NEWS AND NOTES

Evening Post, Volume XC, Issue 80, 2 October 1915, Page 10

NEWS AND NOTES

Germany denounced Rumania for having laid an embargo on arms, and she denounces America because 6he does not lay an embargo on arms. It is true that the embargoes are of a somewhat different nature. Rumania refuses to allow any arms to pass across her territory for the supply of the Turks. America refuses to prevent the manufacture of arms for the French and British, and of course it is far less serious merely to permit the passage of arms than actually to make them. None the less it would seem that Rumania and America cannot both be wrong, — The Argonaut. "The saving of a penny a day by each of the population of the Kingdom means an annual sum of £68,000,000, an amount sufficient to pay the interest, on a debt of £1,500,000,000," says Sir F. Schuster, the chairman of the Union of London and Smith's Bank. "There ought always to be in the United Kingdom at least six months' supply of corn — an emergency reservoir which should never be drawn upon except in a supreme crisis," says the Spectator. "For reasons connected with the keeping of corn, it might be advisable to let a certain amount of corn flow in and out of the reservoir in *ways arranged with the trade, and so as not to upset the market." Among_ the scaentisw co-operating with the British Government are : — Lord Rayleigh, 0.M., physicist; Mr. G. T. Beilby, fuel expert ; Mr. W. Duddell, engineer; Prof. B. Hopkinson, engineer; Prof. J. A. M'Clelland, physicist; Prof. R. Meldola, chemist, applied science to wheat growing; Mr. R, Threlfall, engineer. The Englishman applies everything to his own personal needs. Every Englishman is an island to himself, and taken in the mass his people is the most churlish on earth. — Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten. "It is the common experience of us all who have spent a considerable number of years in the •world," says Mr. Asquith, "that the whole scale of domestic and social expenditure has during the lifetime of the last generation risen by leaps and bounds to a height which was never dreamed of by our forefathers, and which in my opinion, and I believe that of most people, will, if not checked, be disastrous to the best interests of the country." Gorz, the important Austrian town, upon which Italy casts an eye, has been called the Nice of Austria, and has attained mnch , popularity as a wateringplace, on account of its mild climate, Gorz, which first figures in history in the eleventh century, has never apparently had much that was Austrian about it. / During the Middle Ages its population was mainly German, and now it is at least two-thirds Italian. And in its convent of Castagnavizza is the tomb of Charles X., the last Bourbon King of France. "When she launched her ultimatum upon Petrograd, Germany flattered herself that she would have to fight a Government rather than a nation," says the Pall Mall. "She has learnt a different lesson." The Greek Premier, M. Venizelos, is not a Cretan by descent, as is popularly supposed. His name proclaims that. He comes from an old Peloponnesian family. His parents settled in Crete. His urbanity leads one to forget the time when he shouldered ,a rifle for Cretan freedom. He is a lawyer by profession, and studied at the University of Athens^ — and he is said to be one of the best revolver shots in Europe. "These seem to me the resolutions we are bound to make," says the Bishop of London. "I will pray, I will repent, I will serve, I will save." Economy talk is current in the English newspapers. Says one : "The prospect of a rise in the price of mustard should not cause much consternation ; is there any item . on which a saving could more easily be effected? The head of a famous firm that has built a fortune upon the manufacture of mustard once confessed that trie money came to him not, from the mustard we use, but the mustard we waste. Not one of us but proves the truth of the statement every time we use the mustard-pot and dab down on the side of our plate five times the quantity we are likely to eat." "We have been so long under t3ie German spell that we have come to think that there are no industrial facilities in Russia; but 'it was sufficient for us to loo*k into our own house to find that it is full of riches," writes M. Menshikoff in the Novoye Vremya. " Mr. Manontoff, a man who ought to know our industries as well as any man, says that we are capable of producing enough shells to snow down Germany if we will only make full use of all our industrial resources. In the Kiev Province alone, the local mobilisation committee discovered about a thousand works and shops which can caet and turn out shells." It would not be a difficult task, for the Turkish officials to remove their archives should Constantinople be threatened, for it seems that the 'contents are mostly packed. In the lobbies of the Government Departments, according to Kessein Bey's "Evil of the East," stand enormous boxes covered with cowhide and studded with hnge ' copper nails. Ip. these are preserved all Ottoman official documents packed ready to be transported at a moment's notice, when the long-prophesied flitting from the capital takes place. The volunteering of clergymen for ammunition factories reminds an English paper that one of the most important improvements in firearms was the work of a clergyman. In 1807 the Rev. Alexander John' Forsyth invented the earliest form of percussion cap, though it was •not adopted by the military authorities until some thirty years later. An elaborate test of the new device was made at Woolwich in 1834, six thousand rounds being fired in flint locks and percussion muskets in . all weathers, and this trial established the superiority of the percussion cap. "The moment seems to be approaching when at new and great call will be made upon every member of the Allied nations for the final stuff without which no victory can be secured — moral," 6ays the Nation. " Strange compound that it is of fiction and fact, of imagination and of will, it is this which in the last resort snatches victory from defeat." One of the copies of Magna Carta was saved in a peculiar way. It came to tho British Museum as part of the contents of the Cottoniaii Library. How it entered that Library is thus explained : Sir Robert Cotton, the antiquary of James I.'s reign, visited his tailor, and found him with a pile of parchments which he was using to cut out patterns, of garments. He \\as just going to cut' out, a vest, selected a suitable piece, took up his shears — and Sir Robert camp in, *nd so saved fw tbe ntfclon om ol the foojecg^ec o| Magim Quja,