HERE AND THERE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3265, 11 October 1916, Page 57

HERE AND THERE.

Russia's Fight Against Alcohol. —

" The attitude of the Russian Orthodox Church towards the question of temperance is shown by the Chief Procurator, who states that" the Holy Synod adopted a series of preventive measures in the struggle with alcoholism, among which the most prominent was the charge on the schools to influence the population. From individual reports of the diocesan authorities it appears that the general efforts of the Church and Government for the eradication of alcoholism have effected a great change in the national life. All deformities, all kinds of hooliganism," writes the Bishop of Ekaterinoslav, "about the spread of which religions people complained not long ago. have now almost entirely disappeared." The Metropolitan of Moscow also notes "the amazing results of the discontinuation of the sale of spirituous liquors." The Bishop of Irkutsk refers to the diminution of prosecutions for hooliganism, fighting, maiming, and robbery. Weddings have become quiet and orderly, and do not last more than two days. " Family strife and umhappiness have ceased. The Orthodox parish clergy last year comprised 3246 archpriests, 47,859 priests, 15.055 deacons, and 46,489 readers. During the same year were built 513 new churches, of which 186 were of stone.

Buried Pompeii.—

The Italian Minister of Public Instruction has just visited Pompeii, and was shown the recent excavations. One of the most recent was the house of a great personage, Trebio Valente. Its peristyle, dining hall with table, garden and tablinum or "summer house" arc intact, and on its facade, protected by an enormous roof of tiles, is an alburn 'of inscriptions. Another beautiful house has a coloured relief representing the fight between Achilles and Hector, and a splendid hall, with grand paintings of elephants and seated figures. In another recently excavated house were a fine portico and triclinium, the mural paintings of which have been detached from the old walls by a new method, which preserves them on the spot, as if in a museum. These pictures represent scenes from the Iliad. Kaiser's Naval Card. — The German Emperor has designed a naval memorial caret, a copy of which is sent to the nearest relatives of members of the German navy who have lost their lives in the war (says the Berne correspondent of the Morning Post). On the card is a picture of Christ holding out both hands in blessing ever a sinking ship. Surrounding the figure of Christ are the Psalmist's words, "Who stilleth the noise of the seas, the noise of their waves, and the tumult of the people." Under the picture is the inscription: —"To the. memory of . He died for the Fatherland .--Wilh elm Lit." —No Man's Land. — The term "no man's land " has sprung into prominence during the present war. It means, of course, the "dead" ground between ' any two lines of advanced trenches, the" enemy's and ours; a region of death and desolation, studded all over with shell craters and mine craters, Avhcre corpses lie about for days unburied, and even for weeks, and into whose confines, by davtime at all events, none may venture and live. There is. however, another kind of no man's land, delimited and guaranteed by treaties. One of these curious strips of neutral territory stretches across the isthmus that connects the Rock of Gibraltar with Spain. It is about half a mile wide, and our sentries and the Spanish sentries face one another by day and by night, year in and year out, from opposite sicTes. The territory in between thee two chains of sentinel's belongs neither to Britain nor to Spain. .Another similar strip of no man's laud exists m North America between the United States and Mexico. Although only 60ft wide, it is 700 mi'.es in length, extending from El Paso, in Texas, westward to the Pacific Ocean. Altogether there are in the world about 50 of these neutral zones, varying in width from a few yards to as many miles, and the sum total of their areas would make cjuite a respectable minor State. All the rest of the land surface of the globe is, nominally at all events, in the possession of some Power or the other.