NEWS AND NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 6, 8 January 1916, Page 10

NEWS AND NOTES

Bishop Perrin, formerly of British Columbia, now suffragan to the Bishop of London, in a newspaper interview reproves "the exhibition of intemperance in eating and drinking as indicated by the Mansion House banquet." The Lord Mayor should have invited his guests to* tea and coffee, followed by the customary speeches, and then Mr. Asquith and others should have "wie home to a two-course dinner. The King's lead in temperance has been rendered impotent by His Majesty's Ministers, declares the Bishop. Canadian papers reconi that eight hundred big guns made for France and Great Britain by the Bethlehem Steel Company were destroyed on 10th November, when machine shop No. 4 of the plant at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was. burned The monetary loss was £400,000, but the greiiter loss is in the time necessary to replace the big guns and the still more valuable machinery, and the consequent delay in filling war orders. The Bethleh.Sm fire had barely been put out when flames started in a pattern shop at the Eddystone, Del., plant of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, and patterns valued at £10,000 were dej stroyed. Berlin and Vienna papers rejoice over these fires. Major Page-Croft j member of the House of Commons, who has spent nearly a year with 6he British Army m France, spoke in Che Commons with' warm praise of the Army, in which there are no party feelings nor class, prejudices. The effect of service at the front is, he thinks, to exalt the character of men, and when peace comes the Army will bring back to England a purifying stream of ennobled manhood' "In half an hour in action," said this'gallant M.P., "I have seen more Christianity, more elevation of character, more nobility, than I had ever seen before in my life." " Mr. Churchill had the best strategic I eye in the Government," Says the Manchester Guardian. "Of the personal tragedy of Mr. Churchill's decision this is not the time to speak For the whole air is heavy with such tragedies." "Nature has given Mr. Churchill all good gifts, and she will byand-bye give him the last gift which will enable hitn to put what he has into the common stock and abide by the result," says the Weetminster Gazette. "The resuscitation of the General Staff has breathed new life into an organisation which should never have been allowed to languish," says The Times. "Its temporary eclipse has probably cost us dear; but we are satisfied to know that the proper, machinery of a General I Staff is once more at work. We trust I that it will be manned with our ablest soldiers, and that in future full weight will be given to their advice." "I wish we : Londeoners, and especially we London journalists, could be mixed up and sent round the country every few weeks," confesses Mr. J. A. Spender in the Westminster Gazette. "Most of us have sat on our office stools for the best part of two years, without the usual breaks which refresh brain as well as body, and we get our eyes glued to the petty Vexations and frictions of the governing circle, and the fuss made about them by half a score of London journalists. These things count for almost nothing in the country : Men from the Midlands and the North tell me that in the provinces the party truce is a real thing, that they really have buried the old quarrels, and are genuinely dis gusted at the 'London squabbles.'" " * Colonel G. O^ Shields, President of the League of American Sportsmen, says the destruction of birds costs the United States £200,000,000 a year. Cotton growers lost £20,000,000 a year by the boll weevil, because quails, prairie chickens, meadow larks, aiid other birds which formerly were there in millions have been swept away by thoughtless men and boys. The chinch bug costs wheat growers another £20.000,000, and the Hessian fly £40,000,000. Colonel Shields' added that potato growers pay £3,400,000 a year for sprayjng poisons, and remarked that a quail slain in Pennsylvania had 127 potato bugs in its craw. The Paris City Conncil has adopted a measure presented by its President, Henri Galli, and Poirier de Narcay, urging that all subjects of Allied nations of military age who are residing hi France be required either to leave the country or / enlist in the French Army, thosq who refuse to be confined in concentration camps. The motion also sets, forth that subjects or citizens of neutral countries should not receive residential permit's except upon recommendation of their Governments and after a rigid investigation, of their credentials.

! Of the total wheat yield in Canada this year of 336,258,000 bushels, the exportable surplus will be 228,132,000 bushels, or : nearly 68 fler cent., and 85,558,000 bushels in excess of the previous high, record of 1913-14.