NEWS AND NOTES

Evening Post, Volume XC, Issue 92, 16 October 1915, Page 10

NEWS AND NOTES

The Times condemns most of the merrymakings that are carried on for patriotic purposes. "These butterfly gatherings " are, says The Times, really " a -woeful waste of energy •which, might be more usefully employed." They are, adds the paper, "out ""of place in this grim season of wa.r-time. They advertise seekers after notoriety, they impose an unnecessary tax on good-natured friends, and the only people who are really deserving of praise are the hardworked actors, actresses, and singers who are almost forced to give their services. The remedies for all this dissipation of time, strength, and money are not easy to devise, but the first lies with the public themselves." They should avoid enterprises that merely have a patriotic label. Concerning war effects in Britain, Mr. H. G. Wells writes: "The poorer classes have expei'.anced no class disaster by this war. On the other hand, as one specimen of the securer classes, I find the carefully arranged system of investments upon which I had relied for my old age and for my widow's security has depreciated by about 30 per cent. We are fighting this war very largely on our savings on onr social fat; the whole community is being impoverished, but, relatively, the rich are getting poorer and the poorer better off. Much, wealth is being destroy^ed, but jnttoh wealth is also being distributed." The middle and upper classes must set a better example of thrift and restraint. It rs probably -true that ostentation has in recent years increased in faster ratio than actual extravagance. But be that as it may, it is certain that both have increased much faster Chan is seemly or safe. — J A. R. Marriott. "The freedom of the seas means a very different thing in Germany to what it does in America." says the Morning Post's correspondent in Washington. "When Germans talk about the freedom of the seas they mean the abandonment of the British blockade, so that the superiority of sea power ■will no longer be a factor in the war. The American conception of the freedom of the seas is the respect the belligerents shall accord to neutral rights and the observance of international law, and not, for instance, the destruction of merchant vessels by submarines." The First Lord of the Admiralty has placed the services of Sir Frederick Black, Director of Navy Contracts, temporarily at the disposal of the Minister of Munitions, who has appointed him as Director-General of Munitions Supply. Sir Frederick William Black, C.8., has been Director of Navy Contracts since 1906. He is now fifty-two years old. A Danish friend has sent Dr. Gilbert Murray a quotation from a German religious poet, " much admired in Evangelical circles." "We have become the nation of wrath," says the poet; "we accomplish the almighty will of God, and will yengefully wreak the demands of His righteousness on the godless, filled with sacred fury." " The third report of the French Commission of Enquiry into atrocities committed by the Germans upon prisoners and wounded is a document which will arouse the anger of every one who reads it," says the Pall Mall. "The French say, with entire justice, that this is not an army of soldiers but of butchers. We need not here go into the horrible details. It is enough to say that these things are done not in the frenzy of battle, but deliberately, and by command of the German officers." " On the one aide we ccc Kitchener's men, the vigorous, healthy, clean, and keen, drilling ready to go out to France. All around them, watching £he scene, are the loafers, the ne'er-do-wells, the disreputable, dirty, diseased. These remain at home. We cannot spare those who do go; we could get along better without those who don't." —C. W. Saleeby. In England and Wales last year there was a decrease in the number of convictions for drunkenness of 5049 as compared with the figures for the previous year, though it was not spread over the whole year. The official report adds; "To avoid misconception it should, perhaps, be repeated that a decrease in convictions for drunkenness may be due to all manner of causes, and does not necessarily or even probably indicate a decrease in drunkenness — still less in excessive drinking." "All commodities will, for come time to come, be costly; to-day the purchasing valuei of the pound sterling" is only about sixteen shillings, and it may go even lower," says the Telegraph. " That means that for every sovereign less of the things that will rank as the necessaries and luxuries of life will be obtainable. When the war is over, when the guns are silent and the rifles have been laid aside, we shall be called on to face a new. battle. In thousands of homes a long contest will have to be waged against waste and extravagance." Viscount Bryce, speaking at Dulwich College (1550 of whose " old boys " are serving with the forces), said: — "He hoped the war would be over before those who were not yet leaving school would have any opportunity of joining in it. The only contingency which could call all of them into service would be an invasion. He was happy to think that the danger of that seemed more and more remote. Nevertheless, it was a contingency "which was never to be forgotten, and if it arose everybody would be bound to come forward to do what he could, whatever his age. If any invader tried to touch the soil of England we would give him nothing but burying ground." "That privately-owned newspapers may be and are a danger to the State I agree. The alternative to privately-owned newspapers is, I presume. State-owned newspapers. lam entirely against the idea of State-owned newspapers, which seem to me not only to promise far more danger than any existing danger, but to be quite visionary and unpractical." — Arnold Bennett. "Our civilisation lays stress 'on things quite different from those on which Socrates and Plato laid stress ; it seldom recognises schoolmasters as the most important men in the State; it does not care overmuch for simplicity, modesty, or indifference to notoriety and applause; it pays little heed to the sower who quietly sows the seed of what men live upon; ifc values other things more congenial to it," says th« Atlantic Monthly. The Archbishop of Capetown., speak--ing at a men's mass meeting in Capetown, said that a soldier told him that Capetown was the worst place for a soldier to be quartered in, and he asked if the Church could not do something to cope with the e-vil. General Thompson, at the same time, said that, after thirty ■years' service in different parts of the Empire, if they asked his opinion, as he bad often been asked, which station, '■offered the greatest temptation fco soldiers, he would say unheeitattngJy this* v fair pexmtsula of. t&eusV