Sidelights On the War

Auckland Star, Volume XLVIII, Issue 36, 10 February 1917, Page 15

Sidelights On the War

Germany, »«TB the "gologne Gazette," is approaching with rapid strides ever nearer 1 tta Spartan Ideal in which the individual Is ] acthine •Uβ the State everything. ] J XBtfzns are once more on the <warpe.th. ' But ttis time their war patot will be Bri- 1 tish. Twelve hirndred have enlisted tor general service in Canada's annj-. ( Brltiah hospital surgeon* hare adopted ' green uniforms in plare of the long need suits of white. The hospitals also are J being fitted In green. The colour » said ' to be less t.-yir.g to the eyes o* both ' patient and doctor. ' 5 The German soldiers in Belgium. Poland, and elsewhere are encouraged to seek female society. Children born fxotn such < onions are considered German, and there- « fore desired. But a German woman must s be friendly with a foreipcn prisoner, t TSven a mild flirtation or words of sym- i path? brine a prison sentence. If she has s a child it will not be German. ' 1 OWE DRINK COST £90. [ At Liverpool a woman licensee was fined ' HO for selling vermouth after hours, and i two cnatomers were fined £25 each for ■Idles an l * abetting. BRITISH WIDOWS FOR CANADA < Thousands of BTitish 'war -widows and J their children flre to be transported to Canada, with the expectation that many! cf tie -women will be married to Canadian j farmere. according to the plans of Commis-1 sionc-r David Lamb, or the International' ' ■Emigration Society of the Solvation Ai-my. WALKED 350 MILES TO ETTLIST As an instance of the enthusiasm with : ■which some of our men responded to the j < call to the Colours. Private Christie, who \ walked from Vermillion Sboots to Atha- : hasca I-andlng. a distance of 350 miles. In < the dead of winter, to enlist. He was accompanied on this walkings tour by three "hustles." and when at last he boarded the train, these faithful .dogs crouched by i the track and whined for two days. Pri-' vate Christie is in the famous regiment, '•the Little Black Devils," of Winnipeg. ' and ie now enjoying a well earned fur-i 3ougb, having recently been wounded at the front. BELGIAN " SLAVERY " IN ENGLAND. The German Press Bureau, in order to divert attention from the horrors of Biss-; ing's slave-raids, has hit upon the idea of, spreading broadcast a fantastic tale about ! "enslavement of Belgians in En-gland."; •Hesortlns to the threadbare and favouritetrick of Biemcrckinu vintage, "a thoroughly' neutral newspaper" is used for the purpose! this time a Swiss Social Democratic i journal which is evidently eating out of! the WHhelmstrasses' hand .-.s dutifully as'; "Vorwarts" itself. The kernel of the! German-fiwi3s yarn is that "for two years! thousands upon thousands of 'Belgian! refugees have been impressed into muni-j tion service in England, under conditions! •which 'would put the horrors of Cingalese'plantations to shame." Buddings of the past. The Grand: Dnke of \ trill miss 'hie -Christmas pudding for the| teinj time In succession this year. He Tised to have sent to him from, a leading! ajondoo confectioner's three Christmas pud- j dings weighing four Jmndrediwelght each. \ Q3iey -were made in trasins two α-nd a-half ■ feet tagh and nve feet across, and cost £S1 10/ each. The same firm used to send to Abdul! Aziz (as was) a special Moroccan Christmas pnddlng, the gift of a European friend of; the wayward Su-ftan. j And yet another exotic customer of this firm was an American lady, who had a standing order for a Hundred one-guinea puddings, a foot high by a foot across. And this despite the tariff of 50 per cent imposed by t!he Sew l'ork customs. A GERMAN HORROR. In the course of conversation with the medical staff'-of a Paris hospital, during which many phases of German methods •were treated for my benefit (says a correspondent of a London paper), I learned of a horror which, although unknown to the general public, was vouched for on the narrator's honour. As there exists no reason why this doctor, repatriated from "Germany, should not be believed, his story of how glycerine is now ohtained in that conntry is perhaps the most revolting: example of Teutonic infamy. It would appear that the sending to the interior of German dead, tied in packets of three. Is the preliminary stage of