News From All Quarters

Auckland Star, Volume XLIX, Issue 82, 6 April 1918, Page 15

News From All Quarters

Greek notables in Bulgaria are being compelled to work as labourers at road-making. Salt used recently on the streets to melt the snow has affected the water in certain quarters of Paris and made it undrlnkable. For carrying out the new plan of fuel distribution the American Fuel Administration has divided the United States Into 20 producing districts with a practical coal expert at the head of each. Referring to the prosperity of the fishing industry, Mr Tltkler, M.P. for Grimsby, remarked that a skipper had earned as much as £500 In a fortnight, a skipper getting one-tenth of the amount made in a trip. Exports from the United States of breadstuffs, cotton, and meat In December, 1917, aggregated 191,35i,000d0l (£38,270.000), as against 172,000,000d0l (£34,400,000) in December, 1910. Nearly all went to the AUles. WOMAN AS FINGER-PRINT EXPERT. A twenty-two-year-old girl is one of the U.S. Government leading flnger-print experts. She is Marie Dahm, of New York City, the second woman of her profession to enter the Government's service. AN ECCENTRIC WILL. Adolph Metzer, a retired soap manufacturer of Evansvllle,_ Indiana, has made a will which is not to be opened until the year 2163—that Is, 246 years from now. It is placed in air-tight metal tubes to withstand the ravages of time, and homeless dogs and cats are the beneficiaries-to-be. Mr Metzer has Invested ll.OOOdol, which at the end of tne specified time is expected to amount to a grand total of 201,559,641d01. 60 RELIGIONS IN ONE ARMY CAMP. More than sixty different religions beliefs are professed by Camp Dodge soldiers of the United States Eighty-eighth Division, according to a religious census Just completed. Catholics lead with 2585; Methodists are next with 2346; Lutherans, 1810; Presbyterians, 1322; Baptists, 633; Christian. 629; Episcopalians, 541; and Congxegatlonallsts, 532. " TOMBSTONES." The fumes of whisky issuing from among a number of tombstones which bad been Jostled about while being shipped from a Texas city -to the "Mary Dee Cemetery, Mountain View, Okia," attracted the attention of officials and resulted In the discovery of a considerable quantity of liquor packed In a box among a nnmber of tombstones and labelled in large letters, "Tombstones." Two negroes have been arrested, charged with violating the Internal revenue law by transporting liquor into dry territory. A PUGNACIOUS PARSON. Rumours accusing him of being "proGerman" came to the ears of the Rev. H. E. Ganstqr, rector of Christ Church, Waukegan (111.). Arising at a thrift stamp rally of which he was chairman, he challenged the rumour mongers to come forward and confront him. "There Is a narrow plot of ground between the rectory and Christ Church," he declared, "and I challenge any mm who called mc a pro-German to meet mc there. We will settle the matter not by Marquis of Queensbury rules, but with bare fists." SIMPLE LIFE IN JAPAN. Of all the eccentric characters in Japan, one of the most < famous and distinguished is Viscount Dr. Inajlro Tojiri, president of the Imperial Board of Audit. He flatters nobody, excepting himself, and is feared by all who are not slncers. Fearlessness of public opinion or ridicule Is dramatically exemplified in the simple and unpretentious life that he is leading. His food is of tbe simplest variety. He daily carries to the offlce a box filled with rice and some pickled plums, and during the last forty years he has ever stuck to this Spartan lunch. PRICES IN RUSSIA. Profiteering In Russia has been carried to an amazing extent. A tin of condensed milk imported from Britain, which cost sixpence, is sold in Petrograd for 30/, while English boots, when obtainable, fetch anything from £6 to £10 But it Is the selling of old clothes which Is the most profitable business in Russia to-day. No new clothes are to be had, and the result Is that suits well worn and five years old can be sold to a second-hand clothes dealer, who in turn makes a handsome profit for three times their original cost when new. PREFERRED GAOL FOR LIFE. "I will stay In gaol all my life before I will register for the draft." Dominlck Kuchan, Austrian alien, defied the Federal Court and refused to register when ordered to do so (says a New Tqrk paper). He has been in gaol since October because of his failure to comply with Government conscription regulations. "I win no t register," he announced. "If I did my people over in Austria would kill mc when I visited my native land again." The judge retorted: "When you get back home there won't be enough of your people left to kill you." The prisoner was returned to the gaol. TAR AND FEATHERS FOR PRO-GERMAN. L. H. Kcennn, for many years an attorney of Elkins (Virginia), was tarred and feathered by a parts of about twenty-flve masked men as a protest against strong proGerman sympathies. The lawyer was seized, bound and gagged in- the centre of the city while walking along the street with another attorney, *nd taken to an old house two miles south of Elkins. The party, driving In closed cars, stripped Keenan and covered him with tar, after which he was directed to replace his clothes. They, were covered with tar and feathers. The half empty tar bucket was turned over, the victim's head and he was wrapped In a tarpaulin and brought to his boarding house. " CRUMPS." "Sometimes names of shells go through several changes," says Mr L. Keene, a Canadian writer in his new" war book. "For example, high explosives »n the early part of the war were • called 'Black Marias,' -that being the slang name for the English police patrol wagon. Then they were called "Jack Johnsons,' then "coal boxes,' and finally they were christened 'crumps' on account of the sound they made—a sort of cru-ump noise—as they explode. 'Rum jar' Is the trench mortar. 'Sausage' is the slow-going aerial torpeao, a beastly thing about six feet long, with fins like a torpedo. It has 210 pounds of high explosive and makes a terrible hole. 'Whia bang' Is .shrapnel,"

