SHELL – SPLINTERS

Sun (Christchurch), Volume IV, Issue 1164, 3 November 1917, Page 7 (Supplement)

SHELL - SPLINTERS

Ul£* Shc Was calml y and loftily neutral. ll r* America would have her man—to make or V iS: definitely to break. She would not cloud the ri</ issue with piteous appeals. Nor did he. The ivJ// only thin S that worried him was the Pope's vl* appeal for peace. ■4 * ♦ X. * *

}. * Britain is waking up. About the middle lj\\\ of last month the Clerk of the District CounKA cil of Crickhowell received a reply to a letter R,J<j he had posted to the Ministry of Pensions on Ri? September 16, 1916. The reply was marked Ml "Urgent."

y J j\» * * * + y\l I TheT were a ve ry respectable-looking r, / couple, middle-aged, and their niece both awkTif w ard and shy. But the waitress had the eyes U&." of a lynx. Why did the niece keep on her V IT? £ ] ° ve s— "eights," too, or she was bliud? She I |/l esked the manageress, and the manageress VW# asked the police, and—well, there were tears \\|//, of course, and voluminious protestations, but :»*s. "he" will join the Devons as soon as his term

»_!."» expires. )*{. rX * * * -K //JH It's a poor tank, says America, that tw won't work two ways. If it laughs at obJtjf, stacles in Flanders it can tear out stumps in '£ j Ohio. And it is doing it. While the infantry L(j are being trained, the tankmen are ploughing (j ij hillsides and encumbered country where agrijy culture hitherto has seemed impracticable. | / And to this it will assuredly return when the || ') Bociie has been sufficiently dished. M .* * * * *

\/'<J For a little gentle juggling with the price f'w of potatoes a Lincolnshire farmer was made l[r7, suddenly aware the other day of the existence MJI. of a Food Controller. There were 55 separate summonses, and 55 separate convictions—each i' ♦• to the music of £IOO. Add costs of £250, and V/lu you have 5750 reasons a S ain st fleecing your //|y fellows in war.

7,fi *:♦*** •il A In spite of skull-cracking past and to .\A come, Ireland is to-day the material Arcadia jrj'ij of the Kingdom. Air raids, of course, are 1 , i unknown, and most of the activities of tho / |-\ Food and Drink Controllers. If you own a j • car you may use it, and if your gooseberry |Wj crop is sufficiently abundant sugar can be 111// bought by the bag instead of the spoon. Ever. f V the whisky maintains its pre-war standard—v<] and flow.

M*+ * + * \\\jj Peace is in sight at last. The news has •i|»/- been carefully concealed, but has leaked out i?% mysteriously through Holland. According to %#*! the Amsterdam correspondent of the ''Mor--7/ICV fienpost" Berlin has run short of tobacco. //{I . All smoking in the streets is about to be pro/m" 1 bibited —without respect of sex. As the re•V A striction is likely to extend to the whole • M Empire, the war may be regarded as definitely TsL won.

To prevent the Poles from luxuriating in their grief, Germany has harmed funeral costume. It is silly to be sad—and if Poland doesn't immediately cheer up the Teuton •will have to make her. Thus does madness repeat

itself. On one of his innumerable parades through his kingdom Frederick the Great flogged a Jew almost to death for shrinking away in fear as his Highness approached. "Love me!" he shrieked. "You must love me! I'll make you love me!"

■£ * ¥6 * % The next is likely to be the coldest winter that France has ever known. Coal is almost unobtainable, while wood is decreasing by thousands of tons each week. Realising this, America has begun to knit. Has New Zealand forgotten how? )k + :K * rK

He was only 34, but he carried a heavy responsibility. It was not his wife—no; nor his two young children. But there were two aged relatives who were to have died—and hadn't —and if he died first his dependents would lose £200,000. The Appeal Court granted conditional exemption. Pray, brother, pray.

*+& * - It is hard on the Parisian poor. Britain cast shillings among the francs in the humblest shops, and now America has come in with dollars. Prices have jumped so tremendously that householders are faced with ruin. They are paid in the old coin and expected to buy in the new.

* * * * :K At the International Seafarers' dinner in London last month, the toast of the evening was "The health of all nations but Germany—the murderers.'' And visitors were to tell their foreign friends that if the war lasted another three years the mercantile marine would continue to do its duty. There has been no doubt of that since they jettisoned the pacifists.

:K * * * * For failing to appear recently at Selkirk Sheriffs Court, Lord Napier forfeited £5. He is 40 years old, and had been called on a few days before to answer a charge of having failed to report for military service. As he has been a member of the King's BodyGuard for Scotland, it is to be hoped His Majesty will find more courageous protection when next he braves the dangers over the Tweed.

Begged, borrowed, or stolen from the Press of the world, but reduced, polished, and re-issued with THE SUN'S own exclusive mark. Watch this corner each week if you would follow the war without effort or gloom.

