GENERAL NEWS.

Clutha Leader, Volume XLIII, Issue 8, 28 July 1916, Page 6

GENERAL NEWS.

GERMAN WAR CORRESPONDENT'S ADMISSION. A MATTER OF LIFE OR DEATH. ROTTERDAM, .July 24. Ilerr Max Osborn, correspondent at headquarters for the Vossische Zeitung, writes: "Our losses are heavy. The enemy suffered fearful Josses, but we do not blind our eyes to the new mourning which has come to Germany. We are shaken by a burning pain as new streams of German blood are flowing, and we recognise our powerlessncss, after two years of war. The angel of destruction is passing over the ranks of the German army with merciless fury, as if the death dance had just began. It is now a questionoofi f life or death for our nation." A WANDERING KAISER. BERNE, July 24. Messages from Berlin state that the Kaiser has made many hurried' journevs eastward and westward, and also several speeches at the Somme front. Addressing- the German wounded at Peronne, he said: "My earnest desire is to take my place in the trenches, and there deal the enemy such blows as my age and strength permit. The inscrutable Almighty has willed otherwise, and the leadership of the country and of the forces on land and sea committed by the Divine destiny to my care, and the burden of thinking and deciding and leading laid upon me, forbid that my life be risked in the foremost line of battle, where my feelings, if unrestrained, would swiftly carry nip. My life .must be carefully conserved for Germany's welfare, in order to carryout the duties assigned me by God." Some German comments of this speech savour of Lcse Majeste. SIR T. MACKENZIE'S TOUR. IN THE NORTHERN COUNTIES. LONDON, July 24. Sir Thomas Mackenzie has visited wounded and sick New Zealand soldiers in the hospitals in the northern counties. He also visited 1 some of the biggest munition works, conferred with wool spinners, manufacturers and' brokers, anil attended a concert- at Huddersfield which resulted in £IOOO being raised for St. Dunstan's Hospital for the Blind. BRITAIN'S WAR EXPENDITURE. NEARLY £5,000,000 DAILY. LONDON, July 24. In the House of Commons, Hon. H. IT. Asquith (Prime Minister) moved for a credit vote of £450,000,000. He said that Great Britain liad expended from April 1 to Ju'ly 22 £559,000,000. They had £41,000,000 in hand for the Navy, Army and munitions. It had cost £'!79,000,000 in loans to the Allies, £157,000,000 for food supplies, and for railways £20,000,000. The average daily expenditure on the war was £4,950,000. He hoped the Army and Navy expenditure would not in the near future exceed the present level, on a basis of £5,000,000 daily. The present vote would last to the end of October. Hon. D. Lloyd George (Secretary for War), replying to Mr Churchill, said that steel helmets were being manufactured at a prodigious rate. They had already saved many thousands of lives. We were now turning out in a single month more guns than the whole British Army possessed at the beginning of the war. The success with which the British manufacturers had risen to the problem of the big gun supply , was a triumph of engineering, but they wanted still considerably more heavy guns and shells* (WW