NEWS AND NOTES.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 77, 30 March 1912, Page 12

NEWS AND NOTES.

[The following items of intelligence have been selected' from files received by the latest mail.] At the National Insurance Conference in London Mr. Lloyd George delivered a great speech explanatory of its provisions. He concluded with the following peroration : — "An astute Parliamentary friend of mine once said it was no use discussing the Insurance Act in a first-class carnage; that if you wish to be heard you must go to the thirdclass carriage. May I. say, with all respect, that is characteristic of the mistake the first-class damage makes. The passengers in the first-class carriage think that because their compartment^ is well constructed, film, and heavy, with resilient springs, "and well padded and cushioned, that all is well. They, do not mind the third-class carriage, whether it is. rocky or ill-b.uilt, or what is its condition. What they forget is this : 4n ill-built third-class carriage might wreck the train. The Government is paying special attention to the third-class carriage,' Te"pauirfg f it, improving it, strengthening it, and making it more comfortable. Why ? Because they know that that adds to ' the' security of the j train which is carrying' the destinies of I this great Commonwealth of Nations into the dark and i obscure , expanse of the future." ] William Weyland Champion was sentenced to three, years' penal servitude at the Worcester Assiges for offences under the Bankruptcy Act at Broadway, where he posed as a South African millionaire. He had filed a statement of accounts showing &• surplus of nearly three and _a-half millions sterling, and in his public examination adhered to its correctness, but could not produce evidence to prove any ownership of any mining and other properties which he had alleg ©d belonged to him, nor would he disclose the names of people in England and Paris who were said to have financed him. He stated that the deeds were de posited with the Standard Bank of South Africa, but the officials knew nothing of them nor of Champion. The debtor alleged that certain mines were sold to "Mackay and Co., Capetown/ for £5,000,000, but Mt. Cully, Official Receiver, said that neither tlie High Commissioner nor the bank could discover such a firm. The debtor .declined, "in the interests of his creditors," to answer many questions, and said his papers were in the possession of a Mr. Scheltema, who had disappeared. A motor-car driver named Josepn Ward was sentenced at the London Sessions to three months' imprisonment, Mr. Lawrie, who presided, remarking that he regarded these offences as being very serious, because they were co prevalent. The doctor, who certified that the accused was drunk at the time of the accident, said in his evidence that the tests applied included the pronunciation of the words "truly rural" and "British Constitution," What the accused said sounded like "tuti-too" and "bish cush." ' Upwards of ISO children of the Lawrence (Massachusetts) textile strikers arrived in New York on the 10th February, to be temporarily domiciled there until the Labour war ends, and work is resumed at the milk in Lawrence, a manufacturing town on the banks of the Merrimack. The children were brought to New York by the "Industrial Workers of the World," the Italian Socialist Federation, and other Labour and Socialist organisations, who seem to have acted, not only from philanthropic motives, but also from a desire to arouse sympathy for the strikers. To meet the children a great crowd, principally of foreigners, assembled at Grand Central station, New York, singing the "Marsellaise" in many tongues and waving red flags and' banners bearing Labour and Socialist inscriptions, but the Stars and Stripes were conspicuously absent. The children were taken to the. Labour Temple in Eighty-first-street. New York, and distributed among familiefi'who offered them shelter. Speaking at a meeting oKthe Sociological Society in London, Dean Inge, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, said of the reduced birthTate among the rich and middle classes that strong language had been used and selfishness had been alleged. It was, he said, only fair to state that, though in some cases small families were due to selfishness, in many cases they involved a great deal of self-denial on the part of the parents for the sake of the children. It was not altogether a bad sign. If taxation were so arranged as to press most hardly" on the very best and most valuable part of the community,' by which he did not mean the Dukes or the Parklane millionaires, but the intelligent, self-reliant, hardworking class — if the taxes were made to press upon them for the benefit of the wastrels, they would naturally restrict them numbere. It could not be helped. The