WIDE WORLD NEWS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3149, 25 December 1922, Page 8

WIDE WORLD NEWS.

Judging from statistics recently drawn up Paris, with its population of close to 3,500,000, is ai heavy eater. In ;i single week 1,600,000 kilograms of fresh meat are consumed! in the city in addition to 8,000 kilograms of frozen meat, 450.000 kilograms of pork products, 340,000 kilograms of game, 115,000 kilograms' of rabbit, 250,000 eggs. 420,000 kilograms of cheese, 200,000 kilograms of butter. 727,444 kilograms of potatoes, and 60.000 hectolitres of wine. Not a pound of these products is sold outside the city, according to the municipal report. The war romance of a beautiful Parisi hospital nurse with a dot of 25,000 francs has ended in the- arrest of the man she married. Simeon Bertrand, 25 years old, on a charge of bigamy. His real wife is accused as an accomplice. Bertrand was in a convalescent hospital when he met the nurse. He posed' as a turfman, wealthy and unmarried. After an acquaintance of a few days he proposed and was accepted'. Before the marriage he introduced 1 his wife to his fiancee as his cousin, and after the marriage Mrs Bertrand No. 1 frequently visited the home and slept in the house. When the bride's fortune was exhausted some one anonymously notified the police of Bertrand's duplicity. Tha favorite sport of England to-day is horse-racing, according to a vote taken in aid of the Red Cross and St. Thomas' Hospital, in which a couple of million ballots were cast. The result was almost as great a shock to the sporting public as the American ballot his! year showing that more people were playing golf than baseball. Football of the Soccer variety, always believed to be- the leading sport, owing to the enormous attendance' at the games, actually ranked fifth. Tennis was a rather poor second to racing. while golf was a close third. The best cricket could do was sixth, being a few hundred vote* behind dancing, which was fourth. After cricket came in order motoring, billiards, boxing and swimming. Returning to Berlin after a year's absence, an Englishman writes that he is impressed at the evident growth in Republican sentiment. The new flag—red. white and gold—is much more in evidence, and correspondingly less so the red. white' and black of the old Empire. At one of the theatres a ballet entitled "Victory of the Republic." with the chorus dressed l in the Republican colors, was enthusiastically applauded. Twelve months ago he thinks, no theatre director would! have staged it. The result of his inquiries' suggests the reaction following the' assassination of T)r Bathouau as the main factor in the change of sentiment. With the recent addition that the engagement of the cxKnisei' lias disgusted, and for the moment at least silenced, the Monarchists. There has been a record whisker harvest at Ooeraminergau. Immediately after the last performance of the Passion Play all the chief characters went to the barber and had their beards shaven. Their motive is an extraordinary one. These world-famous village players have been pestered with applications from American cinema companies to he allowed to film the Passion Play, and in one instance 11,000,000 marks were offered. It is a traditional principle that no financial bcnuefit must accrue to the players. Tn order to make futile any further film offers—perhaps also to avoid temptation—the players sacrificed their hirsute adornments. During the season just concluded the play has been witnessed by 317.000 people. As 12 years will elapse before its reptition, the villagers have plenty of time to grow their beards again. According to Dr Edmond Arnold, of Paris, who has been carrying on experiments, a new cure for tuberculosis ill its early stages has been found. Tu a report to the Congress of Medicine, lie asserted that a patient suffering from tuberculosis in the initial stages had been given treatment consisting of inhaling various medicinal properties, and is now assured of a permanent cure. Dr Arnold carried out his experiments in a large inbalatorium at Autcull. He said he had been able to notice a daily improvement in the health of patients after introducing certain healing and antiseptic substances directly into their lungs. This treatment not only reacts on the organism but kills the germs. Out of numerous cases treated Dr Arnold reported that not one suffered a relapse. The teaching profession in England, unlike that in America, is becoming drastically overcrowded, according to estimates' just published showing several thousand teachers to be without employment. Commenting on the situation, Sir James Yoxall. general secretary of the National Union of Teachers' declared: "This is the inevitable result of the so-called economy recommendations of the Geddes Committee. These