TOURIST AND TRAVELLER.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1521, 19 June 1919, Page 4

TOURIST AND TRAVELLER.

Glasgow hosiery manufacturers are notifying theii* customers that their business has been demobilised, and that in the future their looms will be available for making civilian wear.

The London “Evening News” of April 9th states that Lord Ampthill is being mentioned as a possible successor to Lord Liverpool as Gov-ernor-General of New Zealand, though he has refused a similar appointment in the past owing to the absence from England for a prolonged period that the position would entail.

Sir David Beatty, in his farewell speech to the officers and men of the Queen Elizabeth, his Fleet flagship, said: “The period in front of us is going to be different. Reaction sets in, new features appear, and new difficulties arise, all of which have got to be overcome; but I am confident that the Queen Elizabeth will live up to her great reputation. The spirit of the Queen Elizabeth and the spirit of the Grand Fleet will remain. The people of this country are fully aware of what they owe to the Navy for the part they have played. I now say good-bye to you. This is to me a sad day, because it brings to an end my service in the Fleet, and I may say my service afloat. What the future holds for us I cannot say; I will not prophesy. Good-bye.”

Describing his experiences as a prisoner of war in Germany Sapper Hyland, a returned Australian soldier, says that “much of the work the men had to do was building houses, but I have seen several Englishmen, rather than work for a German, have their legs or arms broken deliberately, so that they could be sent to hospital. It was a common thing to see men come into their huts in the evening, make a fire, put on a can of water, and after boiling, pour it over their bodies and scald themselves so badly that they could not work. No outsider would ever have any idea as to how hard these men were made to work, and the long hours they had to endure.” Sapper Hyland was captured in April, 1917, and remained a prisoner till after the amistice was signed.

“You know,” said the kerbstone philosopher, as he picked up the fagend of a cigarette, “there is nothing in the British Empire Order. I don’t begrudge it to any of them. You see, there’s so many of them —knights, commanders, dames, officers, and members—-that no one will ever be able to remember who is or who is not one of the honoured, and, if they did, I am quite sure they will not remember their status in the Order. So it comes down to this, the only time the honour will be recalled will be when the person dies, and the newspapers dig up the important news from the list. That’s why I’m not jealous of any of ’em —I’d always be thinking of the only time those letters would appear after my name. Got another match?”—“Dominion.”

The “British Weekly” has the following in a recent number: The other day, in a ’bus, a soldier with a red band round his wide-awake hat was explaining to his neighbour how pleasant it was to be going back to “God’s Own Country.” “Why, I didn’t know you were an American,” remarked the neighbour, in an accent that left no doubt on which side of the Atlantic he was at home. “Who said I was?” complained the other. “Well, you claimed ‘God’s Own Country’ as your home, and that’s America, sure.” “America!” repeated he of the red band. “Yes! I daresay God had something to do with it, but New Zealand is His masterpiece, and dont’ you forget it.”

The death is announced of Mr. John Hott, head of the firm of J. Hott (Ltd.), Wellington, the proprietor of an extensive advertising agency business. The business was founded by Mr. John Hott nearly 30 years ago, and has for the last few years been under the active management of Mr. J. M. A. Hott, owing to his father’s failing health. Up to the last few weeks, however, Mr. Hott, sen., visited the office at times as his health permitted, and remained deeply interested in the affairs of the business which he founded, and which has in recent years developed in a remarkable manner. He was a man of sterling character and high probity, and was deeply respected in Wellington, where he took an active part in movements of a social and moral character affecting the welfare of the citizens.

Father Fahey, D. 5.0., speaking at a meeting of returned soldiers in Sydney, said that he regretted to see since his return from the front that every political party, every industrial organisation, or every organisation With an axe to grind was making the returned soldiers fools and tools, and was using them as the Germans had used the Belgium women—to push them before them as a shield.

