INTERNATIONAL DIFFICULTIES.

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 February 1918, Page 6

INTERNATIONAL DIFFICULTIES.

AMUSING ERRORS; An international difficulty that we are slow in solving i, s the correct handling of foreign reports (says an English journalist). The latest was the announcement that according to Le Matin, 21 chemical works Had been blown up at Griesheim-on-thc-Main. The explosion was indeed a formidable one, but there were not 21 works. The date of the telegram from Zurich to Le Matin —it wa s , November 21, but November was not -given—was mistaken for the opening word of the despatch.. It waa. } however, not so serious a. business as the merchant who added th© year of our Lord into his Income Tax figures. The other curiosities in our dealing with foreign, telegrams, to which I have' already drawn attention, may be collected together. There was the memorable capture of “Point d’Appui,” then there was the conquest of the “works of Betonnes,” a rather iree rendering of “Ouvrages betonnes,” which means concrete fortifications. The funniest was, of course, the announcement in several London papers in big headlines thaf a. “8010 Commission’ 7 was about: to be sent over to England by the French Government, some unwary translator mistaking a “commission rogatoire” (a, legal request for information) for a' commission of inquiry, . Again, there was the strange, new shape assumed _ by the notorious “steam-roller” simile when it became “a. compressed air transport plant.” The choicest of all, however, was the story of the fighting in a “Presbyterian school” at Passchendaele. This referred, of course, to the “presbytere,” the priest’s house and school.