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Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIII, Issue 1388, 21 November 1918, Page 5

A special district order has been issued fixing the location and dates of territorial camps In the Wellington Military District. J Buttery n il! muster at Palmerston North, and the district squadrons of the'fith Mana-v.-atu Mounted Rifles and the 7th Welling-ton-West Coast Regiment at Wanganui. Field Ambulances will undergo training at the Medical Corps Camp at, Awapuni. Reporting to the Director of the Horticultural Division, Mr F. A. Jacobsen states that 'throughout tho Wellington district climatic conditions during the past month have been very unfavourable for beekeepers. In many cases tho colonies have hud to be fed to keep them alive, whereas the favourable seasons at tho period would induce the colonies to become strong to gather the honey How later. It will therefore be seen that unless the weather materially improves at once the prospects will not bo good. Honey in bulk is still coining forward to the grading store, but it is improbable that, any more of last year s crop will bo available for export. Beeswax is quoted at 2s 6d per lb. ‘‘lt has come to bo recognised that the military censorship is one of the greatest evils of war, and raises a most extraordinary hurried to getting impartial truth to the minds ot the people.” The foregoing remarks were made by Mr I). K. Piclcon, edu. cational director of the new Commonwealth Directorate of War Propaganda, in the Assembly Hall, Melbourne, last week (says the Melbourne Age) in explanation of one of 11 to most formidable difficulties which tho new movement, has to face in persuading the people to lay aside their suspicion and distrust of the censorship, and to unite in an intelligent and reasoning outlook on war and peace problems. Mr Picken incidentally [iaid a tribute to the work done by the press in this war.

The closing of hotels apparently lias not had the effect of ensuring absolute prohibition in Auckland, for a badly-inebriated man was seen vainly trying to induce a landlady to let him enter an hotel by a side door. The wife of the licensee, however, steadily barred tho way, and was heard to remark: ‘‘l do not know where you got the liquor, but you are not coming in here.” Men will go to great lengths to get a drink. During the Waikato war soldiers would pay 20s for a bottle ol whiskey, although they liad a dai y allowance of grog. On one occasion an officer who came to town took a sergeant with him in order to bring back a small keg of whisky for the men. On the way to Ngaruawahia, either the officer or tho sergeant sat on the keg. Upon arrival, when the sergeant lifted the keg to carry it ashore, it was empty. Someone had bored a hole through the deck and tho bottom of the keg, and secured the whole of the whisky. Tho officer is still alive and hearty, though nnsv well over eighty- years of age, but ho laughs heartily when he relates how cleverly he was fooled on that occasion. 8. 11. Friedlander, of Los Angeles, who has taken many eminent men and women to America For lecture tours, recently offered Marie Corelli a guarantee of 100,000 dollars (£20,000) for a tour of 100 lectures, contracting also to pay the- expenses of a private car, manager, and secretary. Writing from Loudon on 15th June, the authoress’s secretary transmitted her reply: “Thanks for forwarding mo tho American offer of Mr S. J. Friedlander, which is amusing indeed. This refers to his 100,000 dollars for 100 lectures to bo delivered in many of tho leading cities of that, country. Say to him that 1 wish him to distinctly understand that unless he can pay me £IOO,OOO (500,000 dollars), which is the honorarium of a person like Charlie Chap lin, and also all expenses for myself, my maid, rny secretary, and manager, to travel as befits the great profession of literature, J will not.set foot in America! I will be as a queen or nothing. I set myself on a higher plane than Chaplin—-1 sot intellect higher than making faces. Say to him that an author docs not make less than a comedian, if Mr Friedlander wants mo after lids plain and resolved reply, i’ll think about it—after the war.” A n appeal ivhich was recently made on behalf of the editor of the Field for guinea pigs and field white mice for purposes of national importance was so patriotically responded to by people all over tho country that supplies came to hand in ample numbers. In order to properly look after them a farm has been taken in Surrey, where they will bo specially bred. It is an open secret that the white mice are required for a special reason in warfare as a life-saving, device, and tiie guinea pjgs will presumably be used for inoculation with some of the obscure disea-es which threaten the lives of our men at the front. In this connection it is interesting to notice that some brave men have freely offered themselves with tho same object, and a number of old men have been inoculated with their own consent for the purpose of ascertaining tho nature and characteristics of trench fever. Among thirty men who have thus willingly become the subject of investigation, it is interesting to note that there is a veteran of seventy, ex-Constable K. Robinson, who once made himself famous all over England by effecting the capture of the. notorious burglar Charles Pearce. To men of that age any new disease, even in a mild form, may very well bo fatal, so we must not deny a considerable meed of admiration to those who are willing to risk their lives in this unpretending hui effective way in tho public service.

“Givis” writes in the Otago Daily Times: The armistice hour, when it struck, found tho British at Mo ns. At Mens!—think of the miracle of it. The wheel had come full circle; we end where we began. A whole Iliad of vicissitudes of heroic endeavour, of sorrow and of joy, lies between the Mons of our beginning and the Mon.s of our triumphant close. r l he “Old. Contemptibles,” where are they? No longer in the fighting front, alas; but shrined for ever in tho nation’s reverence and love. This is the place to say, and within the last few days Mr Lloyd George has said it, that Britain has done her bit, and a. bit more than her bit. It was our Eastern offensives—at Gallipoli, in’ Mesopotamia, and Palestine —that brought Turkey down. Austria, the next prop to fall, even an American crilio can see, succumbed to tho British blockade, in tho West, we began with tho beginning, and end only with tho end. To America we owe tho last and most welcome ounce that turned a wavering scale. But tho groat body of weight was in tho scale already. To whom does the world owe tho maintenance of tho struggle from Mons to th e Marne, from the Marne to Ypres, from Ypres to Verdun, from Verdun to the Somme, from the Somme to the desperate German offensive in the spring of this year, from then until the Americans, young, gay, a ,id bright, arrived to turn the scale? To whom but the gallant French and stubborn British? The war closes—we have done our bit, and a bit, more than our bit.