MISCELLANEOUS CABLES.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 16584, 25 July 1919, Page 7

MISCELLANEOUS CABLES.

President Wilson has issued a statement denying that he . was responsible for the Shantung settlement. Gabrielo d'Annunzio, the Italian poet, is organising a Romo to_ 1 okio flight. Five machines axe participating. The Willochra. with doported Germans from New Zealand and Australia, has arrived at Plymouth. Reports from Budapest, via Berlin, state that Bela Kun has been overthrown, and a non-Bolshevist triumvirate is in control. The Honorary Doctorate of Law has been conferred on General Sir William Birdwood and General Sir John Monash by Cambridge University. Tho King has accepted Mr Wilson's invitation to the Prince of Wales to spend a few days in Washington and New York after his Canadian visit. Tho British Government is despatching a mission to Franco and Belgium to make investigations in the battle areas and exhaust the sources of information regarding the fate of tho missing. In tho House of Commons, Mr G. H. Roberts (Minister of i/abour) stated that 59*00 retailers had been prosecuted for profiteering during the current year, of whom 229 were imprisonod. The German National Assembly, by 123 votes to 117, decided that members of the Royal Houses reigning at the outbreak of tho revolution could not be nominated as candidates for the German Presidency. Tho Australian Postmaster-General's report .shows a profit of £337,381, as compared with a loss of £117,146 in the previous jear. For the first time tho telegraph branch has' shown a *i>rofft totalling £23,116. Of 636 million leti ters and other articlos handled, only 14,514 failed to reach thoir destination.

A sugar famine, particularly of refined, is being felt in Sydney, owing to the and othef. causes. Supplies are almost exhausted,' and little is coming forward. Retailers are limiting customers to pounds and half-pounds. Treacle and other sugar products ar<3 also largely exhausted, £ The St. Johns correspondent mf the "New York Times" reports that Raynham, with a navigator named Biblecomb, attempted sto start on the trans-Atlantic flight.:, The piano rose three hundred feet in the air, when it was caught by a cross-wind, and fell to the ground, resulting in a total wreck. Raynham and Biblecomb were not injured. Rnvnham stated that he had now definitely abandoned the flight. It is reported from New York that "Ihe seamen's strike, which threatened to tie up the Atlantic seaboard shipping, now offers hone of a speedy settlement, the strike leaders havine: a creed to confor with tTie United States Shipping Eoard, with a view to arbitration on the demands. Several independent steamship companies have made a private settlement. A libel action has concluded in Edinburgh in which Colonel \V. E. Gordon proceeded against the "Dnndeo People's Journal,'' which published an interview asserting that he ordered the Gordon Highlanders to surrender in the Mons rotreat. Colonel Gordon denied the accusation, and said that Jio ordered the men to fix bayonets and summoned them to follow him «nd break through or perish, but a subordinate officT countermanded the order. Colonel Gordon was awarded £500 damages. In the House of Commons, Mr A. H Illingwortb, explaining tho cable delays, said the ordinary capacity of th'» cables from Great Britain was 250,01i0 words daily, but various interruptions had reduced it to 167,000. Government traffic was now eighteen times heavier than before tho war. Mr H. Pike Pease anticipated that an aerial mail service would shortly be used for letters to Australia changing the whole basis of business transactions.