a process which ends in the extraction from these bodies of the necessary oils and fats forming the* principal components in the manufacture ot glycerine. Tnus have the ■Germans found a convenient. If repulsive, way out of a dilemma which threatened their explosives md ordnance departments. GOLF tJTTDSK SHEIK FIRE. A six-hole golf course within sound of the guns, on which hazards are ehell craters, is described by a private attached to British Army headquarters '-somewhere In France. '• Rifleman A. T. Gardiner, who before the •war was a Fleet Street newspaper reporter, sent a sketch of tbe <ourss to the London "Chronicle," wbi"h produced it in a recent issue. *The lowest score for any hole on the course is four." he wrote. "Golf is a great game, but expensive to a Tommy's limited means, esppcinlly here, where it is played under conditions which -would shock the Boul of a real golfer. "To-day my'first shot was bad and the ball was gone for ever (debit one and onehalf day's pay). Yesterday my opponent broke a club (debit 9/) and lost a ball (another 1/10), but he's a plutocrat on 8/f a day and can afford it." Garffißer'e pay is a shilling a day, the ordinary rate for the British Tommy. A WEIL-FED ARMY. The soldiers in the Italian army eacl month send home to their families out o: tiieir ■pay £830,000, according to the arm: post office statistics. This fact is attri bnted. to the economic disposition of th( individual soldier, and also to tue abundan army ration, which makes I' unaecessar; for him to buy private supplies of wine tobacco or food. "W?iy, they walie us «p in the mornini *o rtrink a glass of rum!" one entira elastic Alpani. The total quantity of the ration i •lightly over four ;iouuds. with an addi tional allowance during periods or Ulan ■wot]: or firrhtin;;. The dally *r«-ad of th soldier weighs rmc nnd -a-hn'.f pound, wit! two pouTrds on special ocr-apions. His dail; drink consists or a half-pint nf wine, wit t ■full pint in bad weather or during period of luird labour. T!i>> other items In liis ration are meal Ptgar, relief, lard, potatoes or beans, sail ©eirper, cheese, chocolate, dry figs tmdi cat*

Tie Kaieer gave tie OhanceUor a eauttfnl vase, and an the men*tir e etf the mperial femlly, including the Crown 'lince, called at the Chancellor , * pelace.— Ixchange." In accordance -wita* las usual ractloe the Crown Prince came after «he ase.— "Pxmch." Mr J. L. Garcin told a IjonOtra audlemce !»at on one of his rare Yislts to the erman Embassy lie noticed ike curious slection of books on the shelves In the -aiting-room. One -was "Darkest England nd the Way Out," and others described ie ruin of our agriculture, the disgrace £ our slums, the Incompetence of our lanafacturers, and the defects which juld make our Navy the prey of an active nd vigorous antagonism. Two German officers escaped xrom the ' etention camp at Hol.vport, Berks, by an xtremely Ingenious ruse. They hid tnemslves beneath waste-paper in a ehed, and > get air used a stick of elderwood from •talch the pith had been removed. The tick Juet emerged from the heap of paper. 'wo orderlies with bartows arrived at ie shed to take the waste-peper away. 'he officers got into the barrows, were t>vered -with a thin layer of paper, and 'heeled past the unsuspecting sentries to place where they made their escape. BUYING COPPER COINS. The news that the Scandinavian ountrles are contemplating the substitution i iron for their copper ore pieces because E the "cornering" of the latter coins by -erman agents for transport to Germany ?nds support to the allegations that the 'Crinans were bu3'ing Dutch copper coins t a substantial premium for the same urpose. % A POWDERLESS GUN. Under government regulation, E. X. Rice, n American electrical engineer, has conucted a test of a new centrifugal force, lowdcrless, noiseless, machine sun. Rice laims his invention will discharge 3000 alf-ineh steel balls a minute at a velocity T t 4000 feet a second. The machine is un by an electric motor, which revolves wheel containing several cup blades, ■"rom a box above the balls are fed through o the plate, which discharges them hrough the barrel. Since in war time it fill be necessary to have a power line vhen the gun Is te be used, officers are loubtful if the gun will be accepted by he Government. GLOOMY