young women just now whosework I am watching closely because so far as I have seen they seem remarkably quick and able, and I believe they can beVevaitu* ally put Into responsible posts." _: -