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Observer, Volume XL, Issue 27, 6 March 1920, Page 3

When bullfighters wish to infuriate poor Toro they thrust little darts, the banderillas, into his twitching flanks. The sword of the matador will finish him, but it is more merciful in its despatch than the spiteful banderilla. To-day the people of New Zealand are beginning to feel like the bull—helpless in the great arena from which there is no escape. Almost daily some new advance in prices is announced, even for goods produced in such abundance in the country that they figure hugely in its exports.—Wellington "Post."

While we were shipping away high quality timber at an average of under 17s. 6d. per hundred feet, the following wholesale prices per hundred feet ruled at Wellington for home consumption: — First-class kauri, 565.; second-class, 475. 3d.; third-class, 41s. Rimu (heart), 485.; ordinary building, 285.; secondclass, 255. Matai, first-class, 40s. 6d. ; ordinary building, 31s. 9|d. Totara, first-class, 525.; ordinary building, 335. 3d. White pine, 295. 6|d. The figures are worth thinking over.—Napiejr "Telegraph."

In a notorious German war order it was laid down that neutral ships attacked should be spurlos versenkt —stink without trace. The editor of a leading Dutch newspaper, the "Nieuwe Rottei-damsche Cburant," says this phrase best describes the present state of the once great Kaiser Wilhelm 11. Throughout his life on the throne publicity and adulation were as the breath of his nostrils, and to such a man the bitterest of all medicine must be to live in seclusion and solitude, an outcast ignored and virtually forgotten by the world he tried so hard to conquer. It is stated that the Dutch papers print nothing about him, and so sedulously is he kept out of the news in Holland that he is as good as dead. The only difference is that Count Bentinck, in whose castle of Amerongen the remains are quartered is charging full rates for board and lodging. The point thus ingeniously put forward by the Rotterdam editor is doubtless intended to convey the moral that the best course for the Allies to pursue is to leave the ex-Kaiser where he is. There is a great deal of truth in it, but it overlooks the fact that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and Amerongen, 18 miles from the German frontier, is decidedly in the bush.so far as the Allies are concerned.—Wellington "Dominion."