MULTUM IN PARVO

Otago Witness, Issue 3313, 12 September 1917, Page 47

MULTUM IN PARVO

Willow, before the war used for cricket bats r is now used for artificial limbs for soldiers. A Berne telegram quotes a Vienna reEort that a bottle of wine, vintage a.d. 17, as been excavated " in excellent condition " at Speyer, Bavaria, from a Roman tomb.

Germans in the trenches are now protected against projectiles. The visored helmet is of steel, fastened by two belts of leather crossing behind the head, one going round the neck, the other over the temples. It is pierced by two small holes at the height of the eyes, and its lower edge is rolled over to the right, so as not to get in the way when shooting their rifles.

The Berlin Daily Paper (Tageblatt) announces that Maximilian Harden, the editor of the Future (Zukunft) has been summoned under the Auxiliary Servico Act to servo as an ordinary clerk. The Future has been suspended for the remainder of the war. This action is sheer Governmental malice, for Harden's handwriting is illegible without a magnifying glass, ajid he cannot or will not use a typewriter. —As their own paper "rations" are being ruthlessly curtailed, the German newspapers havo been attacking the Government for printing 2,000,000 long-winded circulars dealing with food questions. It was alleged that enough paper was thus consumed to fill "30 double railway trucks.'' The Government retorts in self-defence that the circular was urgently required to clear up the food questions, and that the paper was provided for as long ago as October, 1916. Colonel Edward H. R. Green, son of the late Mrs Hetty' Green, and heir to half her fortune of 100,000,000d01, was married in Chicago recently to Miss Mabel E. Harlow. The ceremony was quietly performed at the homo of the bride's aunt in Chicago, and loter the newly-married couple left to spend their honeymoon on board Colonel Green s yacht, the United States. —The German press says that lively hopes have been aroused in the bosoms of the tens of thousands of war-maimed men in Germany and Austria-Hungary by the discovery of Professor Sauerbruch, a Zurich surgeon. At the medical congress in _Vienna Sauerbruch gave a successful exhibition of hn "operative process" of enabling artificial limbs to carry out voluntary movements " with the aid of living sources of strength." The newspapers are without details, but assume that the Swiss surgeon has found some method of joining up artificial arms, legs, hands, or feet to living tissues or joints. The "Brazilian navy, which may soon be co-operating with ours, once fired on the Union Jack—fortunately, not in any hostile spirit. Forty years ago two adventurous bluejackets from a British warship anchored off Rio de Janeiro, climbed to the top of Pao d'Azucar, or Sugarloaf. the conical peak at the entrance to the harbour, and decorated the summit with a Union" Jack. The sight of an alien flag planted there aroused fiereo indignation among the natives. The British Minister apologised profusely, and expressed, his willingness to see the flag removed. As, however, tho ship containing tho culprits had sailed, nobody could bo found to undertake the removal. Pao d'Azucar being classed by Brazilians as unclimbable. Eventually some Brazilian warships tried to shoot tho flag off; but in vain, and the flag remained till it rotted away. The origin of the phrase used by Lincoln, " Government of tho people, by the people, for the people," is discussed «-in a recent book by O. H. Carmiehacl called " Lincoln's Gettysburg Address." In a dustcovered pastehoard box found in Mr Lincoln's law office in Springfield, it says, were discovered two pamphlets by Theodore Parker, containing addresses delivered in 1858. In them were these sentences marked by Mr Lincoln: "Government over all, by all, and for th© sake of all." "Democracy is direct self-government, over all the people, for all tho people, by all the people." Lincoln's masterly paraphrase of the idea, when making it his own in his famous address, shows hie unerring instinct for tarsa and forcible English.