Comparisons ©f The Trench

RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS XPERIENCE is an excellent if an exacting teacher, and the simplicity of revolutionists is due to their past exclusion from public mO|# affairs. Events move more quickly, with railways, newspapers, and the telegraph, than they did a century and a-quarter ago; and the Russians are learning the lessons of practical politics faster than did the French, comments a writer in "The Times" Literary Supplement. Military discipline will probably be restored in less time than the two years and more it took in the French Revolution; and if the Russians have hampered their generals by sending civil commissioners to control them and by making civic virtue an avenue to military rank, the French Convention did the same. When the first French Revolutionary offensive was planned against the Austrians in Relgium, two of the armies did nothing and the third considerably less; it threw down its arms in face of the foe, ran for its base at Lille, and revenged itself by murdering its general; and the future soldiers of Napoleon set precedents as dangerous as those of Brussiloff. Seven Marshals of the Empire owed their initial promotion to election by the rank and lile. Davoust first signalised himself by heading a mutiny against his commanding officer; and Napoleon owed his rise to his success against Toulon and then against the mob in Paris. Kronstadt has not yet gone so far as Toulon, and the "whiff of grapeshot" has not yet sent sprawling the lions of Petrograd.

Awkward come the questions of a friend. Is Portugal our ally and a republic, and, if she is, who are "King" Manoel and "Queen" Augusta? Lisbon wants to know. And if the best blood of both countries must go on

flowing in Flanders, shall Manoel continue to grin through a tennis racquet? And if Hohenzollern princesses remembered their origin in Athens and Petrograd, is there any special reason for supposing that Augusta will forget hers in London? vc a, i'- ju v~ TK V 'i~ V ,~j~

The shortage of paper again. Heedless of the wails of the world's small boys, Britain has forbidden the cigarette card. Tor the rest of Armageddon actresses must blush un-

seen. Fully 5000 men in the Navy have been kept on after serving 22 years. But for the war they would have received discharges three years ago, with pensions of £55 a year. Instead, they have been kept on into their 26th year, with an addition of 2d a day to their pay. Indubitably we all love Jack. ;H ❖ ?H * rli

Something like 10,000 seamen have been lost to date by enemy action against peaceful British merchantmen. In other words, murders of sailors on the high seas outnumber by several hundreds New Zealand's total losses on all fields of battle. Were it not for a few sobering figures like these, Malcolm Ross's communiques might be dangerously intoxi-

cating. ■]■ * :H * Va One literary American at least is cursing the author of the war. At the last annual outing of the New York bookmen, Mr J. H. Hopkins negotiated four chickens, several helpings of salad, and a gallon approximately of ice-cream. And now Mr Hoover has stepped in, with his cranky talk of official rationing.

s** * * According to an official return from Berlin. Germany had captured by the end of July 12,156 cannon, 5,000,000 cartridges, 3216 bombs, 1,655,805 rifles, 155,829 pistols and revolvers, 8352 machine guns, 2298 aeroplanes, 186 balloons and 3 airships. The millions of pounds' worth of statuary, pictures, bullion and other unconsidered trifles snapped up by the Emperor's heroic heir can not yet be officially catalogued. Berlin, like London, is short of paper.

Having completed their training with the poilus, the "Amexes" have heen handed over to British instructors and schools. But they are a long way yet from Fritz. They have still to he introduced to the most modern developments in homhing, bayoneting and machine-gunning, and when they know something more about these, they will conceivably have forgotten about trenching and gas. In a word, they are being saved for the spring. x * ■:-. * *

For want of a little permissible secrecy the member for Avon has ceased to be the fond hope of men. America is talking fish. Looks too as if she will very soon be eating it. In any case, the people are demanding markets, and cool stores, and radical improvement in the facilities for transportation. And no one could have thought of these things before Mr Russell. rK ♦ :!: * ;K

In an east end corner of London sobriety with courage has proved great gain. When rumours come of "trouble over 'ead," those topers who are too timid to go for beer, and too unnerved to do without it, hire the bravest of the teetotallers to go out and draw supplies. A teetotal virgin called Kate is rapidly acquiring a competence ;H * :\i * *

A new .explanation of the wanton destruction of French fruit-trees. Warned in time by his faithful spies, the Emperor was aware oi' the plan openly spoken about in all British schools of "hanging Kaiser William on a sour apple tree." Tor collateral evidence you have only to consider the desperate resistance round Ypres—the strongest rope in the •world coming from the hemp just back of Hindenburg's line.

■\i * * * ■:• Conscription is now in force in Ceylon, East Africa, Uganda, the Straits Settlements, and the Federated Malay States. It was also to have been adopted by Hong-Kong, but before the necessary provisions could be gazetted the last white man had volunteered.

)\i * -M * :K With "absolute explicity, permitting of no ambiguity," the German Socialists have condemned "financial violence to opponents." This is distinctly reassuring. When Hindenburg has securely handcuffed us all, the Socialists will beg him not to pick our pockets.

* * rK * :\i This is what comes of trying to mix militarism and kultur. For having a "nood" tatooed on his arm an American volunteer has been thrice rejected for service. Pictures of the nude are against the regulations, and unless he can get his damsel into skirts, this aident one is forbidden to fight. What a primrose path for the pacifist.