The damage done by deei’ to crops, stocks, and trees, in the Nelson district, was discussed at the annual conference of the local branch of the Farmers’ Union recently. The mover of a motion that the Nelson Acclimatisation Society be urged to grant an open season for the destruction of deer in the Wangapeka and Uppei* Motueka districts, stated that in some of the outlying districts deer appeared to be becoming as numerous as rabbits were reported to be in other parts of the Dominion. He said that one Wangapeka farmer found four head of stock killed by deer in one day. Another speaker said that he had seen 18 deer.in a neighbour’s crop. The motion was carried.

By means of a new X-ray invention just completed in London It is possible to watch the heart beating. The advantage of the new apparatus is that things are seen in relief like a stereoscopic photograph. Everything is thus viewed in perspective and the exact position of a bullet or swallowed coin can be noted, rendering its extraction far quicker and more easy than hitherto. It is stated that under suitable conditions even the blood can be seen flowing through the arteries.

It is not generally known that there are a great many wild cattle on the Tararua ranges, says an exchange. Some little time ago, when journeying from the Upper Hutt Valley through the bush to the Otaki Gorge, Mr. A. Seed and a companion came across a great herd of wild cattle, estimated at fully 500 head. This great herd was grazing in the bush in a big basin of country at least six or seven miles beyond the Otaki Forks, lying between Mt. Kapakapanui and Mt. Hector. In this big basin the country is comparatively open, and in the distant future will probably be broken into good farm land.

Lieutenant Southwell, a returned soldier preacher, has recently caused quite a stir in Bathurst, N.S.W., as a result of his statement to the effect that he had “found very few of the stereotyped Christians on the battlefields, those he had met being not unusually counted among the heroes, and that the battles were won by hard-swearing, real men, not by the mumblers of pious platitudes.” Lieut. Southwell is also reported as having related that in a certain engagement he was badly wounded, and “while the most religious, praying, nonsmoking, non-drinking man of his platoon skulked behind, the richest swearing, hardest drinking little fellow of the lot carried him into safety, and then plugged on for the 24 hours, carrying other wounded. The antireligious attitude of the returned men,” he is said to have added, “was due to the poor figure the religious soldiers cut on the field.”

At the Y.M.C.A. anniversary celebrations in Wellington, General G-. S. Richardson described the splendid work done by the organisation in Great Britain and other parts of the Empire, and he told the audience that had it not been for that organisation lie would not have been able to do nearly so much as he had done. He hoped the citizens would support the Y.M.C.A., not only for the work it was doing, but for the work it had done for the boys. The field secretaries deserved special recognition for their noble and self-sacrificing work. Some of the countries had given their Y.M.C.A. field secretaries superior military rank, and the question had been raised as to whether the same should apply to the Nevz Zealand secretaries. When the matter was mentioned to him the General declared himself emphatically against the idea, not because he did not respect the secretaries, but because he did. He considered that the secretaries had work to do amongst the men and on this account there should be no question of superiority. Mr. Hay had readily concurred in this view. In conclusion, the General said that as a soldier he would always be indebted to the Y.M.C.A., and he looked forward to the organisation being a great factor in the building up of the nation of the future.

Sir Douglas Mawson, who has returned to the Adelaide University after doing war work in Britain, states in a letter to Dr. J. Allan Thomson, Director of the Dominion Museum, that he intends to visit New Zealand shortly for the purpose of studying ice formations among the glaciers of the Southern Alps. Sir Douglas Mawson was a member of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s first Antarctic Expedition in 1907-09, and he was one of the three men who marched to the South Magnetic Pole in 1908.

At a meeting of the House of Commons Committee of the Channel Tunnel, an elevation plan of which is reproduced on this page, it was stated that 310 members are in favour of the tunnel. Sir Arthur Fell said the tunnel would be the joint property of England and France. Sir Francis Fox said it was proposed to sink a shaft from both sides. Geologists were of opinion that the strata on both sides were identical —first a beautiful white chalk under which lay a grey chalk, which was impervious to water. The lining of the tunnel would at first be cast-iron segments, but as they advanced they would remove them and substitute ferro-con-crete. There would be a water lock which they could flood so that even a rat could not get through, and they would reserve the right to blow up some portion of the tunnel in case of emergency. It would be possible to run trains from London at intervals of a quarter of an hour to all parts of Europe, and eventually to Baghdad and Capetown via Cairo.

