LOCAL AND GENERAL

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXIV, Issue 3242, 13 December 1930, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL

Particulars of train arrangements in connection with the forthcoming Christmas and New Year Holidays appear in our advertising columns in to-day's issue. On Sunday afternoon next Colonel Carmichael, of Auckland, a retired Salvation Army officer, will address Sunday School attendants at the 3 p.m. service in the Salvation Army Hall. All denominations are invited.

‘‘The Highways Board spends £IOO,000 in another adjoining county where there are practically no contributions —surely they should spend £250 on a bridge in this county,” remarked Cr. Wilson at yesterday’s meeting of the Waitomo County Council, when the question of the repair of flood damage in the Awakino district due to recent floods was under discussion.

It is understood that a writ claiming £IOOO damages has been served on Mr. Dynes Fulton, chairman of directors of the New Zealand Co-operative Dairy Company, by Percival G. Allsop, a former employee of the company. The damages claimed are said to be in respect to certain statements allegedly made by Mr. Fulton, several years ago in which reference was supposed to have been made to Mr. Allsop.

Though times are hard, more people than usual are marrying this year. This is revealed in the monthly abstract of statistics for November, which states: “The somewhat unsatisfactory state of affairs disclosed by the various business indexes is not reflected in the marriage statistics. Indeed, for the first nine months of the year of 1930, the number of marriages recorded (8428) shows an increase of 181, or 2.2 per cent., over the corresponding period of last year.”

Even plus fours and open necked shirts are now worn in the theatres and best restaurants in London, according to Mr. R. W. D. Robertson, who gave to the New Plymouth Round Tabje Club recently some impressions of his recent tour abroad. In these places, he said, evening dress was now rather the exception than the rule. The soft felt hat was the vogue and university men, formerly recognised as dandies, appeared in old shooting jackets, preferably with a hole in them, and grey flannel trousers.

Berlin has now at many of the busiest centres a policeman with a band round his arm to indicate that he speaks English. Occasionally you may come across a French-speaking constable, but there are not so many. One of these linguistic policemen is perhaps unique in his profession, and Berlin is very proud of him. He speaks fluently 12 languages, and is now learning in his spare time Hungarian, Dutch , and Rumanian. As might be imagined, this linguistic genuis was not always a policeman; in the war he was an interpreter; his father was a Russian officer and his mother a German. Stress of the times led him to his present vocation, and, his post being at the city railway station, which is the terminus for all trains from the east, he is repeatedly able to assist Russians, Finns, and other foreigners.

That Mr. L. C. Walker’s scheme for a train-ferry between the North and South Islands is very far ahead of the Dominion’s present transport requirements is the opinion of the Transport Committe of the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Walker, on November 27, explained his. scheme in detail to members of the chamber. The committee made known its opinion to the last meeting of the council of the chamber.

“My boys have had very bad luck this year,” writes a Canadian father to a Blenheim friend. “They had a splendid crop, just near ripening, when along came a hailstorm (stones larger than pigeons’ eggs) and in 10 minutes destroyed everything. Instead of getting about £BOO each for their year’s work they have made £9O. A hailstorm is really a fearsome tilingover here. I have seen the hood of a motor car perforated by huge stones. I don’t suppose you will believe me when I say that they were as big as hens’ eggs, but they were, and they made very short work of that, hood.”

“Nowadays I defy anybody to tell by length of hair or skirt if a girl is 50 or 15,” remarked counsel during the course of a case heard at the Nelson Supreme Court.

A copy of the Balclutha Diamond Jubilee booklet has been placed in the reading room of the Municipal Library, and may prove of interest to ex-residents of that town now residing in this district.

Among the passengers on the Remuera, which arrived in Wellington from London recently, were three boys from English public schools, who will be given positions on New Zealand farms by the New Zealand Association of Pubiie Schools of Great Britain. Under the auspices of Mr. F. Milne", headmaster of Waitaki High School., a number of boys have been brought out from England, and later placed on the land since the Government suspended its general scheme for the settlement of English public schoolboys in this country.

In reference to the troubles in ' Palestine, Bishop West-Watson, in the course of a lecture at Christchurch, remarked that when Great * Britain accepted the Palestine mandate it was probably not realised that commitments were being entered into that would be difficult to carry out with famness to everyone. He quoted an opinion expressed to him while he was in Jerusalem that probably it would have been better if the United States had been offered and accepted the Palestine mandate; Great Britain was getting tired of being the police of the world, which had suggested to his Lordship Gilbert's line: “A policeman’s life is not a happy one!”