MULTUM IN PARVO

Otago Witness, Issue 3382, 8 January 1919, Page 47

MULTUM IN PARVO

One and a-half million men are needed to man and maintain the British, navy. Herts (Eng.) County Council has allowed £IOOO a year for supplying free, milk for babies. m Sea-water becomes drinkable jf filtered through a bed of fresh dry sand 15ft thick. —An institution has been organised in California, to take care of "despairing mortals on the brink of suicides' graves." There are now 7C&9 members of the Typographical Association: serving in the ■war out of a total membership in England and Wales (excluding London) of 23,583. Five hundred and eix+,y members have been killed. —lt ia quite on the cards that after the war his Majesty -will dispose of Buckingham Palace to the Government, who will ■utilise it for offices, and make Kensington Palace, which, of > course, would be thoroughly modernised, his London residence. The Bishop of Hull has stated that the Church of England has received the names of nearly 2000 men at the front who expressed a desire to enter the ministry and dedicate themselves to the service of their fellow-men. The Church would make itself responsible for the education and training of suitable men, the cost of which would run into something like £500,000. The Grand Fleet and the escort services consume 7,000,000 tons of coal a year. —-The new Canadian dollar bills bear a portrait of Princess Patricia of Connaught. The first colony added to the British Crown was Newfoundland, and that Henry VH was so pleased with the discoverer of the new land that he presented him with £10!

—The peculiar methods of the German authorities in their attempts to obtain a favourable peace before the armistice was signed moved a correspondent of an English newspaper to bitter sarcasm. "Sir" (he writes), —"May I suggest that there appears to be a fixed idea in the German mind that there is no one outside Germany who is more than about eight or 10 years old ? —Yours faithfully," etc. Brown shoes are among the many things that are vanishing from shop windows. Shortage of leather, and the demands of the various women's corps, in addition to the needs of the Regular Army, being the cause. The Germans had a system of reading enemy newspapers for espionage purposes, from which they gained considerable information, a favourite method used by spies being to disguise messages in the form of advertisements, but the authorities, in England have long since discovered their methods, and the Huns now find our news-? papers barren. The war has furnished many strange coincidences. A young officer came home on leave and brought his fiancee a piece of a shell fired by the Huns, but which had evidently been among ammunition captured from us, He thought it would interest her, and it did, for she was able to identify it as having come from the munition works in which she worked. It interested her still more when she found her own mark on it. The selling, of face powder manufactured from rice has been prohibited by the French Government. Before this prohibi tion enough rice to make a daily ration for 100,000 soldiers was wasted daily on women's powder-puffs. The award of the Croix de Guerre to the Fourth Shropshires can be taken as the equivalent of the inscription of the particular action on the regimental colours. Al though we have not given any decoration to a French regiment for particular bravery on the field, we have made a remarkable exception and given the Military Gross to the town of Verdun for its magnificent stand against the repeated attacks by German hordes. Verdun has been honoured by a decoration from practically all of the Allies.

Soldiers are frequently referred to as "swinging along the roads," but their average pace when en route hardly merits tfys description. It is estimated that the usual speed of" an infantryman is 98 yards a minute, or a mile in 18. Allowing for short halts, he marches along at three miles an .hour. Mounted troops, when their horses are walking, cover three miles and a-half an hour. Trotting, they double this, and at the gallop reach a speed of about 12 miles an hour. Elbassan, which the Italians captured, is ancient Skampae, and sometimes styled the capital of Albania, It holds an important strategic position commandinsr the entrance to mountain passes, and is the point where four main roads converge. # Edward Lear, the putative parent of "Limeiicks," who had a genius for getting into trouble on his tra-vsels, was mobbed when he tried to ' sketch" the city by "a mighty host" of Elfiissanites, who were convinced that he was Satan's' emissary doing some impious work, or that he had been sent by the Sultan to write down their names for sale as slaves

An interesting occasion in the history of Edinburgh University took place recently in the M'Ewan Hall, when Dr Chas. Sarolea delivered the inaugural lecture in connection with the new Chair of .French Language and Literature. Commenting on the fact that this was the first profesorship in French in any Scottish University, Principal Sir Alfred Ewing, who presided, said that the Chair had been established, thanks in part to the grant from the Carnegie trustees, the generosity of the Clason-Harvie trustees, and other donors. Professor Sarolea took for the subject of his lecture "The Soul of France." —To the marvellous accomplishments of men maimed in the war must be added the record of Private Gwilym M. Jones, a young Welshman of 30, who lost an arm at Ypres. In spite of this handicap he per forms so brilliantly on the piano that he is booked at an early date for a' West End place of amusement. Before the war Private Jones earned a big reputation as an organist and pianist, and when he returned home from hospital minus his arm everyone sympathised with him over his irreparable misfortune. But he simply smiled and said: "Oh, don't worry; I will do all right again." So he set to work and mastered the piano with one hand. Full Term, marking the beginning of the activities of tho academical year at Cambridge, commenced in October, and is a brighter beginning, than has been experienced at Cambridge for the last three years, during which the numbers of male students and University residents have steadily decreased; silver-badged men drifting back to resume their studies, or coming up to begin them, have increased the roll. Only the women students preserve normal numbers and conditions. There is a full programme of > lectures for the term, and though the University has suffered grievous losses of its teaching staff, the regular courses of studies will bo continued.