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Otago Daily Times, Issue 16541, 15 November 1915, Page 4

If it actually be the case that, in the hope of securing a patched-up peace, Germany is contemplating a "coup de main" in the form of another attack on the Suez Canal, quite unusual notice has been given of her intentions. The warning on the subject which is supplied in the cable messages this morning is not by any means the first that has been received. Nearly eight weeks ago the Journal des Debats published details, said to have been derived from a source that was absolutely trustworthy, concerning an attack which was to have been delivered against the Canal towards the middle of the present month. According to the information which reached that paper, there had been for months past a concentration of stores, guns, and munitions in Syria. The troops, which were Turkish •and said to be plentiful, were armed with new rifles and were being trained by 2000 German officers, and a corps of several hundred camel scouts had been formed. It was reported that the starting point of the expedition was to be Birsaba, at the entrance of the desert, and in order to facilitate transport a railway was being pushed forward with all possible speed by the German engineer Meissner Pasha, who, after completing the line from Damascus to Medina, advocated the construction of a strategic line to El Afuleh (on the branch line connecting the Damascus-Medina line with the coast) in the direction of Birsaba. In the month of May last this line had already reached Lidda, where it crosses the Jaffa-Jerusalem line, and the first locomotive reached Birsaba on August 9. It is, perhaps, reasonable to connect the story of this projected "coup de main'' with the recent report of the discovery of a "plot in Egypt to dethrone the Sultan, and to connect Lord Kitchener's mission to the East with both the storv of the contemplated attack and the revelation of seditious developments in Egypt. In any case it seems probable that the German reliance on the "slowness" of Great Britain will provide, in the sequel, yet another instance of a miscalculation in the Wilhelmstrasse.

The establishment of a New Zealand Dental Service Corps as an arm of the Defence Forces is a step that is to he welcomed. It is beyond question that the system which has been followed in the past for the dental examination of recruits has been in some respects highly unsatisfactory. A great deal of valuable work has been performed in this city by members of the dental profession in their private capacity and as members of the honorary staff at the Dental School in supplying treatment, in many cases quite gratuitously, to recruits who were dentally deficient; but recruits from other parts of the dominion have not all been equally' fortunate, and the provision that has existed at the mobilisation camp at Trentham for their examination and treatment has, we fear, been inadequate, and not calculated to produce the best results. The system has, in fact, been more or less haphazard, and the attention which the recruits have received has not been invariably of a kind that could be approved by the best dental authorities. The formation of a Dental Service Corps, of which the provisional organisation has now been drawn up, may be expected to herald the institution of a greatly-improved, order of" things. The responsibility for the efficiency of the organisation will rest upon the Director of Dental Services (ranking as lieutenant-colonel), and the assistant-, director (ranking as major)—especially upon the former, to whom large administrative powers are to be entrusted, —but the appointments that will be made to these offices, which will, we believe, both be filled by residents of Dunedin, will, we have, every confidence, offer the assurance that the Dental Service Corps will be a thoroughly capable and useful body. It is an important feature of the scheme that dental officers will in future be included in the reinforcements, not only in camp, but also at the front, where, we are sure, there must already be a great, need of the services of additional dentists