INSURANCE ON COMBATANTS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue LXVIII, 19 December 1914, Page 5

INSURANCE ON COMBATANTS.

BAD NEWS ON A BRICKBAT. DANCING DERVISHES. PETER'S PENCE FROM BELGIUM DECLINED. A PROPHETESS' VISION STORIES FROM TSING-TAQ. ANCIENT GERMAN CANNON. (Received Dec. 1.9. 8 a.m.) I LONDON, Dec. 18.

The National Rifle Association announces that Imperial challenge shield teams, senior and junior, may fire any day except Sunday between April Ist and June 30th next.

Many insurance companies are not accepting insurances on eombajtants, and a deadlock has been reached. It is suggested that the Government fhould reinsure for war risk.

Through the Press Bureau an eye- j witness says that the news of the de- j struetion of the German cruisers in the Atlantic was communicated to t*e' enemy's trenches by means of a briclrhat round which the message was drapped. The best throwers hurled this towards the enemy. On the following day news of the sinking of the NurnTserg was thus transmitted. The Kaiser is suffering from a mai lignant sore throat and his entourage is gravely anxious. The Turks are enrolling regiments cf dancing Dervishes (the members of the Mevlevite fraternity of dervishes). The Pope has written to the Archbishop of Malines declining, owing to the condition of the Belgian people and Royal family, to accept offerings of Peter's Pence (a voluntary contribution of a penny on every hearth) from Belgium at this sad moment. Vienna officially admits that the Austrian killed and wounded in Servia numbered 100,000. General Potiorck eight days ago telegraphed to the Emperor that he would be at Nish in three weeks. Madame de Thebes, a Paris prophetess, describes the year 1915 as full of tumults and splendours. She says the war should end between March and July; Italy will draw the sword, and Germany be torn to pieces by revolution.

American correspondents who were present at the sieg3 of Tsing-tao } say that some of the German guns had been previously used at the siege "of Paris in 1871. When the. Germans had exhausted their ammunition they dynamited the guns. An aviator, Lieutant Plushkow, who escaped, has been interned with his machine in 3!)pina. The Japanese were unable to understand why Tsing-tao surrendered while a fighting man remained or why the Governor of Tsing-tao had not comiritted suicide.

Correspondents on the east coast suggest that the Germans followed the British trawlers, knowing this would be a safe position, and that they would be able to reach England without much danger of mine-fields.

The total losses on the east coast were 110 killed and 405 wounded, including Hartlepool's 83 civilians, eight soldiers, and four sailors.