increase of the population was not a thing desirable .in itself, except in sucfi halfipopulated countries as Canada and Australia, but they must not blink the fact that the enormous improvemienits in sanitation and the length of human life had created a serious problem which must not be shirked. Quality was more important than quantity, and the great menace to our civilisation was not so much the fact that the birth-rate among the upper classes was stationary as that there was an increase among the ill-fed poor of our great towns. Dr. Waldo,- the City Coroner, commented recently on ' the increase in the number of fatal street accidents that had come to hk knowledge 'since tho great development in motor traffic that had taken place in the City of London and in Southwark. Last year there were fifty-seven such accidents, as compared with thirty-nine in 1910, forty-one in 1909, and thirty-seven in 1908 ; while in the years previous the numbers: were fewer and fewer as they went back. During the past year thirty-nine of .the fifty-seven fatal accidents were due to mechanically propelled' vehicles, and eighteen to horsedrawn vehicles; while in 1910 twenty-,one-out of thirty-nine, in 1909 twenty out of forty-one, and ii? 1908 seventeen out of thirty-seven fatal accidents were due to mechanically propelled vehicles. What they were going to do he did not know, but it was a very serious matter. In the "Report on Industrial and Agricultural Cc-Operative Societise in the United Kingdom," imued by the Labour Department of the Board of Trade, it is stated that the aggregate membership recorded by distributive and co-operative societies of all kinds in 1909 was 2,597,236, an increase of 517,221, or ,55 I per cent. as v compared with 1899. The value of the total trade of all societies (exclusive of banking, credit, insurance, and building society transactions) was nearly £132,000,000 in 1909, an increase since 1899 of £56,500,000, or 75 per cent. Up to the end of 1909 the English Society had spent £4,363,432, and the Scottish Society £1,555,055, on laud) buildings, machinery, and fixtums. The English Society owns 741 acres in Shropshire, where it grows fruit for its I jam factory, while part is let to farmers, and a mansion is used as a, convalescent home. The Scottish Society raises live stock on its 130-acre farm at Carntyne, and also cultivates pait of it« East Jvilbride estate of 1112 acres, the castle and gardens being used as a museum of productions and recreation grounds for memJ39TB of ahareholdinp societies..

The South-Eastern Railway Company was fined £100 and coete by the Gravesend Magistrates for cruelty to pigs and sheep by overcrowding. The prosecution was instituted by the Royal Humane Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Evidence waa given that a Graveeend dealer bought twenty-eight sheep and twenty-two pigs at Maidstone, and gave instructions for them to be sent in two trucks to the Graveeend 6tation. The prosecution alleged that all the animals were crowded into one truck 15£ ft by 7£ft. On arrival three were dead, one pig had its leg broken, and five sheep were much bruised. The death occurred, on the 12th February, at his residence, Farm Hill, Dundrum, County Dublin, of Sir Heffernan James Fritz Joseph John Considine, 0.8., who until October last was Deputy-Inspector-General of the Royal Irish Constabulary. Sir Heffernan Considine was one of the most responsible and active servants of the Crown during the worst days of the Irish land agitation. He knew the whole country intimately, and brought to his dangerous and difficult duties conspicuous qualities of courage, firmness, and moderation. On six occasions he received the thanks of the Lord Lieutenant and the Irish Government. The elde6fc con of Mr. Heffernan Considine, of Derk, County Limerick, he was born in 1846, and educated at Stonyhurst, and afterwards at Lincoln College, Oxford. He married, in 1880, Emily Mary, daughter of the late Mr. John Hyacinth 'IJalboU formerly M.P. for New Roes. Preaching at St. PauTs Cathedral, London, the Bishop of Lincoln said that as he went up and down among the clergy two convictions were forced upon his mind. One was that never in the ■course of English history, before or since the Reformation, were the clergy as a whole living better lives or doing better work than now. The other con viction was that the bravery with which many clergy struggled on, making the best. of their small income, was noticing less than heroic. If all the livings, better and worse, were pooled and then divided up, they would only get £260; and if all the incomes of the bishops, deans, and canons were thrown in beside they would only realise £270 all round. In other words, the Church needed reondowment out of the generosity of tho wealthiest nation in the world. At the public examination in the