included larger (lasses and fewer teachers. The result is that the profession is badly overcrowded, and several thousand are unemployed. This development reveals a big waste of public money. Many teachers were induced by bursaries —paid for out of the public funds—to leave the secondary for the primary schools. Now all that money is wasted, for the teachers are out of work." Can the ruin of an ancient abbey or castle be picturesque when not mantled with ivy? asks a Home paper. The point has been raised more than once. The architect and the engineer say that without ivy a beautiful ruin may In 1 preserved almost indefinitely, and thai with ivy its days must inevitably he numbered. The average holiday-maker and seeker of the picturesque will— with iho knowledge they at present possess—declare that the remains of a glorious castle or abbey can possess no beauty if stripped of the ivy and other vegetable growths which have grown about their worn stonework throughout the ages. 'l'h* architect with his eye upon delicate form and tracery, naturally thinks otherwise. The whole question is likely to become acute again over I'evensoy Castle, where what are probably tlie most important Human remains in England are, it is said, being destroyed by ivy. A~ though it were not hard enough for midnight sons to pay a tax for the privilege ol breaking the closing law, the sales of Kcmpton, in Southern Havana, have issued receipts for this tax. which I lie revelers declare is rubbing it in. The receipts look like money, exeepl that they bear a picture of a drinking orgy, and through the number in I lie corner runs a black cal symbol ol n bad morning after. The reverse shown an engraving of Ihe town church. I'ndcr the new law persons remaining in cafes and bars after flic legal closing time may slay as long as they like provided they pay the tax. Three schnappsless days a week have been decreed in Bavaria as the possible precursors of .an official ban upon strong liquors. A good heap of eoOi|W)st always comes in useful on the farm. I'alh cleaning, animal droppings, road scrapings, lime and stockyard debris should all be well mixed' together. In the immediate vicinity of Ballarat land which had been utterly ruined from the agricultural poinl of view by milling operations has been brought to a high state of fertility by the process of building up with such material.

' A happy ending of a war romance was celebrated in London lately, when Captain G. E. Belville, a prominent polo player, married Baroness de Cronlbrugghe de Loorihghe, of Belgium. Captain Belville was wounded while serving with the. 16th Lancers ill 1 .<'>-! and taken to to the Baroness' chateau near Moils, which had been turned into a hospital, and there she nursed him baek to health. Says a Berlin message:- Ihe Commission settling boundary Hues between a Roumania and Jugo-Shivia have a] last solved the problem of a farmhouse which stands on the border. The wile and husband's bedrooms are in Bouma.nia, while the children sicep in .Jugoslavia. Theoretically all the family nce'dl passports and visas whenever they go from one part of the house to another. Both representatives on the commission were unwilling to exclude the house from their territory, and as ;i result some of the shingles were removed and a. painted border sign erected in the middle of the roof. Finding a number of finger-printe on the window sill of a house which had been broken into, the Plymouth policehad a part of the masonry sawn off and bent to Scotland Yard. The "Yard" examined the marks, and gave the Plymouth police information which led to the arrest of Arthur John Ford within a week of the robbery. He confessed that he stole some valuable artielesi from the house, and at the Quarter Sessions was sentenced to 14 months' hard labor. A dealer named' William Duke was ordered six months' hard labor for receiving the goods. Thus a Paris telegram :—William E. Johnson. American prohibitionist leader, haw at last) got a wedge into France. and strangely enough the anti-alcohol movement, as l was the case in the United States, isi getting its biggest impetus from railroad men. The Society ot'Tiailwav Abstainers held a. conference reoentfv at which Mr Le Trocquer, Minister of Public Works, announced that this organisation, which was constantly ridiculed 1 a year ago. now had nearly a thousand 1 members not one of whom drinks anything stronger than beer, even wines being precluded as likely to develop nervousness and thereby interfering* with responsible work. Owing to the frequent inability of the Government printing presses to keep pace with the demand for notes of the smaller denominations, several of the largest German industrial firms are making their own paper "money." On pay dav these are issued to the employees* who are able to exchange