TELEGRAMS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19001, 25 October 1923, Page 11

TELEGRAMS.

CPes United Panes Association.! WELLINGTON. October 24. Charles Edward William Phillips was committed for trial on a charge of bigamy. It is alleged that he married Ellen Petersen in 1916, when his first wife was alive in England. He has two children by Petersen. A deputation of Wellington members of Parliament wafted on the Ron. J. G. Coates to-day to ask that £IO,OOO on the Estimates for the Tawa Flat deviation be expended ibis financial year in commencing the work. The importance of improving this portion of the Main Trunk system by eliminating the haulage on the present heavy grade between Wellington and Tawa Flat was stressed. The Minister replied that he realFed the importance of the undertaking, but said he favoured the tabulating of the various developmental railway undertakings in the dominion in order of urgency, and then deciding which should be started and brought to completion. Trial surveys had been made on the route, and an engineering survey was now to be made.

Sir A. Russell, who returned from England yesterday, speaks in terms of admiration of the way the graves are kept in r ranee, and the excellent organisation controlled by the Rev. M. Miullinoux for visiting them. The general was surprised to find how far advanced reconstruction was in the districts he visited. There was hardly a shell hole in view. Villages which ho left as heaps of rubble had now been rebuilt, and crops were growing everywhere. J'rqbably not 2 per cent, of the land remained unreclaimed.

CHRISTCHURCH. October 24. “Shop lifters must bo punished severely, because shopkeepers must be protected and they have the right to trust customers,’ said the magistrate in fining Francis Matilda -Kichards £lO for stealing a piece of curtaining valued at 9s fid from a shop. The magistrate refused an order for the suppression of the name, and said it was really necessary in all shop-lifting cases that accused persons should bo sent to gaol.