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Otago Daily Times, Issue 17081, 13 August 1917, Page 11

Condemned army boots sold ,by auction have realised £24,(XX). — A book setting forth the fiscal resources of Germany, and published in that country by Helffcrich in 1913, should be of vast utility to the Allies when drawing' np their peace terms. According to tho statistician, Germany's wealth in that year was equivalent to £16,000,000,000. Her annual revenue totalled £2,000,000,000, of which she spent two-thirds, leaving a surplus of something like £500,000,000 carefully packed awuy in the reserve cheet. With a systematic form of post-war taxation, this gigantic yearly surplus could, M. de Yernouil estimates, be augmented by another £250,000,000, thus allowing the Allies an annual war indemnitv of £750.000,000. — The name of Alan Seeger, the young American pott, has to be added to the Ik* of literary men who have fallen in tie war. His collection of verses, which are in the press, had a narrow escape from the clutches of the Hun. On the eve of the war their author had sent them to a friend in Bruges. When war broke out Seeger himself was in London; but he crossed the Channel at once to endeavour to rescue his manuscript, of which he had no copy Working his way through Belgium, he travelled to Pans with Belgian refugees, joined the Foreign Legion, went unscathed through the Champagne attack, and in July, 1916, on Belloy en Santerrc, m the * bomme, received tho wounds of which ho died, at the age of 28. The Bruges manuscript has, however, been secured through the courtesy of the American Embassy at Berlin. Seeger spent the most productive years of his life at Paris, where he lived in tno Latin Quarter, and was known ae the poorest American. He had the distinotion of novcr having had nor sought a job ana never having earned a cent. " — ; • "I