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Otago Witness, Issue 3336, 20 February 1918, Page 36

The Otago Military Service Board will sit in Dunedin on February 28 and March 1. The final meeting of the Halifax Fund Committee was held on the 18th. The secretary (Mr E. S. Wilson) reported that after liquidating all accounts there remained a credit balance of £llO odd. It was decided to advertise tho balance sheet and to transmit £lO5 to the Mayor of Halifax, N.S., through the Minister of Internal Affairs by first opportunity. In all £560 has been despatched. Two up-to-date thrashing plants will proceed to the Lauder district to start work next week. The yields (says our correspondent) should be good. Our Wellington correspondent informs us that bad news has been received as to tho shipping prospect for an indefinite period ahead. The details may not be announced for some little time, but it is possible that there will be little or no space available for any outward cargo except foodstuffs. This woald mean that wool, hemp, and tallow must not be shipped from New Zealand. The wool having been bought by the Imperial Government, is not held at the New Zealand producers' lw'sk, but a lack of shipping for the other products may be a serious matter. At the Magistrate's Court, Tapanui, on Thursday, before Mr H. A. Young, S.M., Thomas Hindle, of Rankleburn, was fined £lO and costs for neglecting to destroy the rabbits on his farm. A Press Association telegram from Wellington stated that neither the Rev. Mr Stockwill nor the Rev. Mr Miller, victims of the assault after the Rev. Howard Elliott's meeting at Feilding last week, had sufficiently recovered to enter the pulpit on Sunday. So far no awest has been made. It appears that no one witnessed the assault except friends of the assailants. Another Press Association message states that the Public Questions Committee of tho Wellington Presbytery has passed a resolution expressing profound sympathy with the Rev. T. Miller and the Rev. A. Stockwill, in the indignity and bodily injury to which they have been subjected at the hands of a brutal mob, alarm and indignation at tho manifest intention of certain bigots to suppress, if they can, by insensate violence, not only freedom of speech but even attendance at public meetings held to claim for Protestants their full political rights, satisfaction that the Minister of Justice has promised to do his utmost to discover and bring to punishment the perpetrators of tho Feilding outrage, and a determination to uphold in all legitimate ways the right of Protestant people to assemble in public •meetings for tho vindication of their political liberties and tho exposure of #ie wiles by which these liberties are endangered. Tho Greymouth branch of the Labour party has received from Sir Jas. Allen the following telegram:—"Your telegram received. On inquiry I find that the Military Service Board had considered application of Mr P. C. Webb's appeal, and refused to grant a rehearing. I regret that I am unable to interfere further in the matter, as decision with respect to exemption rests entirely with the Military Service Board."

Speaking of native troubles in South Africa. Mr E. W. Evans, of Maritzburg, remarked (says tho Lyttelton Times) that the disaffected natives had been chivalrous enough to decide in conference that during the war they would hold their hasid from anything that might embarrass Britain in the conduct of the war, and they had strictly adhered to their pledge. The natives knew tho Germans well enough to desire to have nothing to do with them, for the sphere of German influence was just near enough to make itself felt. Jn German South-west Africa, among other atrocities, tho Germans had entirely blotted out a tribe which turned out to bo intractable and would not work. The strange thing was that in East Africa the Germans had induced the natives tp do practically all the fighting for them. He had heard no satisfactory explanation of this fact, unless it was that tho natives had been terrorised.

Petty thieving in tho fruit gardens around Eangiora is becoming very prevalent.