News From All Quarters

Auckland Star, Volume XLIX, Issue 208, 31 August 1918, Page 15

News From All Quarters

A wood pigeon shot near Catford had 103 whole peas in Its crop.

Uendon District Council is engaging two policewomen to patrol the streets and the public park.

Agricultural workers in Surrey are promised 34/ for fifty-four .lours in summer, auil for forty-eight hours iv winter.

A Stannington farmer, named Worrall Kevit, was fined i 25 at Sheffield for selling milk at fourpencc per pint instead of threepence.

Over ten thousand white butterflies have already been destroyed by Dover children, paid fourponce a hundred to prevent catexpillar plague.

Robert Kelly, a reputed informer in Fenian day?, who was sentenced to fifteen years' penal servitude, has died in a Dublin workhouse, at the age of eighty-foar.

AGED MUSICIAN'S SUICIDE. (longer. . . God save our country," was the pathetic explanation, addressed to his sister, of an aged musician, who shot himself at Dover. The coroner's jury found him "temporarily insane." GERMAN MORALS STILL LOWEE The Derne correspondent of the "Agpnzia i Liliera" learns that moral corruption is spreading with alarming rapidity in Germany, and that the principle of multiple marriage has been adopted on a vast scale. It is asserted that in chateaux throughout Germany veritable harems are maintained by men who have become enriched through the war. SENT HIMSELF POISONED CANDY. Federal Judge Dooling. at San Francisco, imprisonment for sending poisoned candy to himself by mail. A girl had almost been implicated in the crime. "May I say a word?" asked Lindberg after sentence had been passed. ".s'ot to mc," replied Judge Dooling as he left the bench. 300,000 WOMEN ON FARMS. More than 300,000 women are at present engaged on land In Great Britain compared with 91,900 last year, the president of the Roard of Agriculture told the House ol Commons on July 10.

number of soldiers, German prisoners and "We have Increased the arable area of the country by 2.142,000 acres," the Minister said. "Crops for livestock have been increased by 280,000 acres."

SOLDIER'S WORD OF HONOUR. Charged with being an absentee, Orordon Wightman, U.F.A., told Mr Waddy at North London that his unit was passing through London, and bavins been 32 months at the front he thought be would like to see hia 1 people- fie was returning when arrested. Mr Waddy ordered him to be handed over to an escort without any reflection on his character as a soldier. Wightman: Will yon allow mc to return without waiting for the escort? Will you give n.e ynur word of honour i thnt you will go back at once?—l will. Thc:i I accept your parole as a soldier "FUN WITH SOLDIERS." dalk, a Labour Exchange official, who is r iilloKOd to have been roasQuerading as a young woman, with the object of having fun with soldiers, resulted in. his appearing before the magistrates. It was said that, drossod as stated, aud wearing hat nnd veil, Wilson tried to attract the attention of some khakl-clnd boys. Three of. these informed the police. Thereupon Constable Quinn put on mill to ry nniform, ami at Onstletown railway bridse watched Wilson, nnd at last made occasion to open conversation with the seemin? lady. When the constable began to reveal bis official status, Wilson started to run. but he was arrested. Then he offered the constable five shillings. After tbe.se events bad been narrated in court Wilson was returned for trial to I.outh Assizes, bail being allowed.

A BRIDE FOR THE PRINCE OF WALES. The marriage of the Prince of Wales is still discussed. In inner circles (says "Club Member" in the "Liverpool Daily Post") it is believed his choice will fall on the many regard a union with a daughter of the King of rtaly as likely to be equivocally viewed owing to the Princess having been reare 1 as a Unman Catholic.

If the war had not come the Trlncc would in all probability have been married and settled down to the rather prosaic duties of an Heir of the Throne.

Kate has willed it that the Prince should see war at close quarters, and it has had the advantage of introducing him informally to hosts of soldiers In our army, and the armies of onr Allies. And everywhere the Prince has made friends.

AMERICA'S BIG MERCHANT FLEET. 11l merchant tonnage (he L'nited Stntes is now first, nod is likely to remain so while tUe war lasts, says a San Francisco paper. According to figures given out at Washington, the merchant fleet of the t'nited States, not counting craft used by the army anil navy for transport and supply, included on January 1 126,742 ships that time and July 1 over 1,000,000 gross tons have been added, bringing up the tonnage to a little over 10,230,000. Great Britain had at the beginning of the war 10,000,000 tons of merchant shipping, but 50 per cent was taken by the army antl navy, and the 0.500,000 left has dwindled since the beginniug of 1!)17 to about i%750,000 tons, or but 57* per cent of the American fleet.

PRESIDENT WILSON'S NERVES. President Wilson's fe-.iow workers In the executive offices have been impressed by the way in which he bas retained his health and his nervous equilibrium through the most trying periods, but they were a great deal more impressed by a trifling incident to the Liberty Loan celebration In Washington (says a San Francisco paper)-. The newspapers recorded the fact that the President's hand had been slightly burned when he was inspecting a British tanks. The facts are that Mr Wilson grasped a hot steam pipe and seared his hand almost to the bone. He called no one's attention to the injury, buc climbed out of the machine, smiled and bowed to the crowd, and walked to the executive officer, where he extended his hand for the inspection of his secretary. This official was the first person who knew that the Tresident had received an injury of the most painful character without wincing and without appearing erea w pru'ntQjiij d. JCtf "IIHMiP^

At one period no mail reached the miners of Spitsbergen for eight months, but they are now able to get the world's news twice a day by wireless telegraph.

