NEWS AND NOTES.

Evening Post, Volume LXXX, Issue 134, 3 December 1910, Page 12

NEWS AND NOTES.

[The following items of intelligence have been selected from files received by the latest mail.] EARNINGS OF TRAITOKS. What is the average amount of the miserable reward that traitors in this country obtain for selling information, plans, and bits of fannon, rifles, and cartridges to a possible foe? enquiries the Paris correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. Their number has increased enormously of late years, and an enterprising contemporary has been going into this £ad question. One soldier is reported to have expected £4000 for the sale of an automatic "debouchoir" which he had purloined, but the military authorities ask in amazement what could have put such an idea into his head or into that of another soldier who carried off a- mitrailleuse and believed that he would pocket £2000, but only got £50. As for the old soldiers who, having turned traitors, have remained abroad, their lot is a poor one. They begaa by only receiving small sums, and then they were utilised as spies, with the prospect of being turned adrift if they failed to bring in any information worth having. . Then consider the risk that they run if detected in France. Ullmo and Berton are condemned to detention for life, another man has twenty years'' hard labour, and so on. So soldiers have a great deal more to gain by remaining loy^i, as even if they are successful in such nefarious practices at the outset, their earnings are poor, and they have a wretched future before them abroad. Four hundred American cadets afi West Point are under arrest, states a recent exchange. For they struck. They wouldn't talk. They objected to an instructor, and when the instructor came into the diningroom they ate their food in silence. It was not a hunger strike, such ■as we have heacd of from Siberia and Holloway. The students ate. But didn't talk. They administered silence to the unpopular officer. • Could there be any sweeter metnod of protest? Not guns-, or shouting, or even bombs. 'But silence. And America has resented the. silence of the cadets who ate their food, and wouldn't make a noise! A singular accident has occurred at Fort Kaid Bey, Alexandria. Messrs. Panelli and Co., of the city, had purchased from the Government some old cannons with the object of melting them down. As they were being dismounted a charge,. which had apparently been left in one of the cannons since the events of 1882, went off with a terrific report. A French workman sustained suen terrible injuries that his life is despaired of, while the son of Mr. Panelli, a youth of 19, was also seriously _ hurt. Three native workmen in addition received injuries more or less severe. The report of the explosion could oe heard all over Alexandria. —1882 was, of course, thb year of the bombardment of the Alexandrian forts by the British fleet and of the occupation of Egypt. In ten years Detroit, Michigan, has giown from tbe thirteenth to the eighth place in the relative , importance of American cities. Various theories aa-e advanced to explain the gain of Detroit over Milwaukee, Buffalo, St. Louie, and other communities. Its natural conditions a;re in no wise better ; ite relation to commercial channels is ■not more important. The truth is that, states the Argonaut, Detroit has had far ten years a notably efficient municipal government. The movement started by the late Mayor Pingree has been consistently sustained. Manufacturers have come to Detroit, and largely on this account. Capital has been safe there. Labour conditions have been fairly adjusted. Social conditions have been decent and secure. _ All this accounts for the concentration in a«d about Detroit of automobile and other large ma-nufactur ing interest*. And by the same token, absence of all these conditions explains why San Francisco, instead of ' going j ahead in a>n industrial sense, is con- I spicuouely losing ground. ! Th. news that Dr. Cook, of North Polar fame or pretensions, is writing a book in London, has excited his Ameri- 1 can friends in New York. Captain Os- ' bon, the most loyal of his band of personal admirers, which has grown smaller by degrees and beautifully less, is delighted. He exclaimed, "Peary'si adherents ore in a tangled mass of sparsand rigging. When Dr. Cook returns and starts a second lecture tour Peary will' be left alone on a raft, aimlessly drifting further from the Pole than ever." According to Captain Osbon, two men are going after Dr. Cook's records at Etah, and Dr. Cook himself is going to be received like a hero from exile. For some