GENERAL ITEMS.

Waipa Post, Volume XXI, Issue 1339, 9 January 1923, Page 7

GENERAL ITEMS.

NEWS FROM ALL QUARTERS.

The latest Berlin novelty is a miniature, though sufficiently powerful, pair ,of opera glasses in spectacle form, which -leaves the wearer's hands free.

Owing to the collapse in the value of the kroner it has become necessary in Austria to provide currency of denominations previously unheard of. The new five million kroner note in pre-war days would have been worth approximately £250,000. Today its value is about £ls.

• It has been pointed out to Willesden (England) Council that, whilst they are paying road sweepers i a minimum of £3 a week, they are only paying the senior library assistant, a B.R. of London University, £154 a year. A similar sa'lary is being paid to another library assistant, a married man with two children and 20 years' service.

That the King's interest in his hobby of stamp collecting has unabated since ne first begun when a midshipman, is shown by the recent exVbiticn of his Trinida. 1 stam,s to members of the Royal Philale'.ic Society. His Majesty is not, nowever, the only Royal philatelist in Europe. The Crown Prince of Sweden is numbered amongst enthusiastic collectors, and for many years has been president of the Swedish PhilatelL: Society. Queen Elena of Italy has also a fine general collection.

The King of Spain is the most elaborately and expensively attired monarch in Europe. It is doubtful if the youth fir! monarch has ever been seen more than half a dozen times in the same suit, and it is certain that there are many suits in which he has been seen but once or twice. The King of Spain keeps from a hundred to a hundred and fifty suits in the Royal wardrobes, and buys on an average a hundred suits a year. His Majesty's bills to his tailor alone average £ISOO a year, of which sum London tailors get a good share.

Mr James Adair Campbell, a Gfas gow merchant, and nephew of the late Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman, a former British Prime Minister, is to marry Princes Catherine Balitzine, third daughter of the late Prince Paul and Princess Alexander Galitzine of Russia. The bride elect was in the midst of the revolutionary storm. She was lady-in-waiting to the late Grand Duchess Vladimir of Russia, and had a period of thrilling adventure in escaping from the Bolsheviks. Eventual']}' the Princess got to the South of France, where she met Captain Campbell. He was at the famous landing at Suvla Bay and was incapacitated for military service by an injury in Gallipoli.

Mr William H. Vanderbilt. son of Mr Alfred Vanderbilt, who lost his life on the Lusitania.'has decided to earn his own living, and learn the hanking business. He has begun work as an ordinary clerk in the United States Trust Company, and takes his meals with the other employees. When he reaches his 21st birthday he will receive Oakland, the Vanderbilt estate at Portsmouth, R.I. This has been held in trust for him along with a trust fund of nearly five million dollars, since 1915.

A wealthy American corporation has been formed, under the title of General" Air Service Corporation, to operate an airship service between Xew York. London and Hamburg. The machines will each carry 100 passengers at 100 miles an hour. Engines will develop 4000 h,ors"e power. Luxurious quarters will be situated so that noise and fumes will pass unnoticed. Lounges, smoking rooms, sleeping quarters and an adequate dining service will be provided.

The latest American prodigy is Onofrie Delisi, a child two and a half years old. two and a half feet high, almost as broad, and full of words. He pours them forth in five languages—English, German, Russian, Polt ish and Italian. When a pin sticks in him he cries in all of them at once, and when his playmates annoy hie; he tells them what, he thinks of them in one of his languages and waddles away before .they can figure out what he is talking about.

Two suicides attended the discovery of frauds totalling £50,000 en the Norfolk (England) County Council by a clerk. His salary was £3OO a year, and he was a trusted employee of the council for 27 years. He left that employment early in the year. He had been living at the rate of £3OOO a year, professedly on betting gains, but it has been found that for seven years he had ingeniously embezzled public money. Overtaken by financial embarassment he shot himself. Another council employee threw himself in front of a train when he heard that the defalcations were known.