WIXHELMSHAVEIC. The "Wilhelmshavener Zeitung" pubishes a proclamation by ihe Military Governor ordering that all hotels, cafes, jars, theatres, cinemas, and other places if amusement, clubs, private societies, and restaurants in TVilhelmshnven, whether :hey sell non-alcoholic drinks o r not—in fact, any places where food or drink is served—must close at eleven in the evenng. The smaller beer halls and establishments whore females serve, and those frequented by sailors, must close at seven. urgent necessity of saving fuel and light und certain particular measures which are GERMAN MACHINE GUNS. Major Moraht. the well known German Military writer, declares that the increased ?tfectiveness of German machine-gun are luring the Allied offensive is successfully :ounteracting their artillery superiority. "This has been brought about,"' he says, 'not only because the number of our tna-ciilne-guns has considerably grown, but ilso because their tactical use has been so highly developed during the war itself. We must remember that It is the flrst war in liy us. For all these reasons it is not to be wondered at that the front line of the Allies in the Somme and Ancre region, despite their initial superiority in artillery, (has been pushed forward only very gradually." QUITE ENOUGH. In the Vienna newspapers we flnd precious examples of the Austrian journalistic touch in describing the late Emperor's funeral. One extract from the "Allgemelne Zeitung" will be enough:—"Motionless the ■masses of people watched.. The 'plekelhauben' of the guards, the field-grey lines of the troops -watched. There stretched the empty long-drawn pavement whost The drums beat. There passed the rlglc silhouette of the German Crown Prince the wise thinker-profile of the Bulgarian King, the Bavarian ruler, his features radiant with tender gopdnees, the Saxor KJng in his heartiness, the King oi Wurtemburg'e venerable dignity, th< Turkish helr-appa rent's grandeur. ,, Th< newspaper which rejrales its readers wit) this paragraph suddenly breaks off a "grandeur." and adds one word"Enoush." , PASTE MARMAUIDE. Professor Be.vthien. of the Dresden Chemical Research Laboratory, has Invented a new kind of marmalade, called paste-marmalade. to which name the Dresden. "N'eueste Naehrlchten" takes exception. The professor says that the cfiief ingredient is an artificially coloured, sweetened, and scented paste of meal with a very slight addition of fruit-pulp. This marmalade has nothing in common with the ninrinalafle to which the housewife is accustomed, but. tie professor claims, it Is a good nourishing food, and not at all injurious, as are the marmalade substitutes now offered to the public. The "N T eueste Naehrichten" says that the nation is very grateful to its chemists for providing substitute foods, but what is It, it asks, that : induces them to give these r'.iei. • produced articles names that are wholly misleading? "Professor Beythien's 'pastemarmalade' neither tastes, nor smells, nor looks like marmalade. Then why call it marmalade?" TOTS, PIANOS, AND MOUTH ORGANS. According to South German papers, among the numerous Industries which are in a moribund condition owing to the war and the consequent cessation of exports are those of toys and musical Instruments. Practically the entire trade, as far as exports are concerned, ie dead. Some idea of the extent of the pre-war toy trade ">«r be had from the fact that In 1013 no less a quantity than 56,500 tons were exported, representing a value of close on £6,000,000. In the group of ■musical instruments more than half the value was represented by pianos. The value of the pianos exported in 1913 was nearly £2,500,000. The -Schwabische Merkur" states that the piano and "American" organ trade is languishing as home orders are -wholly lacking and export is not to b e thought of. Mouth organs; and concertinas, save for the troops, are no longer manufactured. In--1013 they represented a weight of 4700 tons, exported to all t>arts of th e world. \notner industry -which flourished in the old days—clocks, ivatcbes, and grandfather clocks representing a value in exports alone of £2,500,00— is also on Mβ last legs. To the United Kingdom alone 2150,000 German clocks were exported in 1313, or nearly a third of the entire export of that year.