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Marlborough Express, Volume LI, Issue 151, 28 June 1917, Page 3

A private letter received in Auckland from a business man in the United States-contains the following: "The American people are taking hold "of the new problems and responsibilities that have gome to us with great might. It required only a week or ten days' to make up our minds to raise our army by conscription \. . Germany evidently thought that our so-called German-Americans would cause us a lot of trouble. Well, thfy haven't. The past few weeks prove that there is no such thing as the German-American. It happens rhat Representative Kahn, who led the fight for the Conscription Bill fo ; r President Wilson in the Bouse of Representatives, was" born in Germany. This is one bit of evidence of how our so-called German-Americans have responded to Mr Wilson's magnificent leadership."

A comparison between the losses due to war and to mortality among the infant life of the nation was made by Professor D. A. Welsh, in an address to the recent conference in Sydney on infant and child welfare. "Throughout the two and a half years of war, to the end of 1916, Australia has been losing her best men at the rate of 20 lives each day," he said. "During the same period she has been losing her infants under one year at the rate of'2s a day. If we extend \he figures to include children under five years of age, we find that we are losing these little lives at the rate of 35 a day. When we include the unborn : that might have been, tho grim totnl rises to some unknown figure, which cannot be less than 40, which may be more than 50, representing the children lost to our 'small population every day. Such is Australia's present effort to make good the losses of her finest men."

The ceremony of burning documents by official order is not obsolete. The clerk of Dungannon (County Tyrone) . Rural District Council reported at a recent meeting of that body that he bad received from Count Plunkett a copy of his letter addressed to Irish bodies, asking ths Council 'to assist in establishing an Irish republic. Mr Bennett said that it would lit people better to settle down and grow plenty of crops, instead of circulating such nonsense. He moved that the letter be burned, and, this being duly seconded, a .match war, applied to the document, which was soon reduced to ashes, amidst cheers. , The following interesting facts, stated in the British House of Commons by the Secretary to- the War Office, "illustrates the high > value of inoculal-ipn for typhoid fever: —In the British Army the typhoid fever cases were fifteen times higher . a^nong those who had not been inoculated than among the inoculated, and the death ratio, seventy times higher among those not inoculated, j