LOCAL AND GENERAL NEWS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXII, Issue LXXII, 21 December 1916, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL NEWS.

A proclamation in the Gazette extends the penua during which bank notes are to be legal tender till June 30th next.

The express train last night was crowded with holiday-makers, and it also brought home a contingent of Taranaki soldiers from the camps on furlough for the holidays. The Hawera boys look well and happy.

Major Gok, gz-oup commander, has been advised that authority has been sanctioned for the equipment of a rifle range in Hawera, and that the work will be put in hand immediately. It is estimated to cost £440, and will be situated on property purchased from Mr Wills, near the Lakes. Whereroa.

The Medical Board, which is now in Hawera examining, recruits under section 35 and those' chosen by lot in the first ballot, yesterday put through 65 men, 10 of, whom were classed as medically unfit for either active or home service. Of. the 55 who got through some were classed for home service only. The officers of the Board state that the men accept the position in a very good spirit, and that it is the desire of the Board" to make no distinctions between the men chosen by ballot and those who have volunteered.

During the sitting of the Wellington District Military Service Appeal Board yesterday, the chairman (Mr D. G. A. Cooper, S.M.) said the war had been going on for two'years now, and yet many single i men did not regard the position seriously. He said they should begin to understand that the position was serious, and- that they would be well advised to make arrangements in regard to their affairs, because they would all be called up sooner or later.

A contemporary is informed that the man Cooke, who was sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment at Christchurch in connection with h-s anticonscription views, is a tailor by trade and some time ago headed a deputation to the Minister of Munitions and Supplies asking that he and his fellow tailors at Christchurcb should get larger orders for uniforms for the expeditionairy forces. The sentenced man has regularly denounced ;the Compulsory Training Act 6i'nce its inception, and it is indeed strange to find a man with his strongly anti-militarist views openly begging for a share of the profits to be made out of the. manufacture of soldiers' clothing. Cooke stood foa* Christchurch East at the last general election, but received only a few hundred votes and lost his deposit. , /

Referring to his recent trip to the South Island, Dr R: McNab stated that he had never seen conditions more favorable than they were in Southland. The farms, however, were beginning to feel the labor pinch little. This was particularly noticeable at the Gore show, where the attendance was nothing like it has been for many years past, although the entries were up to the usual number. On enquiring, the farmers had told him the reason was that they did not have the men on their farms, the result being a reduced attendance.' "Both as regards Canterbury and Otago," added Dr McNab, VI. think the farmers will feel the pinch earlier than' the North Island, because such a large proportion of work on the farms there is manual in the cultivation of the ground and the growing of their winter crops. The farmers there cannot reduce their men at a pinch to <the same extent as the North Island farmers can, owing to the large amount of grazing in the south. Otherwise the farmers appear to be in good hestrt, and are endeavoring, as far, ,as possible, to do the work themselves."