News from All Quarters

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 84, 8 April 1922, Page 19

News from All Quarters

The British Home Ofh' c refuses to allow German boxers to appear before the publkin England. German middle and lightweight champions verp to appear in London on February SO and 'Ju respectively. Twenty residents of Greatnr Now York lost their autos by thpft each day of the year, it is estimated by police, who xnnounced that more than six thousand automobiles weer stolen form New Yorkers last year. WHISTLES FOR BLIND. Blind residents of Denver soon will be assured of safe passage across busy streets by means of commanding blasts on poli-e whistles, which will be furnished to them free by the city, according to the head of the dry's Department of Public Welfare. When a bliud persons blows his whistle traffic officers will see that all traifle is sus pended until the bliud pedestriau is safely across. PRISON DE LUXE. An account of the pleasant prison life of the recently escaped Lient. Dittmar. one o£ the U-boat marderers of the survivors or the torpedoed hospital ship Llandovery Castle, has been pubiishcJ in Berlin. At CCatmbnrg prison he was given an agreeable room decorated with photographs and pictures, and his father-in-law, a wealthy manufacturer, was allowed to provide him with a comfortable bed. Dittmar was sentenced to four months' Imprisonment, and had no difficulty in escaping by a ladder which friends provide*.

NOT SO MANY MARYS NOW. slary as a Christian name is not so popular as it was a few years ago. according to the committee which raised a fund for a wedding gift to Princess Mary from oil the Marys in the empire. Keporls from The different districts of the British Isles and in the Dominions show that iv many cases the name Mary i≤ absent even in large households, which always used to have at least one. Among si-hoin children the average was found to be only eight Marys out of every 100 girls. The committee says that these reports prove that the name is en the decline. BRIDEGROOM'S RUSE. except for the principals, comes from the little German town of Ahiingen. where a butcher, called upon to undergo a term of imprisonment on account of some smail profiteering transaction, got a friend to impersonate him and take his place In prison while be enjoyed his honeymoou. The sentence of six weeks' imprisonment had been passed some time: but. for legal reasons, the carrying out was delayed. The story came to the ears of the authorities, andi now the butcher has to serve, not only the: six weeks' sentence, but an additional four weeks for playing the law a trick. SOLVING THE MARRIAGE PKOBISM. Cosmo Hamilton, the English playwright. feels this way about it: "If husband an<l wife would only occupy separate homes, it would save the nusbaad from being completely absorbed. '"The husband in modern days is treated much as the female spider treats her mate. Tho lady spider is much larger than her mate and she goes,after him and eats him. "In separate homes romance would be preserved. The husband can kid himself he is cot bound by marriage ties, and to the wife the husband will become the idolked lover. it cannot bt revived." UNITED IN OPERATIONS. Mr. and Mrs. Edward .1. Herbert, ot Brooklyn, are determined that their holidays thi3 year shall not be marred by appendicitis, and they have decided, as there was a *in?er of this, to go into St. Catherine s Hospital, Brooklyn, and hare their appendices removed within a few minutes of each ether. Mr. and Mr*. Herbert were warned while en their holidays last year isays the "Central Xews"i that they nii&ht suddenly be stricken with appendicitis. They decided to go into hospital together "to keep each other company ami to avoid the necessity of having to make special visits to each other 1? only one was operated on." The husband is twenty-sis and his wife two year* younger, and they were married la January last year. THE MECHANICAL AIR PILOT. A mechanical air pilot demonstrated its fivness by guiding a twin engine Farman GoliatU airplane across tbe English Channel on February 11. The plane-, carrying twelve passengers and a human piiot, was sent up to a height of 1000 feet, and then tbe pilot attached the mechanical substitute, put his hands in his pockets and removed hie feet ifrom the control. The machine travelled many miles steadily, the automatic apparatus correcting for air currents before the movement became perceptible to the human brain. George Aveiine, the inventor, says that the principle of his devico is quicksilver operating electrically a compressed air motor which obtains its power from the rush of wind as the plane goes through the air. PRISONER INHERITS FORTDJiE. A prisoner named Makra. in the penitentiary at Szeged in, Hungary', condemned to five years for army desertion and theft, has received news that he is heir to a fortune of £300,000 through the death of a New York uncle. Makra thus becomes one of the richest men in Hungary, since the inheritance transmuted to Hungarian crowns- is almost beyond the computation of the prisoner, who has no idea of the extent of his wealth. He celebrated his good fortune by buying six fat hogs as food for his fellow prisoners, and ordering a great dinner for all, piomising the friendly warden an automobile. The new billionaire, who must still* serve two years, is 40 years old. He has a wife and child, and says that when released he will buy a fine four-room peasant cottage. THRASHED HIS GRANDMOTHER A small boy was summoned at the Children's Court at Tottenham for assaulting his grandmother, who told the magistrate that she was making her home with the boy's father, a widower. Johnnie, which was the defendant's name, disobeyed her at dinner and she smacked his hand. Johnnie immeiiately smacked her lace, followed up with a blow on the eye, blacking it, and knocking her down. That ■was not the first time be had assaulted her. The magistrate asked if the father ha<l iripd the correction usual in the case of ■wilful boys. The grandmother said the boy's father had thrashed him, but, the thrashing over and the father out of the house, the boy said, "You got mc that thrashing: jou are for it," and he started beating her. When tbe father was at home Johnnie was most angelic. , The magistrate adjourned the case lor Hhe father to attend.