Preaching for "poor, dark Brazil" at tha annual meeting of the Evangelical Union of South America, Pastor Fanstone said that the best Brazilian preacher he ever heard was a murderer who had done eight years in a penal settlement. The record number of 1348 lives wer. saved by British lifeboat work during last year. Since the outbreak of war over 4000 lives have been rescued and more than 150 ships ond vessels saved. The oldest choir singer in America, Mrs. Abigail M. Johnston, died at' her home in Shippensburg (P.A.) recently. She sang In the Presbyterian Church choir at Shippens- ~ burg sixty-nine years continuously, and rarely missed a Sunday. THE NEW BOUQUETS. Gigantic bouquets of real vegetables ant now to be seen in the florists' windows in Vienna. "These unwieldy, but effective bouquets," says "Die Zeit," "find not only daring purchasers, but also grateful reel- ~ pients," GOD'S SCOURGE. W. p. Douglas, a printer, and Aaron Secord, elders of the International Bibbs : Students' Association, were arrested in Toronto recently, charged with receiving, and distributing copies of "Finished Mystery," a prohibited publication, which; implies that Germans are a scourge sent' ' by God and a weapon In God's bands. The arrests followed a raid upon the offlce ot the association, where bundles of books - and literature were seized. FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD BIGAMIST. Mrs. Marlon Ross, 15 years old, is locked up in Elkton gaol awaiting a hearing on a charge of bigamy, preferred by her hu*- 1 band, Hugh Roiss, of Perry-ille, says a Chicago paper. According to the husband fie married tha girl In Windsor, Vt., September 12, 1917. One month after, he said, she deserted him and went to Bellow Falls, Vt., where she ! met a former sweetheart, to whom she was , married. The husband traced the pair to • Perryville, then to Baltimore, where he had ■ them arrested. FEATHERBED ENGUUVD. ' Miss Lena Ashwell, speaking at si National party meeting at Chelsea, said that in this featherbed of ours—England— we absolutely failed to conceive what war ; was. "Armchair condemnations, views and - . criticisms, which choke and suffocate the life of the nation, make oar hearts ache.. Thank God. there is a food shortage, thank God we are being held up in queues, thank God it is difficult to get sugar, thank God ' we are going to get two meatless days, for now we are beginning to share the sufferings of the lads in the trenches." NO ONE WAS HURT. With the permission of Lord 'French, an unexploded bomb dropped from a Zeppelin •was recently presented to the mayor of a. north-eaetern town by Major-General Ton •Donop on behalf of the headquarters staff. It bore an Inscription setting forth that ths bomb passed through the roof of a heuse. through three floors and two chests of drawers, and embedded Itself four feet below the ground level without exploding. N_ one was hurt. The bomb, which weigh* 111 pounds, Is to be placed in the municipal i museum. VINEGAR MAKER'S APFEAE. One vinegar factory here has been in continuous operation twenty-four hours a day every day of the year for flfty-tw. years, and another for forty years, says a Philadelphia paper. This fact was brought out when the owners of the factories appealed from the Fuel Administrator's order closing industries for certain periods to save coal. Vinegar experts testified that to stop making vinegar would ruin the tanks in which it is manufacturer. Alcohol is placed in tanks lined and packed with beech shavings. If the generating process is halted ■ the shavings are dried out or burned op and are useless. To stop for a day would mean closing six months, said a large manufacturer. Much of the present output of vinegar is - used in making explosives. DESERTION IN THE ARMY. In every army and in every war then have been desertions—even from craclL. regiments raised for a particular campaign and composed, presumably, of men spoiling for a fight or burning with enthusiasm for the cause. Roosevelt's Roughriders, in the Spanish-American War, Is an example. ... From an official who has cognisance of these matters, I was interested to learn that for every one man who has "ratted". - from the Empire's Army in this war at . least 500 Germans desert and come over to our side, says Clubman in the "Pall Mall Gazette." Our few deserters are invariably a very low type of man,, and : % generally of mixed nationality. vt RIVERS OF WINE. London "Truth" says that the Imperial' wine-cellars underneath the Winter- - Palace at Petrograd have been sacked, and nothing remains of what was the largest and finest collection in the world of the very best- wines of the choicest growths of . the most famous years. A great deal hasbeen quietly stolen during the last six ' months by enterprising patriots, and in the end the soldiers on guard obtained possession of the cellars, and were joined by a huge mob recruited from the dregs of the populace. Tens of thousands ot" bottles were destroyed, and the floors of the immense cellars were knee-deep la liquor, the end of the orgies being that muddy water from the Neva was pumped Into the cellars, after which the mixture of wine and, water was pumped back into the river. Thousands of bottles were fired upon to facilitate the destruction. Numbers of the rioters are reported to have been drowned, as they were lying dead drunk on the floors of the cellars In heaps. A" LA ADAM AND EVE. To dream away the long summer days beneath the waving palm trees, on an uninhabited isle far away from civilisation, il the honeymoon that appeals to Ross Cap. penter, Seattle business man, and his bride-to-be, a New Zealand girl, says the San Francisco "Bulletin." They plan to meet iin Honolulu this spring to be wedded, and ; then hope to find seclusion on a South Sea , island where man travels not. I Carpenter so expressed his quest In a letter to the Hawaii Promotion Committee asking information if Hawaii can provide such an Eden as he seeks. !~ "We have planned a rather unusual honeymoon," he says. "We wish to And some wild, unfrequented spot for the sum-mer—-a la Adam and Eve. (I understand there are no serpents In the Hawaiian Islands.) It would be so romantic if wa could discover an uninhabited island, or at least some portion of the sea coast of ths Hawaiian group which would be oufflcleailjr 1 Isolated for ench an adventum"