NEWS AND NOTES

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 126, 29 May 1915, Page 13

NEWS AND NOTES

In Belgian Congo lm been completed a new railway, enabling the journey from Stanley Falls to Tanganyika to be made in ten days. This railway line connects the Lualaba River with Lake Tanganyika, thus proving a valuable source of defence for the Belgian Congo, which has been threatened from German East Africa. German territory runs to the eastern shores of Tanganyika. Because of the increased price of food in England, West Ham Guardians have decided to allow 6d a week to each outdoor pauper, and 3d for each child. Iceland, which is claiming a larger measure of Home Rule from its sovereign lord, the King of Denmark, is, in some ways, a progressive little State, and granted women a Parliamentary vote on equal terms with men a dozen years ago. Several women have secured election to the "Althing," and, among other activities, have secured the passing of several very drastic laws for the restriction of the liquor traffic. The Guardian thinks that the British Government should be compelled to treat the liquor trade as it has treated the railways, by giving a guarantee against loss. Adds the Guardian : "We cannot in the name of righteousness or national convenience ruin hundreds of thousands of people, for, apart from the producers and distributors of alcohol, many millions of trust money and savings are invested in breweries and distilleries." On a recent London bank holiday no fewer than ninety-five children were lost on Hampstead Heath. Within a day or two, however, they had all been claimed. Krupp subsmptions to war loans look Bi'?piciously like rebates. — Wall Street Journal. Mme. Curie, of radium fame, was motoring outside Paris, says the Petit Journal, when her car ran into a ditch not far from the Forest of Senart, and was smashed. Mme. Curie sustained nothing worse than a shaking. It is announced that no European pine trees will be permitted to be imported ! into the United States after Ist July. This action is being taken to save American pine trees from the pine-shoot moth, which has long done much damage inEuropean forests. The president of the British National Amalgamated Union of Shop Assistants, Warehousemen, and Clerks at the annual conference protested against the replacement of able-bodied male labour in the shops by female labou r. They had no objection to female labour so long as it. did not depress the conditions for those engaged in the industry, but they strong: ly objected to the war being made an excuse for female labour without any guarantee that such labour was for the duration of the war only, or that the women i would be paid equal wages to those of the men. If the wine-bibber would do well to copy the King, women would do well to follow the rule set by Queen Mary.. Who ever saw the Queen, writes a feminine observer, with an "osprey" or other misnamed and cruelly obtained plume in her i hat? The ostrich, well fed and tended on the farms of South Africa and California, is the only bird that supplies the royal hats. And the ostrich dops not- give his life, or his youn, with his plume. He does but pay an annual feather or two in return for an existence of great dignity. "It is possible and even probable that the passing of the late Mr. J. P. Morgan's £20,000,000 shipping combine into the hands of a receiver will attract more attention in England than here," says the New York correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph. Beyond a small paragraph recording that the International Mercantile Marine. Company, which controls the American Line and some of the chief British Atlantic passenger lines, except the Cunard, has 'passed quietly into the hands of a receiver,' the event was unnoticed in the newspapers. This does not affect the subsidiary companies-ithe White Star, Dominion; Atlantic Transport^ and American lines.' They will continue to operate their services just as usual." "Noah has been a good deal blamed for his little weakness of wine-bibbing — which certainly led him into a most humiliating situation," says the Morning Post. "But there is this much to be said for the Patriarch. Wnen he was told to make the Ark, it is not recorded that he delayed his shipbuilding in order to drink. On the contrary, he must have worked overtime, and it was not until after the danger was over that he 'planted a vineyard and drank of the wine and was drunken.' " English papers record that "thirty-five years ago Miss Haine, of Liskeard, believing in the early second coming of Christ went to Jerusalem to "meet Him, taking with her a limited sum of money. A few years since a Liskeard gentleman and his wife visited Palestine and called on her. She was then in possession of all her faculties, but very weak. About twelve months ago, however, it was learnt in her native town that she was in distress, all her money having- become, exhausted. Since then several Liskeard Mends had contributed to her support. She has just died in Jerusalem at an advanced age." A picture of Bagdad by Mr. R. Campbell Thomson : " And 0, Baghdad ! the city of all romance, with, twisting streets hung overhead with sacking-strips to shade the hucksters from the sun, and cool verandahs by the river's brink. Smell the smell of it, wanderer, for Baghdad is the Daughter of all the East, and once the traveller has snuffed the reek of Arab dust, the msmory will never pass. Over the dancing waters tpin the little coracles of pitch and palm, made as they were when Abraham left Ur, round the two-three steamers granted by_ the Osmanlis to ply to Basra. Great sailing ketches ride at the wharves, straining at their hawsers on tho turbid spring flood, and behind these, on the river front, fly the flags of many nations, for the Consulates of Foreign Powers and the British Residency mark each its presence with a brave ensign." " Germany can catch up with Britain only by rolling back the planet," says Mr. Israel Zangwill in Nash's Magazine. " And that involves rolling it back to a barbarism that combines the era of the cave-men with the latest devilries jof science. Vain for Germany to cry t)iat it is Russia which is the enemy of civilisation. The Cossack is only a wild beast, and the German is a wilful beast. The Briton is a beast neither by nature nor by design." At the National Negro Business League Convention at Muskogee, Oklahoma, U.S.A., it was stated that the 2,000.000 negroes living in Oklahoma, Kaunas, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, ami Texas now have under their control, as owners and renters, about 300,000,000 dols worth of farm property and own 60,000 farms, containing 6,000,000 acres of land with farm property, land, live stock, and farming implements vmMi 200.0 M..000 <loj* t

The King, on the recommendation of the Secretary for Scotland, has approved the appointment of the Rev. John Herkless, D.D., Professor of Ecclesisatical History in the University of St. Andrews, to be Principal of the University in succession to the late Sir James Donaldson. " Dr. Herkless, who was born hi 1855, was educated at Glasgow High School and at Glasgow and Jena Universities," 'says The Times. "He was ordained in 1881 to the assistant charge of St. Matthew's, Glasgow, and was minister of Tannadice from 1883 till his appointment in 1894 to the Regius Chair of Ecclesiastical History at St. Andrews.'' Considering the reported scarcity of food in Germany, we question the judgment of the Germane in taking those 500,000 Russian prisoners. — Nashville Southern Lumberman. A Renter's message from Francs says that after the famous Italian writers, D'Annunzio and Ojetti, had visited Rheims Cathedral they called on Cardinal Lucon. He stated that the building would be left in its present state for a whole year after the war, and -would be made- the goal of a pilgrimage. The late Lord Wolseley has commented on the fact that spelling has been the weak point of many great commanders. Defending Marlboroygh against the charge of illiteracy, brought by Lord Chesterfield for one, who said he was " eminently illiterate, wrote bad English, and spelt it -worse," Wolseley replied (1) that a great many of Marlborough's distinguished contemporaries, such as Lord Chancellor Somers, spelt quite as badly; and (2) that Wellington and Na>poleon also were among those who could never learn to do it properly. During the winter warfare in France the most common injury to rifles was found to be the bulging of the barrels caused by a shot being fired when the muzzle was clogged with mud. As may be imagined, the shops to carry out the amount of repair work that comes in from the front necessitates an elaborate equipment, and the employment of men of almost every imaginable trade. The natural status of the Trentino (one of the portions of Austria- coveted by Italy) is confessed in the name long given by the Habeburghers themselves to the district south of Trent — "Welsche Confinien." " Welsch " in that part of the _ world means Italian, the generaT significance of the word being "foreign. ' It 16 for the same reason that the Celtic region west of England was called "Wales," and the same word appears in Cornwall and in " walnut," the foreign nut. But it ■ has been observed s that " Welsh " was applied only to Celts who had come under Roman influence. Our forefathers spoke of "Bretwealas" in Britain; of "Galwealas" in Gaul, and of "Rumwealas" in Italy; but the unRomanised Scots were never called " Welsh." The Turks eeem to be in danger of having company at their back door and front door at the same time.