GENERAL ITEMS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17427, 23 September 1918, Page 6

GENERAL ITEMS

MR ROOSEVELT'S SON. SUFFERING FROM PNEUMONIA. Australian and N.Z. Cablo Association. NEW YORK. Setpember 20. Mr Franklin T). Roosevelt (Assistant Secretary of the Navy) lias returned from Europe suffering from pneumonia. FIRE IN MUNITION WORKS. OUTBREAK IN AUSTRIA. Router's Telegrams. LONDON, September 20. A Vienna official message states that a fire at the munition works at Woellersdorf caused a panic among the workers, and there were great numbers of victims. The cause has not been discovered. GERMAN INTRIGUE. DISCOVERED BY AMERICA. Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. _ NEW YORK, September 20. The New York Times Washington correspondent reports that Mr Mitchell Palmer (custodian of alien property) has exposed an alleged conspiracy between the Kaiser's agents and German-American brewers for the purpose of spreading proGerman and anti-prohibition propaganda in the United States. The Senate's Judiciary Committee is now investigating the matter. GALLANTRY REWARDED. DECORATIONS FOR NEW ZEA- • 1 Australian and N.Z. Cable Association and Rputfr. LONDON, September 20. The Military Cross has been awarded to the. following New Zealanders : — Captain K. Saxon (Rifle Brigade). Lieutenant M. E. Johnson (Auckland Mounted). Lieutenant J. C. Mac Lean (.(Engineers). . Lieutenant J. M. M'Leod (Canterbury Regiment). BRITISH MONITOR SUNK. LOSS OF LIFE REPORTED. Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. NEW YORK, September 21. (Received Sept. 22, at 5.5 p.m.) A Britisli monitor was sunk in harbour. -Twenty people were killed and 57 are missing. DUE TO INTERNAL EXPLOSION. Australian and N.Z. Cable Association and Router. LONDON, September 21. (Received Sept. 22, at 11.40 p.m.) The Admiralty reports that a British monitor was sunk in harbour on September 16 as the result of an internal explosion. One officer and 19 men were killed by the explosion, and 57 men are missing. It is presumed that they were killed. APPEAL AUSTRALIA'. REINFORCEMENTS WANTED. Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. Sl r DNEY, September 22. (Received Sept-. 23, at 0.20 a.m.) The first direct wireless message from Britain has been received, Mr Hughes appealing for reinforcements. FUTURE OF BOSNIA. AUSTRIAN PROPOSALS. Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. WASHINGTON, September 20. (Received Sept. 22. at'"s.s p.m.)® It is reported that Austria intends forming Bosnia-Herzegovina into 'a provincial/ Government under the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is understood that the move is intended to affect tho Allies' intentions to create a Jugo-Slav State. SOLDIEES SENTENCED. Sentences by district court-martial, held at Trentham, have been promulgated as under:—Desertion, Private V. L. Sixtus, Details (late E Company, Forty-first Reinforcements), 180 days; Private j. Tresidder, Details, 42 days. For being absent without leave and losing accoutrements, Private W. J. Traeey, Details, was sentenced to 46 days' detention. WELCOME HOME SOCIAL. Under the auspices of the Momona Patriotic Society, a welcome home social was tendered to Private 5. Nichol and R. Sprott in tho local hall on Friday night. Mr Amos presided,. and welcomed the returned soldiers. He presented them with suitably-inscribed gold medals. A programme of music, recitations, singing and dancing was supplied by Misses Gamble, Violet Patorson. and Messrs C. H, Leith H. Swallow, Paterson, audi D. Gibson! Supper was served, and a dance followed. IRELAND: A REPLY TO "CIVIS." TO THS EDITOB. Sib, I had occasion to refer in a previous letter to "Civis's" gift of Billingsgate. I might also, if I wished, comment on his skill in the use of "red herrings." He began this little controversy by the following passage in his " Passing Notes " in your paper:—" Summed up, tho Rev. Father b:lk s notion is that Ireland has been crushed, enslaved, despoiled. ' Ireland for the present year will be paying towards the war, over and above her "public services and expenditures, at tho rate of £25,000,000 a year. Then comes a characteristic confession: "I don't believe a\word of it My forte is not statistics, nor facts, nor figures." No need to toll us that. I challenged him to substantiate his denial of a statement founded on the plain words of the Chancellor's Budget speech, and his idea of doing this was to -produce a quotation from a Mr Cox, who said that except for a brief period in tho middlo of the nineteenth century Ireland has never been over-taxed in comparison with the rest of the United Kingdom. lie says this is not an evasion. But man-in-the-strcet will wonder how Mr Cox's opinion about tho nineteenth century affects tho figures officially calculated for tho present year of the twentieth century. It may be well enough for logicians of the calibre of "Oivis" to pretend that the introduction of the old-fashioned red herring is argument; but to suppose that the readers of the Otago Daily Times are so easily deceived is to insult their intelligence. OiVis has not proved my figures wrong, and he has evaded my challenge to do so. Ho says that Mr Cox was a member of the Financial Commission of 1915. Is Givis " aware that there was a commission in 1595, consisting of financial experts appointed by Mr Gladstone to inquire into the taxation of Ireland, and that this commission foOTBi: (1) "That the Act of Union imposed on Ireland a burden, which as events showed, she was not able to bear " ; 12) " that whilst tho actual revenue of Ireland is about one-eleventh of that of Great Britain, the relatiye taxable capacity of Ireland is very much smaller, and is 'not estimated by any of us as exceeding one-twen-tieth." Would "Civis" reflect that this is the finding of a oommission, and not tho opinion of Box or Cox, or of any individual who in the mysterious ways of British Government finds an appointment which may give him dignity and importance but not, brains. If " Civis" values opinions and> regards them as arguments which are valid in such a controversy I can give him a few Here is from Mr T.' W. Russell, a Scottish Presbyterian: " I plead guilty of having misjudged the Irish leaders. Had I been an Irish Catholic, had my ancestors suffered as the Irish Catholics suffered, had my country been oppressed, neglected, and plundered, as their country was for 70 years. I do not go behind" the Union; I should, had I escaped tho gallows, have been against England. No Catholic Irishman reading the history of his country from 1800 to 1870 could be anything save a rebel." And the words of that bravo soldier, Sir John Moore, are well known:— "If I were an Irishman I would bo a rebel." —I am, etc., D. V. Silk. Mosgiel, September 16.

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