SWEEPING THE SEAS

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLI, Issue XLI, 15 October 1921, Page 10

SWEEPING THE SEAS

The world at large does not realise what an enormous and difficult task it was to clear the sea's of mines after the conclusion of the war. Around the British coasts alone 70,000 mines had been laid ag a submarine barrier; and that area -represented no more than a fraction of the total where mines had been sown freely. The British forces engaged in this work of clearance have swept an area about equal to the whole of England and Wales; the work was done thoroughly, but with so much scientific care for the men employed that the loss of life has been less than one per cent, of the number of hands engaged. In this beneficent kind of "sweeping the seas" Great Britain has proved as efficient as in the warlike rorm for which the aavy was designed.

*The Greymouth. Star says that one day last week a Coal Creek farmer heard a squealing noise in the vicinity of the lagoon, which he thought was caused by one of his young pigs He investigated, and instead of a pig he tound a hare in the water, swimming from an island towards the shore Winging to its back was a weasel which evidently had attacked the hare! Ihe latter must have taken to the water in an effort to save itself, but the weasel, not to be denied, clung to its victim's back and travelled as a passenger. The farmer aimed a stone at it, whereupon the weasel jumped ashore and made a clean get-away. The hare was dead.

''He's like a concertina—always in and out/ said a barman at the Greymouth Magistrate's Court, when giving evidence in a licensing case, in which a licensee was charged with perj matting drunkenness on his premises. The barman was describing his effort* to get rid of an inebriated customer, and stated that as fast as he put the man out of one door he came in at another. "He's a perfect pest," h« concluded, amidst laughter. . In Southern Kussia women's stockings, owing to their cost, are seldom seen. Their absence, in conjunction with the present mode of short skirts, produces a peculiar spectacle. The women are keenly on the look-out for a foreigner to marry, as in this way they can change their nationality and obtain permission to leave the country. A British ship's officer, who de scribes himself as a portly, middle-aged man, received 13 proposals of marriage from women whose ages ranged from 18 to BO*