— Louisville Post. The King has approved of the appointment of Mr. Robert Younger, K<J to be one of the Judges of the High Court of Justice m the place of Mr. Justice Wamngton, appointed Lord Justice of Appeal. The new Judge is in his fiftyfourth year. From the Edinburgh Academy Mr. Younger went to Balliol ColJolr' Oxford, whence he graduated in 1883 Called to the Bar in the following year, he selected the Chancery side of the law as the sphere of his activities, acquired a very respectable practice as a junior. He took/silk m 1900, and the following year was elected a Bencher of Lincoln's Inn. Mr. Younger is little known to the public, but \in the Courts .in which he practises hae long been regarded as a very sound lawyer, with a ; judicial manner. He is a' bachelor, and belongs to many clubs. Writing in the Contemporary Review, Dr. E. J. Dillon correctly observes the trend of Italian events : "The partisans of neutrality, once- so numerous as to be almost identical with the nation, are fast diminishing in number. The worth of the offers, relatively slight, made by Austria is impaired by hampering obligations, and also it would appear, j when analysed, are little better than a conditional promise of future concessions. The Allied Powers on their side are making no overtures." Mr. H. G. Wells has been crossing swords with Mr. J. 0. P. Bland in the Nineteenth Century about European politics. In reply to Mr. Bland, he writes : "There is. I gather, some sort of specialist, 'the Statesman, ' to whom these high affairs should be restricted I am afraid that T, as a man with children who will have to live in the world that this war and the subsequent peace will rearrange, cannot acquiesce in the complete abandonment *of> their affairs to the operations of these mysterious superior beings. So far their occult activities have made a tremendous mess of things, and it is with the deliberate intention of letting the light into thpir operations that amateurs and outsiders like myself are battering upon the discussion of the settlement" When Li Hung Chant; visited Bismarck at his castle in 3895. the latter said:— "You have seen but little of us in your pa-it of the world, for Germany as a j unit is only a new nation ; but the time will come when the German Empire will dominate Europe. England, with all her bluster and" show, has a hundred weak points, and she knows tha,t a conflict with a Power nearly her equal will mean her undoing. I hate the .boasting Engenders, even though Ger-, man blood rules from the Throne." "The most encouraging thing about the French just now is that they ,have reconstituted "their life within thirty miles of the firing line, and are going about their business with the same composure as if the enemy were a thousand leagues away," writes Mr. J. A. Sppnder in the Westminster ' Gazette. "No one can realise war without seeing it or taking part in it, whether he lives in London or Birmingham, or in Lyons or Bordeaux. But ordinary sensible people do realise their duty in this war, and, believe me, they are the vast majority of this country." What a wonderful book it would be, if it could be written, which told of how and .why and from whence men joined tho new British Army. Bishop Robins, of Athabasca, tells of three men whom' he met at Athabasco Landing, who were on their way to enlist. One of these had tramped 500 miles. Another 1000 miles, without a companion, and had had to throw away his blankets in order to struggle through. The third had come 1500 miles from Fort Good Hope, | and had had hut a single dog to assist him in carrying his supplies. " We are glad to learn, from indopendent testimony, that the Indian* troops who did such brilliant work at Neuve Chapelle are standing the rigours of a spring campaign with nn almost complete immunity from ordinary sickness," says the Pall Mall. " They are as happy in their work us our own irrepressible Tommies, and those who ;iro wounded are mightily pleased with the care and attention tnej receive at the base hospitals^ Nurses say it is a pleasure to do imything {or v wnmtderl Indian ; bo in so cratolul."