WORLD'S NEWS.

Manawatu Times, Volume LXV, Issue 1902, 23 April 1913, Page 3

WORLD'S NEWS.

FROM LATEST FILES. TRAGIC VANITY. London. March 15. A tragic finding to a young girl's objection to an unbecoming hat was disclosed at the Westminster inquest held yesterday on tne body of Madalina Bretini, aged 15, an Italian laceworker, who committed suicide after quarrelling with her mother, iier body was found in the Thames. A friend of the girl's stated, that deceased had a "tiff" with her mother over a black hat. The mother insisted on the girl wearing it at a funeral on Saturday, and the fact that the hat belonged to the mother and was unsuited to the girl apparently worried her very much. She became very depressed and morose.

Petro Bertini, the father, whose evidence had to be interpreted by his little son, said the girl was natrrally cneerfal-and bright. Suicide while temporarily insane was the verdict. BABY AS PRISONER. London, March 15 A happy future is promised after all to the 15-montns-old child who a Hhort time since was taken into custody by the Tottenham police. The police, raiding a house of illrepute, found the child there, and, ns required by the Children Act, arrested her. The little one appeared before the magistrate, who ordered her to be sent to a reformatory. The magistrate held that the duty of finding a reformatory and meeting the expense of her maintenance there devolved upon the Education Committee. The Education Committee replied ♦"hat they were not required to find a reformatory for any child below the school age of five years, but the Home Secretary held the committee were wrong. The committee, however, refused to accept the Home Secretary's interpretation of the law. The situation has been saved by a clergyman who has now come forward and offered to adopt the child, and it is very possible the little one will find a home with him. At present the child is in a children's home. NEW MOTOR SPIRIT. PETROL AND PARAFFIN. London, Marcn 15. The announcement made in the Daily Mail yestlerday that Mr de Jarny, chief engineer fro the British Motor Cab Company, has invented a carburetter device which would enable a car to run efficiently on a mixture of paraffin and petrol, costing taxicab drivers per gallon, has aroused the keenest interest among all classes < i motor owners.

A representative of a journal was able to obtain stime further details of the device from Mr de Jarny last evening and to see it working. It is execeedingly simple, and any ordinary make, of carburetter can be fitted with it.

The main part consists of a small needle-valve fitted into-the induction pipe, as close as possible to the inlet valves, connected by a length of piping to a small auxiliary petrol tank on the dashboard. When the engine is to be started up this valve is opened for a moment, letting in a charge of petrol, and then closed. The engine is then started in the ordinary way and 'immediately begins to use the contents of the main tank, which is aSO per cent, mixture of petrol and paraffin.

"ihe only modification you have to make," said Mr de Jarny, "is a 10 per cent, enlargement of the jet and a slight increase in the air-ad-mission. The two carburetters our company uses are both absolutely standard and orthodox." A number of drivers of the Motor Cab Drivers' Union are testing the new fuel and the device for starting the engines and will report on the result to the strike executive committee. Should the tests be satisfactory the union drivers will have to obtain the permission of their executive before accepting the new terms of per gallon. SIR H. TREE'S NEW PLAY. SCENIC INNOVATIONS. London, March 15. Sir Herbert Tree, satisfied, he says, by almost a year of rest, is strenuously engaged now by an almost constant quantity of rehearsals of the new play that he has arranged to produce at His Majesty's Theatre on Easter Monday. "The Happy Island," as Mr James B. Fagan's Englisn version of Melchior Lengyel's Hungarian drama is called, "is" says Sir Herbert Tree, "a very full play—largely conceived—and it has exacted a great deal of care in rehearsal. We are not carrying our preliminary exertions to anything like the lengths that are practi:ed in the Moscow Art Theatre, where they j give a play a hundred rehearsals. The nerves of English actors would not stand such a strain. Besides, I believe in doing a play in the whiteheat of excitement. "The new play deals with the evolution of character. It is the story of a man living amid luxury in London, who"becomes by a perfectly natural process the thing that his dupes believed him to be—a great man. A PACIFIC ISLE. "The first act is laid in London, the remaining three on an island in the South Pacific, where the great events in his life are enacted. There is something reminiscent of Stevenson in this part of the story. It has a splendid background of colour and atmosphere —of mountain, forests, and sea. "The meclmnical part of the production is very elaborate, and the setting will be an entire innovation for His Majesty's Theatre —for we practically dispense with side wings and sky borders, and bring into play a greater portion of the stage than we have done before. There are about twenty speaking parts, *but to the public it will be of more interest to learn that it possesses a strong love interest. "