LOCAL AND GENERAL NEWS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18220, 13 October 1922, Page 6

LOCAL AND GENERAL NEWS.

Twenty-two applications to have as many persons adjudged bankrupt are to bo made to Mr. Justice Herdman in the Supreme Court this morning. The fees received in the Court during the last quarter in conneotion with bankruptcy matters totalled £322.

A decrease in the number of applications by ex-soldiers for assistance was noted in the report of the Claims Board submitted to yesterday's meeting of the Executive Committee of the Auckland Patriotic Association. Last month's applications were fewer than for many months, the number • for the last five months, commencing in May, being 291, 272, 185, 178, and 123, indicating a steady and substantial rate of decrease.

An average shipment of Island fruit arrived by the Navua yesterday. Included in the shipment were over 14,000 cases and 926 bunches of bananas, and '1760 cases of pineapples. All the fruit arrived in particularly good condition, and had evidently been well ventilated on shipboard. About 200 cases of Island-grown watermelons also reached Auckland by the steamer, and proved to be of fine quality. Watermelon growing for export has only recently been commenced in Fiji, and although a small quantity was exported last year, the present shipment is the first of any bulk to reach Auckland.

The refusal of the Immigration Department to approve of the granting of passports to the English wives of two Auckland returned soldiers has now been withdrawn. In these cases, the wives came out to New Zealand on troopships with their husbands and thus came within tho classification of assisted immigrants. The latter are refused passports to leave the country within five years of landing unless they refund the sum of £16, the amount which it cost the department to bring them out. Ip the present two cases the department has decided to forego the refund, following upon representations made by the Auckland branch of the Returned Soldiers' Association and Mr. G. Mitchell, M.P. At the executive meeting of the association last evening a vote of thanks to Mr. Mitchell for his good offices in the matter was carried.

A boy named Allan Flynn, aged 16, was admitted to the hospital yesterday suffering from facial abrasions, the result of a kick from a horse. The boy, who is an apprentice jockey, and who resides with Mr. C. W. Coleman, Ellerslie, received his injuries on the racecourse at about 7 a,m. He was attended to by Dr. A. Grant, who ordered his removal to the hospital.

Two minor outbreaks of fire occurred yesterday. One was discovered at about 7 p.m. in a stack of timber in Mr. F. Appleton's timber yard, Arthur Street, Newmarket. One plank on top of the pile had been set alight by a spark from a chimney. The Newmarket fire brigado suppressed the flames before any material damage had been done. The city and Remuera fire brigades received calls shortly after 6 p.m. to a rubbish fire on a vacant section in Victoria Avenue, Remuera. No damage was done.

The tablet in memory of the late Father Dore for erection in the Roman Catholic Church at Foxton, his old parish, and presented by the Auckland branch of tho Returned Soldiers' Association, has been received at the Foxton Presbytery and will shortly be unveiled. Father Dore is affectionately remembered as the padre who was attached to the Auckland Regiment of the Mounted Brigade of the Alain Body. He served on Gallipoli with the regiment and was wounded in August, 1915. being subsequently invalided back to New Zealand, where his death followed as the result of his war injuries.

Judging from the evidence of a witness in .the Hamilton Supreme Court yesterday, divorce proceedings are very expensive in New Zealand. The witness had secured a divorce at the second attempt, and said his legal expenses were £158, while a private detective bad been paid £53.

A poem recording New Zealand's part in the war was submitted to the executive of the Auckland branch of the Returned Soldiers' Association at its meeting last evening, with a request that iit be used as an inscription on the War Memorial Museum. The verse is by a returned soldier. The executive decided to place his request before the Mayor, Mr. J. H. s Gunson, who is president of the Auckland j Institute.

Church socials would appear to be great levellers of social distinctions in remote country districts, according to a little incident related by a back-blocks vicar who addressed a meeting of women held at St. Sepulchre's, parjsh hall yesterday. Even in country districts there were a few wrongdoers, said the vicar, and it was necessary that magistrates and other officers of the law should pay occasional visits. At the request of the vicar, a well-known magistrate attended a church social after a recent day's sittings and joined in the round games and dances with great, zest. Presently he approached his host with a rather disturbed air, however. "That was a nice thing you let me in for just now," he said. "I had to dance with a man I fined £5 this afternoon!"

A tribute to the way in which the English brides of New Zealand ex-soldiers are settling down to life in the back blocks was paid by the Rev. H. Johnson, of Dargaville, in the course of a speech at the mass meeting of women held yesterday. The speaker stated that he had three soldier settlements in his district, and there was not one woman there who had not proved a success. Some of the English girls had been workers in the large industrial towns of England, but nevertheless they had adapted themselves to pioneering conditions in the back blocks with wonderful pluck, and were proving themselves in every way the worthy helpmates of their soldier-settler husbands.

Representations have been made to the Union Company recently by business bodies in the South for an improved inter-colonial service. The general manager of the Union Company, \lr. D. A. Aitken, stated in Wellington this week that should the Paloona, which is at present engaged in the Melbourne-Bluiff-Dunedin-Lyttelton-Wellington service, be found to be too small during the summer months, and should trade warrant it. she would be replaced by a larger vessel. In regard to the Sydney-Welling-ton service; it iB understood that the Union Company is considering a revised time-table to come into effect during the summer.

The revenue return per hour from mixed bathing at the Tepid Bath at Christchurch is 265, as against 10s an hour during men's hours and 5s an hour during women's hours.

A church is being built by the Morrinsville natives at Rukumoana Pa. It is being constructed of concrete blocks, and the main dimensions are 45ft. by 24ft. The plans provide for an elaborate design. The natives are building the church themselves' under the direction of the Rev K. Karaka, their Church of England minister.

"I am not going to decide that because I do not understand it," said Mr. Justice Frazer when a knotty point arose in the Arbitration Court in Wellington, "and I am not going to put my foot into anything which I do not understand."