Notes and Comments.

Feilding Star, Volume XI, Issue 2464, 5 October 1914, Page 2

Notes and Comments.

To-day's Anniversaries. n o' l- aee Walpole born, 1717. Offenbach, the composer, died, 1880. 1908 " a ' declared --"-dependent, Portugal declared a republic, IPIO.

"Mrs Tommy Atkins." This is the title of the third topicat, patriotic musical composition that has come to us for review within a <fZ £ s - Wo can easily imagine Mrs Tommy Atkins" catching on at benefit concerts, with its easily picked up chorus— * l Have you got a "bob" to spare for Missus Atkins ? For her hubby did his country's call obey. He has gone to fight for you, so the least that you can do Is to help her, now that Tommy's gone away. The two-verse words and music are tla T;£ le ? nnig*n g* and Alex. Wildev, Ltd., of Christchurch, are the printera and publishers, at tho easy price mentioned in the chorus.

Brought .It On Themselves. As we have already pointed out, the city papers took absolutely no notice <--*■ th e request of the Government that no details of our transports and the going away of the expeditionary force m them should be published, the transports had to -be recalled, ?■? n men are not away s" et - Now the Government has published a Proclamation threatening the men who turn out the papers with all the pains and penalties of martial'law if they publish what they should away their country to the spy within our borders, as it were. The next step will be that Minister Allen will be following the example of Australia s old-new Defence Minister, Senator Pearce, who stated in Melbourne last week that a new censorship regulation was being drafted, compelling newspapers to submit all news concerning movements of troops and vessels to the State censor. This will bo worse for the Australian papers than the signing of all political news for the Censor will not read the "copy" as fast as a sub-editor. What a delay I If our city contemporaries on this side of Tasman Sea don't mind, their Proclamation—well, they will only have themselves to blame.

War and Its Recorders. What war means to newspapers in the matter of extra cable news and pressure on space may be gathered by Feilding folks from the coloums of the Stab. But how much more it means to the important dailies in London is indicated by the list of men the Express, for instance, has sent to various points in Europe to keep it in touch with the war. Here are the men in front for Pearson's paper: Alan Ostler, who was recently doing the war in Morocco and more recently was imprisoned in West Africa"; Alphonse Courlander, a well-known novelist; Oliver Madox Hueffer, one of the most gifted of essayists; Percival Phillips, another novelist; Alfred Stead, son of the late W. T. Stead; Stewart Lawford, Ray Johnson, Captain L. F. Lyssons, M. Mes'tchek, and Signor Bodini. These are all special war correspondents, in addition to the regular correspondents in the European capitals. Edgar Wallaco, one of the most virile of English novewrites us that he has syndicated himself and has gone to the front as his own war correspondent. Frederick Palmer, an American, author of that much-talked-of war novel, ''The Last Shot," has gone to the front for an American magazine—in fact, quite an army of authors of fame from all the literary nations ' have been commissioned to write up the war on the spot. What a debigs of fictional fact we shall have now for years and years and years and years, as Harry Lauder put« it in one of his songs!