NEWS AND NOTES

Evening Post, Volume XCI, Issue 149, 24 June 1916, Page 10

NEWS AND NOTES

A -wounded New Zealander draws this moving picture of the scene in Westminster Abbey on Ansae Day : — " Many a pageant lias the Abbey seen, but never before have three thousand men from the outskirts of the Empire worshipped with their King in its storied pile,", he writes in The Times. "The service had a climax almost oppressive in its sadness. Tho Australians and New Zealanders turned their eyes towards ithe altar as the notes of the National Anthem echoed through the Abbey. They saw there the simple khakiclad figure of the only man in our Empire who does not stand when the Anthem is sung. And they wondered what he thought. Surely he saw as they did that every man in whose company he worshipped would again lay down his life to uphold his sovereignty."

Lord Rhondda (formerly Mr. D. A. Thomas, who received his peerage from the present Government at the beginning of this year, and who went to Canada/ and the United States to organise the supply of munitions) pointed out to members of the Chambers of Trade Conference at Cardiff recently that people looked upon business as little lower than a profession. The clever boy of a family was sent to study medicine, the law, or the Civil service, and the less clever boy was sent into business. It was, however, of the highest importance to the nation that the best brains of the nation should be directed to commerce.

Lord Eshej defends- Queen Victoria from the attacks of a recently-published book. He-' says, in the Spectator :" I am content to rest the vindication of the Queen's ultra-German tendencies upon Bismarck's fear and dislike of her influence. Biographies are printed _H_d perish. King Edward very wisely decided that the Queen, should tell her own story, and that her people should know from her correspondence and journal, the type of woman they had lyved and respected. Her sovereign qualities, whatever record leaps to light, never will be shamed."

Capital now invested in Great Britain in plant and materials in the two branches of mechanical and electrical engineering .was probably not less .than £1,000,000,000, said Professor J. A. Fleming, speaking at the Caxton Hall, London, last month. In many matters it would pay British firms in the same business to promote scientific, research in common on certain problems of manufacture. Col. R. E. Crompton said that if engineers and scientific men in Germany had said a thing must be done the banks must find the money. The reverse was the case in London. The uneducated section of the City of London was at the bottom of our bad fight with Germany.

The Government of the Straits Settlements has profited by the lesson of the Singapore riota to introduce Compulsion and to place its Volunteer force on a, sound footing. The Government of Ceylon is contemplating the same thing. The Calcutta Englishmen asks, Why should ■the Government of India, with very much larger interests at stake, hesitate? The European community is ready and anxious to accept compulsory military training, because it . has come to the conclusion that it is the only way to make the Volunteers. an efficient force auxiliary! to the Regular Army for use in cases of emergency. If Compulsion is to be introduced at.all the present is obviously the best tima to do it when the people chiefly concerned are asking for it.

The Lyordan, the organ of the lower School at Harrow, has the following propositions in the current issue:—"A subaltern is one who has position but no magnitude. A Turkish communique lies equally on any point. An obtuse officer is one more stupid 'than a superior officer, but less so than two Staff officers. A trench is that which has length, breadth, and stickiness. A soldier equal to a Tommy is equal to anything. An observer and a pilot who are in the same line meet in the same plane. An 'old dug-out' i 3 often a plain figure with a Sam Browne belt round its circumstance. If things" are double the price of tlie same thing obtainable elsewhere, it is a War Office contract."

Ellen Key, the : famous Swedish writer, in her new book, "War, Peace, and-the Future," says:—"The belief that some day we shall be able to prevent war is to me one with the belief in the possibility of making humanity really human. The first mea__s of preventing war would be to let all education of the growing generation aim at eradicating tho predatory instincts in which war, as shown at the outbreak of hostilities, has its root.

. . . Another means against war would be to consider it the worst crime against the freedom of the press to use tho press as the means of disseminating personal or party hatreds within a nation or national hatreds between' nations."

The, Union of Democratic Control (states the Daily Mail) accuses the nation which harbours its members of contemplating "a war of revenge" and a "vendetta." This also is utterly false. Why are the great majority of people making up their minds that after the war Germany cannot be restored to the old trade terms? The answer is not out of revenge but because of common prudence. " This is a war to rid Europe of German military domination, and its object would not be secured if at its termination Germany wore'allowed once more to accumulate, ihe means of waging a second war. It is not. a question of eternal punishment, but of taking precautions in the present and hereafter of continuing 'to be cautious for such time as circumstances may show to be necessary.1

"Ii yon want to see extravagance in full swing, you had better take your eyes for a moment off the poor mothere in East London who are .seeing,' for the first time in their lives, their children decently olothed and fed, and take a look round Brighton on a Sunday," says Dr. Scott Holland, in th. Commonwealth. "There the hotels are crowded with people who have' nothing to do but to spend money Glancft down the menus. You will see what a dinner in.an-X Champagne foams. AH that lusurions living can do is rampant. There is no single sign of restraint, of seriousness,' of public responsibility. It is all gToss, palpable, audacious. It flings itself out, in reckless fcsolenee, in the lace of the silent heavens-."

The Welt am Montag, a widely circulated weekly Berlin journal, publishes an article headed "Peace m Autumn," in which the following passage occurs: ""The great Council recently held in Baris, according to tho unanimous reports of British, French, and neutral newspapers, not- Only decided to exercise a shsiper pr__aure on neutral trade, but to prosecute a co-ordinated attack on all fronts with all the means at their disposal. We have a right to be somewhat sceptical with regard to these reports. ' Wolf! Wolf!' haS been cried too ..ten. But this time we expect something. In the nature of the ease, and under existing circumstances, the English troops mtist stion come into action, and the noticeable silence prevailing on this point strengthens our belief."