MULTUM IN PARVO

Otago Witness, Issue 3352, 12 June 1918, Page 45

MULTUM IN PARVO

~ Great Britain has 7700 miles of coast line to defend. - week the aircraft patrol round tho British Isles Hies 30,000 miles. —Of 13,000,000 men transported by the British oversea, only about 3500 have been lost. The military service age limit in France is 48 years, and in Italy 45 years. Somewhere about 1500 Maltese have made their way to Australia. Excluding officers, non-commissioned officers, and invalids, there are in Great Britain somo 30,000 enemy prisoners, all but 400 of whom are at work. Only 586,000 tons of paper reached England in 1917, as against 1,798,000 tons in 1914. The Royal naval air service numbers 46,000 men, 17") airships and kite balloons, and well over 2500 seaplanes and aeroplanes These figures are constantly increasing Since the beginning of the war tae British Admiraltv believe that between 40 *nd 50 per cent, of German submarines operating in homo waters have been captured, sunk, or otherwise destroyed. —ln one month battleship-cruisers and destroyers in British home waters steamed more than 1,000,000 miles, while auxiliary patrol services steamed more than. 6,000,000 miles. Well over 1000 British subjects in tho Federated Malay States joined the Imperial forces, of whom 135 have been killed and 76 wounded. Sir John Wolfe-Barry, K.C.8., the engineer of the Tower bridge, London, left £278,362, of which £225,033 is net personality. outbreak of war were liable, and in consequence men over 50 are now serving, though generally behind the lines-. A hospital built in France for tho American army will have 20,000 beds. A great new port has -also been made, including a street of storehouses three miles lons. The Church of England has no roll ol members, but at Easter the clergy count the number who communicate. At Easter, 1917, the number of communicants was 2,224.057, a decrease of 113,555. For the Hilary sittings of the court at Liverpool no fewer than 468 cases were down of men and women seeking to dissolve the bonds of matrimony. The list shows 334 petitioning husbands and 134 wives. Many of -the petitioners are soldiers. The Prince of Wales is said to possess a hoof of the charger that bore Nolan to his death at Balaclava. It is surmounted with a small silver statue of the captain carrying the fatal order for the advance of th e Eight Brigade. The City Bakeries (Ltd.)j Glasgow, were fined £IOO for selling a pound loaf for 23d instead of 2£d. The respondent eiid the extra farthing was for the wrapper, but the sheriff held that if baiters •were allowed to charge for paper they could charge any preposterous price. The statistics of the Church of England for 1917 show a decrease of 88,000 Snndav school scholars and of 9760 'teachers. The male Bible classes show a shortage of 30.960 and of females of 13.000. Sir Frederick Bridge says that he succeeded some years ago in finding in the pages of Shakespeare an allusion to music or to a musical instrument for every day in the vear. —lt will interest all stenographers to know that at Eton in March two grandsons of Isaac Pitman distinguished themselves greatly in the athletic sports. They won mile and half-mile races, as well as other events. —At an examination on general knowledge, held in a g : rls' school, one of the questions was, "What is _ the all-red route?'" and • the answers in two cases were " The Beetroot " and " The Carrot!'-' Securities worth £1,000,000 in course of transit for enemy benefit have been permanently detained bv the British postal authorities, and about £1,770,000 kept back prncl'ng investigation. During last year 10.000 "cloaks," or intermediaries for enemy trade, have been defected and their .activities stopped. —lt is possible to register the sound waves made in the air by speaking, and thus to determine that in order to call up the name belonging to a printed word about one-ninth of a second is required, to a letter one-sixth of a second, to a picture one-quarter of a second, and to a colour one-third of a second. —M. Pierre Loti, in an article on ' The German Horror in Siberia," says that a quarter of the population has already succumbed to famine, cold, and the odious services exacted; 180,000 prisoners, including 20,000 women and 3000 children, are honied like cattle in filthy camps, without bread and without clothes, and arc dying by hundreds after interminable agonies and atrocious corporal punishment. The world's production of nickel is now six times as great as in 1900. Ontario (U.S.A.) is estimated 'to supply 80 per cent, of this, although before the present century the French island of New Caledonia, in the South Pacific, yielded 65 per cent, of the total outpu't. The nickel deposits of Sudbury, Ontario, are incomparably the richest yet known. —ln a letter received from Mesopotamia. a Guildford man serving with the Queen's Roval West Surrey Regiment writes:—"At the' funeral of General Sir Stanley Maude a Turkish airman flew over the _ cortege and dropoed a wreath 500 yards in front of "the column. The machine then dipped twice, about-turned, and flew back to its nest. During 'the time it was over the city and before its mission could be divined, the machine was subjected to antiaircraft fixe, but, fortunately, it evaded the shells." , , „,. ~, The death is announced of Miss Cnarlotto Disbrowe. of Walton Hall, Burton-on-Trent as?ed 95. She was the eldest child of Sir Edward Cromwell Disbrowe, a direct descendant of Jane Cromwell, the Protector's sister, and Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plemnofcntiavv in tho reign of William 'the Fourth. She spent tho greater portion of her early life at the Russian, German, and other Courts. She was the author of "Old Days in Diplomacy. A simple walking dress in serge costs so much in Paris, Tho Times dross gcmp reports from there, that most women cannot afford more than one of a kind. The cheapest cost £lO, and tho dearest, perhaps, £35. For a blouse anything from £5 to £lO will be asked. The excuse for sucn prices is the enhanced cost of materials, the wages of labour, rent, taxes. light, heating, and tho dearncss of all other necessaries of lifd. It is therefore scarcely necessary to tell women they must h*ve fewer dresses; most of them feel no inclination to be extravagant.

South Australia purposes raising £IOO,OOO to insure all married men with children and single men tho sole support of their mothers accepted for active service abroad against death occurring during their term of service. The benefits—necessarily confined within limits which will permit of satisfactory financing—will extend to dependents, resident in South Australia, of members of the A.1.F., the Australian Naval Forces, and, so far as may bo applicable, to Australian nurses.