them for' goods, the firms, of course, undertaking to redeem the notes later. The great (inn of Krupp took the lead and, incidentally, have put to shame the designers aiid printers of Government paper money. Employing their own artists, engravers, and printing works, tbev arc circulating notes artistically superior to anything that lias come from the Government presses, not to sneak of being more difficulty to falsify. " This, says a Home paper, is a story of a sad predicament, The little girl was going to church, and she had been given a sixpenny bit. She was to change this on the tram going to church, was to put fourpence in the hag. and was to return by tram with the remaining penny. But the train was verv full, and the child bad to get out with her sixpence intact, because the conductor did not come for her fare. Then came the difficulty. Tf she put the whole sixpence in the bag she would have to walk home. 1/ she was not to walk home she could not put anything in the bag. Piety triumphed—and shewalked home. German and Austrian secret military organisations resembling the Faseisti held a series of meetings this week to celebrate past victories and to seek means of achieving Austra-German nnitv and a military revival. Tnnsbvuck was ablaze with Austrian and German Hags and pennants, while the streets and" cafes were jammed with former soldiers. Old regiment comrades, wearing steel helmets and their old uniforms, "zig-zagged arm in arm through the narrow mountain streets shouting patriotic anthems. A bystander who did not get out of the way was beaten up. General Ludendorff was the guest of honor. He met oilier German nationalist and military leaders, while the younger members held a track meet. The same spirit that inspired the German youths in their revival against Napoleon following the battle of Jena is prevalent now. Their ideal and hope is to rebuild the shattered German armies. It is typical of post, war Europe that secret military bands continue their activities of terrorising at home because they have no convenient enemy next door. A hair-raising story of hypnotic influences js reported from San Kenio (Italy), where a woman named Mine. Morando is on trial charged with Inning so influenced a child's life as almost to kill it. The parents testified that the child, who was acquainted with the woman, fell ill with the measles two years ago. The case was most critical and they called in relatives to take a, last look at the child. One visitor, after a look at the baby, declared that it was a victim of witchcraft and instructed the mother to get a lien im mediately, pierce its liver with pins and then boil the liver in a new saucepan together with the baby's woollens. She was- further instructed to do this for threo consecutive days and if during the process a hell did not ring three times the only thing to save the bain would bo to call in the suspected witch. The bell only rang twice whereupon the mother hurried to Mine. Morando. As sooni as the supposed wileh entered the house the child rose in bed shouting, the dishes fell to the floor and the light went out. The parents then discovered, according to their testimony, that the .Morando woman had a long hladed knife in her hands and attempted to lynch her. but she was saved by the police and later was placed on trial. What kind of picture- appeal to flic British school child!-' This question. which bus been considered for nearly three years by a London County Council Advisory Committee, was debated lately, when educationists. k.C.C. officials, artists, publishers and business men met at the 1,.('.('. Central Scnool of Arts and ('rails. Sir Cyril Cobb. M.P.. who was chairman of the Education Committee when the question of school pictures was thoroughly discussed by the !,.('.('.. said before the war school pictures could be produced in Germany at a third the cos I in England, in 11)0(5 it was decided to exhibit German work |.e galvanise British. firms into producing something at comparable pricey, and of comparable merit. The sequel, as related by Sir Cyril, was exasperating, "Instead of English linns taking up the matter." he said, "it 'imply meant that we had given some very useful hints to German producers as to the English market. The existing pictures and posters had nearly all been n| German scenes. Wo pointed mil thai English children wanted I olook at English scenes and subjects, h'nini thai time on no definite offorl was made by English publishers. until the war Cut off the German source, but I lie Gorman publishers promptly supplied pictures suitable for English schools." An American visitor approached a coster's stall in Partington street. London, and. pointing to some melons, asked, "Are these the largest apples you haver" "Put that bloomiu grapes dahu. will ver?" snarled the coster.