COLOUR-BLIND R.A. Dr. F. \Y. Klridge-Green, of tie Board of Trade, who lectured at the College of Surgeons last mpath on "X ew Researches in Colour Vision." told a "Daily Mail" reporter that he knew of a Itoyal Academician who could recognise only two colours. The artist painted the faces in t it and had to ask bis wife to select the colours' for his pictures. A person with very acute colour vision could distinguish seven colours. NEWS VENDOR'S RECORD. Harry "Williams, a news vendor, claims the world's record for selling a single newsra.'er with a total of 113,000,000 copies of tie "Evening Star." He joined the sales forces in January, 188S, when the "Star" was first published. In recognition of hJs services he has been given a substantial pension for the rest of his life. Williams - record for OLe day's sales came August 4, KU4. when tie public was clamouring for war news. On that day he sold 29,000 copies. LONDON'S DAILY PAPERS. How many morning dailies are now published in London? Most people, journalises Included, would answer offhand that there are not more than a dozen. Actually, the addition of the "Westminster Guzette" to the list brings the total number up to thirty. London's morning publications are considerably in excess of the evening issues, whose number is twelve. A few of the constituents of this latter list are also not to be found on the ordinary bookstall. ITALY'S REMARKABLE GAIN. The really serious natality problem which faces France was shown recently by a compilation of statistics in the Peris "Eclair." which foresees a future struggle for supremacy in Europe, wherein Italy will be just as dangerous an enemy as Germany. It is discovered that while Italy before the war was coust:;ntly decreasing in population, there has been a remarkable increase in the birth rate and an improvement in the mortality rate, and as a result Italy to-day has nearly half a million more inhabitants than France. FATAL FIGHT WITH EAGLE. A story of a soldier's fatal struggle with a huge eagle in a mountain pats near Loss Andes is told by the uewspapers in Santiago. Chile. The soldier shot the eagle, and. thinking he had killed it. approached, but the bird had only suffered a broken wing, and furiously attacked him. In the strugcle which followed the eagle's claws Hutched the trigger of the soldier's gun. which was discharged, the bullet entering the man's body. He died in the arms of a companion, who took his body and also the wounded eagle to Los Andes.

: A COSTI-Y I.TXXURY. j \ London women police are "not a necessity 'and are too costly to maintain as a iuaC*-" Sir William Horwood. Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, has found, and as a re-< suit the women's patrol* will te flisbund&i as soon as possible, according to ihe "£>ai!y Mail." ' London has one hundred policewomen and maintenance of this force costs £".0.000 annually. The Government's special conomy committee under Sir Erie Gedfies, wuicb reported its flndibss. also declared the utility of the women pi-lice "negligible." MOROCCAN BEAUTIES. The Dnchess de V . a grand Spanish lady, is serving in a hospital of MelKla. where she is worshipped by the soldiers. Some foreign ledonnnirGs who are cfllicu. "tbOSD wltuout fear and without mercy,'" to show her their gratitude, recently offered her a magnificent basket of roses. Thp duchess thanked ""los soldados." but in bending down to admire the aowers she uttered a terrible cry and fell into a swoon. The legionnaires had added to their gift and placed among the roses two heads of Moroccans who had committed atrocious savageries on the Spanish prisoners. BROTHERS CAKRY OUT A SUKJIDE THEORY. The belief amounting almost to a religion that when a man comes to rhe end of his resources he is entitled to take his life, has aCL-ounted for the third of four brothers in a Portsmouth family. Bramley Moore, In explaining the death of his brother Leslie, an engineer, who committed suicide by jumping from a'steamboat, told the coroner that they were all great believe:s in this theory, that one brother had jumped from an American liner, and that another recently had leiped to his death from the Thames BrKge. He added there was not the slightest trace of insanity in the fami'.y. TOO POPULAR. Senate London was so badly congested at one point that even a policeman could not get through to ascertain what the tronble was. but a policeman passing on the top of a bus saw in a shop window a pretty woman wearing a mask drawing on the latest in silk stockings handed her by a smart maid. Consequently he arrested Samuel Harris and 'Sydney Walter, proprietors of the shop, and told the 'Magistrate at Marlborough police station that the obstruction was intolerable. The defence said it was an advertising stunt to put fashionable hosiery before the public, and that everybody seemed to approve of the idea except the police. "A more disgusting thing I cannot imagine,"* said tue Magistrate a3 he fined the proprietors. BLACKGUARDS WHO FELL IN THE WAR. The blackguards who fell in the war were blessed by the Bishop of Southampton at the unveiling of a memorial window in the Clayesmoore School Chapel in Winchester. "There is a good deal of humbug sung and preached in connection with war memorials," the Bishop said: "I have known memorial services where all the hymns were about saints. But what about the blackguards who fell in the war for mc? ' want to give thanks !to them. also. Do you expect mc to call j them saints f*r such an occasion? We know for a fact that many who fell in the war, some of whom we were very fond, were far from being saints, but we want to pot np their names just the same, and give thanks to them with the rest." GERMANY SEEKING REVENGE. "L'Action Nationale" publishes a letter from Mayencc in which its correspondent says:— "All the German will is strained toward the most rapid preparation for the war of revenge. It is sufficient to observe seriously and attentively the industry of the Reich. "In seven months of this year thirteen ■factories of Westphalia, West Prussia and Bavaria have produced 2,748 agricultural tractors of the small German type of 1818. These tractors, which are too heavy for agricultural purposes, are intended for war, for in twenty minutes they can be transformed into tanks. Protecting plates and screens are constructed and are always In proximity to the place where the pacific 'tractor' draws the agricultural machine."