Bankruptcy Court, London, of Thomas Llewellyn Demery, the bankrupt stated that he had acted as secretary to Mr. Ernest Terah Hooley, financier, at a salary iof £300 a year. His liabilities were £76,752, of which £2539 is unsecured, and assets £1825. The securities held by the creditors consisted of mortgages on the Broome Park Estate, Kent, which he agreed to take over from Mr. Hooley and 'afterwards transferred. He sold his equity in that estate for 10,000 shares in the Swiss Condensed Milk Company, which he afterwards sold to bis employer for £500. Lecturing at Liverpool University, under the auspices of the Liverpool section of Chemical Industry, Dr. J. Harger claimed to have discovered a method of preventing coal dust explosions — a prolific source of accidents in mines. He said_ that his experiments proved conclusively that a. email reduction of oxygen and an addition of & little carbon dioxide, such as often occurred in actual mining practice in the workings, were sufficient to render coal dusfc ignition impossible. Absolute safety would be secured if the reduction in "oxygen was made to 17£ per cent., with £ to 1 per cent, of carbon dioxide,, not only from coal dust explosions, but from fire damp explosions. This could be done with a simple plant and without extra machinery. A tailor named Maurice Doherty,' twenty-six yeare of age, was sentenced at -Winchester Assizes to three years' penal servitude for uttering a forged cheque at Andover. Detective-Sergeant Cornish, of Scotland Yard, stated that the prisoner was one of a gang of expert criminals whose operations during the previous nine months had been directed to stealing letters from private boxes, many of which , contained cheques and other valuable papers. The cheques were manipulated by an old convict, whom the police knew, but could not catch, red-handed, and were then pass* ed as open cheques by other members of the gang at the banks upon which they were drawn. Ther* had been hundreds of these letter-box thefte in London during the previous few months. > In the concluding part of his visitation charge in. Canterbury Cathedral the Archbishop pleaded for co-operation among the various branches of the Christian Church. "For me indeed," said the Primate, "it is simply impossible to read such addresses on the life and work of the Church of Christ as those by which Presbyterian speakers have thrilled and invigorated the whole company of listeners in the students' conferences at Baslow, and Liverpool, and elsewhere, without a sense that they and we ought to be able to co-operate more thoroughly than we do. We have learned by the happy experience of men whom no one will suspect of lukewarm Churchman- > ship that such fellowship in counsel and in prayer need involve no sacrifice of Church principles and no watering down of distinctive and dogmatic belief." Dr. JoEn Gillospie, ex-Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and for the past forty-two years minister of Mouswald, Dumfriesshire, who died on the 14th of February, besides being one of the most respected and noted figures in the ecclesiastical life of Scotland, was an agricultural expert, and was in great request as a lecturer on agricultural subjects. Born in 1836, he served as clerk | of the Dumfries Synod and as deputy assembly clerk, and became Moderator in 1903," after filling many public offices. He wan the author of several notable works, among them "The Humours of Scottish Life" and a manual on the Small Agricultural Holdings Act. It is pleasant to see the wisdom ot Nature vindicated. Harsh things have been said of the vermiform appendix, but the director of a hospital at Spar- ' tansburg, South Carolina, finds that it has a use after all. It comes in hand; as a natural canal by which to introduce into the system an antiseptic solution with which he is combatting the gerrnu of pellagra. "Now perhaps the people who have had theirs taken out won't feel so superior," remarks the Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican The Roads Improvement Association has been inspecting London road surfaces constructed on modern methods and with tar or bituminous binding, to ascertain the effect of hoar frost upon them. As the result the association's expert has drawn up the follo\*mg list of materials composing road surfaces, arranged in order of "non-slipperiness" : ' — 1 and best : Asphalt and experimental ■ roads deep-treated with tar or bitumen. 2 : Smooth-tarred roads tarred on smooth macadam. 3 : Smooth untarred macadam road«. 4 : Rougher untarred macadam roads. 515 1 New wood pavement. 6 and worst : Old and uneven wood pavement. The Commonwealth Labour Government has now lent, £5,130,000 to tho Sates, us follow : — New South Wales, £2,000,000; Victoria, £980,000; Queens, land, £1,000,000; Western Australia, £650,000 j Tasmania, ,£500,000.