"IT'S OWN NAVY."

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16308, 24 December 1920, Page 10

"IT'S OWN NAVY."

Admiral Sir Cyprian dndgo, who was commander in chief on tho Australian station, wrote to .“The Times” iifOctober as follows:-—“Mr Asquith mis just told tts that, in his opinioiT, -ft would amount to ‘ insanity * if selL governing Ireland were to start a navy of its own. I fully .agree with Mi Asquith. It would he insanity. Tlforo is a groat deal more of that particular kind of insanity in the world than ia generally perceived. Every independent or self-governing country which has a seaboard desires to have its navy, and—pretty nearly always— manages' to get one. . Yet a naval force is about tho most costly thing that human ingenuity has ever devised* Also, it tends to become more and more costly. If you have a navy, and wish to prevent it from becoming ridiculous, you must resign yourself to the necessity of periodically and at short intervals ‘ scrapping ’ material which not very long before had cost you a lot of money. Some pestilent inventor is perpetually doming forward with some novelty which you must, or believe you roust, pay for heavily, or your navy will bo left hopelessly behind other navies. This does not prevent small and far from wealthy countries from determining to have* naval forces.' In fact, a navy to many independent and selfgoverning countries is what a dress suit is to a young man just out of his teens, via., a thing that he says he cannot, and he certainly null not, try to do without. It costs money, but it is the thing ’• to havo it. .So there you arel

INCREASE IN SMOKING. Although, the French population decreased nearly 2,000,000 as a result o the war, the directors of the French Government’s tobacco manufacture report that there has been an unprecedented increase in the use or cigarettes. Despite even the presence of American cigarettes on the French market, it is impossible to satisfy the smokers' demands,, and fifty new machines axe to bo installed m the State s cigarette factories, with ft view to rolling, at least 800 million more cigarettes every year. According to too Frcnclu officials, the cigarette habit has not been adopted’ by French women any more than in other countries, the increased demand coming from returned' soldiers, who during four years of trench warfare < developed ai peculiar nervousness which only the French ' < capocal ,, can console.

PATER PROM COTTON STALKS

There is now a pulp mil in Greenwood, Mississippi, that turns one hundred and fifty tons of cotton stalks into fifty tons of Valuable paper pulp every dav. A careful study of the cotton plant has led to the discovery that a, certain thin tubular fibre in the plant will, make excellent cellulose for durable papers. It is long and flexible, if a quarter of the annual supply of the cotton stalks of the South wore put to tin's use each year, there would be no need of a paper shortage in America. TAILLESS SPARROWS. ,

London is producing a taco of tail- . leas "sparrows. Replying to a corre- • spondent, who remarks upon the number of tailless' sparrows in Glasgow, Mr E. Kay Robinson, editor of tho official organ of the British Empire Naturalists’ Association, states:—“ It ns the sumo in other cities and notably in parts of London, where, also, sparrows with more or less white in their colouring are common. Thcse > tailless sparrows, moreover, are conspicuously feeble in flight, showing, apparently, that they are suffering from a general atrophy'of plumage, due, no doubt, primarily to tho fact; that for many generations their ancestors have never needed, to go in search of food further than the corner of the next street; and. secondarily, to tho absence of birds of prey, which would weed out the feeble birds conspicuously marked witli white. In the Zoological gardens, especially, the tailless fashion seems to ho spreading among the sparrows, which find an" easy Bring by hopping from cage to cage and sharing tho food of the occupants.