Dnvid Greenwood, twenty-one, the discharged soldier condemned to death for the murder of Sites Nellie Trew, at Eltham Common, has had his sentence commuted to penal servitude for life.

In attempting to land after rowing on the River Mersey, the little daughter o{ Albert Knight, of Northenden, a soldier, fell into the water. Knight jumped in, and was drowned, but other soldiers rescued the girl. HUNDRED -WAITERS ARRESTED j State's Attorney Iloyne. of Chicago, acting on information as to coercive measures used by waiters to compel the giving ot tips, arrested one hundred waiters, members of Waiters' Union, Local No. 7, a few weeks ago. Mr. Iloyne had a report that waiters used a certain powder in the dishes of known opponents to the tipping system. ALPHABETICAL CURIOSITIES. The honour of holding first place in the alphabetical card catalogue system of the United States War Risk Insurance Bureau goes to Clayton Aloysius Aab, second-class seaman, now somewhere on the high seas on an American battleship. He is closely pressed by Karl Olaf Aabel. The names through all the letters of the alphabet and end with Joseph Zyny. GOVERNMENT FINDS FATHERS. The death-rate among children born out of wedlock is notoriously and universally far higher than that among legitimate offspring. In the borough of Hnmpstead, London, it is 197 as against 60, and in New South Wales it is 162 against 67. Norway, however, has reduced the death-rate to normal through the Government assuming the responsibility of finding the father o? found. A ROYAL GREETING. Captain Amundsen, who discovered the South role, is now making his farewells before starting on a voyage for the further exploration of the Noren Pole. He is at least secure against such a greeting ac that which was accorded by his late Majesty William IV. (more familiarly known as "Silly Billy") to a weather-beaten veteran who had Just returned from an Arctic expedition. •'Why, with your red face." said his Majesty, "you look more like as II yoa had come from the South Pole." FLASHXAMF AS "REVOLVER." A sensational story was told at the Sunderlund Police Court, when Private James Conlson was charged with stealing a flashlamp. It was stated in evidence that Coulson entered the house of Mr Samuel Wilson, the chairman of the Sunderland Football C|gb. appropriated a flash-lamp, and entered the bedroom of Mrs. Wilson, brandished the lamp as a revolver, and compelled Mrs Wilson to glv» him a suit of clothes. He then decamped, and was arrested while changing Into mufti. Coulson was sentenced to three months' imprisonment with hard labour. — BATTLE WITH ARMY DESERTERS. Three persons were killed at Little Rock, Arkansas, In two pitched battles between officers and a band of twenty-five or more deserters aud their supporters.

The first flght took place at the home of a family named Atkinson, where, it is boured. Deputy-sheriffs of Clebnrne County surrounded the house and called to those within to come out and surrender. A volley of shots was the reply, and one of the attackers fell dead.

About noon the sheriff led a second attack upon the Atkinson place. The men in the house opened fire. The posse returned the flre and Atkinson and his younj son were killed. Following the fall of the Atkinsons the band dispersed. Governor Brongh arranged for the sending of fifty soldiers from Camp Pike armed witn machine guns. A PLAGUE OF WOMEN. A recent war book casually remarks the plague of women that have arrived in France for the purpose of investigating vice conditions in the American army. Wβ should like to know something more about this—how these women secured permis* sion, and what sort of reception they met with, says the San Francisco "Argonaut." We may also express onr grim suspicion that if there were no vice conditions before these women arrived they stood a good chance of existing after they have been there tor a time. Americans are the only people in the world who would stand for interference with an army by harridans of this calibre, but then Americans arc the only people in the world who have acquired the habit of letting women do anything they please, even to the point o£ inflicting insults and contumely upon men who are dying in their defence.

LEFT ON HER WEDDING SAT. A couple's curious matrimonial history was unfolded at Sheffield when Klljatl Pearce, 32, a Mons hero, who wore two wound stripes, was sent for trial on a chnrj;e of liisaitiy. The man's lawful ■wife, Charlotte Pearce, said they were married Iα Sheffield in 1005. Her husband, who was a soldier at that time, left her on the marriage day to go to India. Althongh be returned to Sheffield two years afterwards he had not lived with her since. She admitted that twelve months after he went to India she began co-liabitation with a man named Tom Powell, with whom she lived until the second day of the war, when he joined up. Powell was- now a prisoner of war. The alleged bigamy took place when Pearce "married" a girt to whose people he posed as a bachelor. Pearce said he would have divorced his wife on his return from India, but he had not sufficient money.

"MARRIED" FIVE TIMES. SOLDIER GETS SEVEN YEARS. At the Kent Assizes recently Tom Wilkinson, alias Tom Williams (38), a sapper in the ltoynl Engineers, was convicted of bigamy, and sentenced to seven years penal servitude. He had already receiveil seven years at Derby Assizes for a similar offence, and it was proved that he had gone through a ceremony of marriage with. five women in all, and that at the time of his arrest at Chatham he was making arrangements to marry three other young women. Accused had deserted from three different regiments, and in his defence said he thought, from the legal advice he received, that if a husband had not lived with hie wife for seven years and did not knovf where she was, he was at liberty to marrj; again. The Judge observed tftnfr that lesal ad' rice we* *«7 *»*• α-j