reason the American public was not enthusiastic over Peary. It probably believes that he got nearer the Pole than the Brooklyn doctor did, and it is generally convinced that Di\ Cook is a magnificent humbug. But New York likes any man who is clever enough to fool it, asserts the Daily Telegraph correspondent, and Dr. Cook may b& quite sure of an immense audience -.f he comes back and faces the music. "Truth wilj out by accident even in the witness-box," said Judge Bacon at JUoomsbury County Court on a recent date. The new club house of the Turnhouse Uub. near Edinburgh, was opened on a recent Saturday. The Marquis of Lmhthgow, who performed the ceremony, said be doubted if Scotland had given the world anything greater than tho same oi golf. Wlwiher in China, with a pig-tailed caddie carrying for him, or in India, with a black boy Bearing the clubs, he had often thought that no game invented by the ingenuity of man had mad^ more for friendship and good fellowship. > " Until I first had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Osborne," writes Mr. Harold Cox in the Nineteenth Century, "I thought, as doubtless many other people- have thought and still think, that his part in the case consisted only in lending his name for others to use. That is not so. Mr. Osborne is not a name: he is a man. The struggle upon which h6 is . still engaged was entered into entirely upon his own initiative, and though of necessity he had, as the struggle progressed, to ask for financial help from other people, it was he who begged for that help and not they who offered it. I have taken some pains to inquire into the circumstances of this case, and I can say without hesitation that never was there a finer instance of a man fighting single-handed, and with single mind, against what he believed to be injustice." M. Bloriot. the airman, has bought £6000 worth 0/ land at the new pleasure resort of Hardelot, npar Boulogne, and is about to erect a villa there for himself, and sheds for his aeroplanes. There is no Government in the world which revels more 'in statistics than the Government of India. Yet in many respects, states the journal Englishman (Calcutta) the figures are whoUy unreliable owing to the nature of the agency that has to bo employed in collecting them.

It is one of the paradoxes of Australian settlement, remarks Table Talk, Melbourne, that Western Australia, the State nearest the rim of European civi* lisaion, has been the last to develop. Fusiyama, the sacred mountain of Japan, is to be adorned with a funicular railway. The Japanese mania for imitating all that is Western is going too far, a Tokio journal considers. The International Shooting and Field Sports Exhibition at Vienna was closed on 16th October. Up to the middle of September the exhibition has been visited by 2,000,000 persons, or an average of about 15,000 persons daily. Sayß a London daily : We English must feel a little shame in reading that in China, "in the draft of the new laws, it is prohibited for the newspapers to recount crime at length, as sensationalism is believed to inflame more crime." Everywhere mature age is more and more coming to be required in men holding positions of responsibility. Did not the Kaiser, when visiting Vienna in September, express astonishment that the Vice-Burgomaster was "only" fortythree years old? asks the Tageblatt, Berlin. France proposes to be as supreme in the air as Britain is on the sea, observes the Toronto Globe. Nothing is left for the Kaiser but supremacy on land. The Government is preparing to build the longest fence ever constructed, states a message from El Paso (Texas). It will •extend from this city to the Pacific Coast, a distance of 1100 miles. The^ purpose is to mark the boundary between {he United States and Mexico. The fence will be built of barbed wire. The Jews have not found it necessary to wait till now to be convinced of the efficacy of the "last cure," remarks a writer in the Jewish World, and though newspapers have suddenly awakened to the fact, and bring forward medical opinion as a guarantee, we have been fasting for ever practically, and stand as the most powerful asset in its favour. Jlr. William Cadbury, of Birmingham, has received the following cablegram, signed "Da Silva." Lisbon : — "Republican Government declares" it will settle the San Thome iabo"v question with absolute justice and freedom to natives. Meanwhile, orders gh'er immediately to enforce existing laws of free recruitment and 'repatriation." Mr. Andrew Carnegie has been made a freeman of Luton, when a library which he had given to the town was opened. The American Ambassador, who performed the opening ceremony, said that Mr. Carnegie had given a known total of more than £30,000,000 for the betterment of man. "But," he said, "in spite of Mr. Carnegie's liking for libraries, his spelling is deplorable." "The director of the New York Jewish Evangelisation Society has lately issued a booklet, published by the Brooklyn Bible Society, giving startling figures of the coming of Jews to the Metropolis," says the Boston Evening Transcript. "He says there are about 1,100,000 Jewish people in Greater New York, or over 26 per cent, of the entire population, while in Paris and London there are a trifle over 2 per cent; in Chicago, 3£ per cent. ; in Berlin, nearly 5 ; in Constantinople, nearly 6 ; Montreal, 7; Vienna, nearly 9; Amsterdam, 11 ; Warsaw, thirty-three ; Lodz, Russia, 47 ; and in Jerusalem, 55. Fully 90 per cent, of the Jewish people in the United States are in the large towns and cities, preponderating in New York. There are three thousand Jewish lawyers and one thousand Jewish physicians there, and more than 75 per cent, of the students in Normal College are Jewesses." , Mr. Lloyd George's attachment to the little Carnarvonshire village where his childhood and youth were spent is well known, and on his occasional visits, however brief, to Criccieth, he never fails to pay a visit to Llanystumdwy village. During his recent stay at Criccieth he took his family for a picnic to the woods near the village, the hot water for tea being supplied by an old peasant woman, an old-age pensioner, who, however, had no idea whose wants she was supplying. It was on this visit that he determined to make good a want he and others had frequently felt, the need of a village institute and library. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has now notified the villagers of his preparedness to present the village with a suitable building for an institute and village library, provided the parish supplies the site and undertakes to maintain it when once established. A parish meeting has been called to consider the matter. A telegram from Frankfort-on-the Main reports the fatal termination of a midnight madcap wager for three of those who took part in it. A gentleman named Henei betted that he would make the journey from Hachenburg to Altendorn and back in his motor-car with four passengers in an incredibly .short time, and started off to fulfil his boast at the dead of night. When, however, furiously driven, the car had covered some eight miles, it got out of control and overturned, burying all the five occupants beneath it. Two men were kill- ; ed on the spot, and Henei himself was taken home in a dying condition. The remaining two members of the party escaped with broken anne and other comparatively slight injuries. i Mr. J. D. Symon. who has been, ap pointed to the Chair of English in the new University of Cairo, is a native of Aberdeen. After a successful career at the University there, he proceeded to Oxford with a scholarship at Oriel, and thereby hangs a tale. Oriel usel to have a bulldog known as " Oriel Bill," and Mr. Synion wrote an .article upon it for the English Illustrated Magazine, which tempted the editor Mr. Clement Shorter, to ask him to join the staff of the Illustrated London News, which he did, leaving the university without taking his degree. "He remained on the News as literary editor until two or three years ago. But his heart has always been in letters l cither than m journalism ; he gave up the ofiice for his own study, and during the last few yeai'b he has done some fine work in literary criticism for various journals, notably the Athenaeum. He has written much polished verse, but his greatest success was a very curious novel, called " Syrinx," . published by Mr. Heinernann. prince Radolin, who is retiring, much against his will, from the German embassy in Paris, has a good memory for faces (remarks the London Chronicle). When M. Vessitch, the present Servian Minister in Paris, made his first appearance at a Foreign Office reception after >nis appointment, Prince Jladolin hastened to welcome him. *'Do you know the new minister?" one of his colleagues asked the prince later in the evening. "Very well," was the reply, "although I have not seen him for over twenty year?. He used to sweep the street outside my door every morning when I was attached to our legation at Belgrade." In those days M. Vessitch wrote for a paper strongly opposed to the government of the day, and was given "time' for one of his articles. During his sentence he was employed ou i-oad-sweeping, and thus made the acquaintance of his future colleague. |