Mr. Poynton, Acting-Minister for the Australian Navy, recently announced in Melbourne that he had decided to abolish caning on naval training establishments. Mr. Poynton said that after full consideration he was of the opinion that such corporal punishment was against the spirit of the times. The authorities would be able to adopt means of punishment more compatible with the age we lived in. “Personally,” he said, “I regard the caning punishment as a relic of the past and repugnant to the sense of the present-day community.”

Some of the new facts and anecdotes have recently been ventilated concerning the great military genius, Marshal Foch, who on October 2 next will have completed his 68th year. That Foch was born at Tarbes, and traces his descent to an old Pyrenean family of martial valour is well authenticated by French publicists and historians. He had three brothers and one sister. Sophie Dupre, the mother of Foch, was a Pyrenean; daughter of Chevalier Dupre. He had fought under the Napoleonic eagles in Spain, and earned distinction. Deeply rooted was the Napoleonic tradition in Foch’s family; at an early age young Ferdinand Foch became fascinated with the great epic; when only a lad he had read and mastered M. Thiers’ 15 volumes of the Consulate and Empire—the Napoleonic Bible. His career was decided upon without difficulty. He was to be a soldier —like his mother’s father.

Japan has created a new world’s record in shipbuilding. The Kawasaki Dockyard in 1917 set out to beat the world in construction time, and its first attempt at speed produced a 9000-ton steamer in two months 27 days from the laying of the keel. That record, however, was later beaten by several other yards, but the Japanese were still keen on holding the record, and the order for the Raifuku Maru gave the Kawasaki Dockyard Company another fine opportunity. The result was easily a record, one which will probably never be beaten. From the day the keel was laid until the big vessel was ready for her maiden voyage, only 29 days elapsed, which was one-third of the time taken to establish the firm’s first record for a sister ship to the Raifuku Maru.

A Paris correspondent who has been in regular attendance at the Peace Conference says that the benefits of an Anglo-American understanding will be admitted by everyone who knows the international situation. Even if the United States withdrew from European affairs, she would remain with whetted appetite, with expanding fleet, and commanding wealth of men and money, ready to make her influence felt. A race in armaments between her and the British Empire would be probable; indeed, Congress has actually sanctioned it. And British sea-power is so vital to her that such a race would almost certainly end in catastrophe. For Britain would be out-builded —and sorely tempted to attack while yet it was strong. Into that attack would the

Dominions follow? Could Canada follow? What would happen with Germany? And why should such a possibility be allowed to become possible?

Condemnation of the misleading use of the word Bolshevik was made by Aiderman Power at a recent meeting of the Paddington Council, New South Wales. Aiderman Power said it would be interesting to know what the Federal Government intended to do with the people in Australia whom it choose to term Bolsheviks. Was it going to deport them from Australia? The worst that could be said of these people was that they had the temerity to oppose “the powers that be,” and progressive people, since the dawn of Christendom, had been doing the same thing. He did not see why these people did not have -as much right in Australia as the rest of us. As far as deportations were concerned, a great percentage of those people being deported were the very best class of citizen for any country, and they should be made welcome in Australia. Any man who had the courage to stand up and express his opinion was of the right type. The name Bolshevik, he continued, was applied to people who differed from this Government in order to scare people who misunderstand what it meant. In Russia, the Bolsheviks had adopted a policy that no sane Australian would dream of; but because they did such things in Russia it was no reason why the Government here should use the word Bolshevik as a weapon with which to flog its political opponents.

An explanation of why the United States seems at present to dominate the Peace Conference is given by a Paris correspondent. The United States has come out of this war an enormously powerful force. Many people call it now the greatest Power in the world. It has the gold of Europe, it has large armies, backed by a new martial expanding ambitious spirit; it has foodstuffs upon which the European masses depend for mere life. It has challenged Britain’s shipping supremacy, and is shifting the commercial and financial centre from London to New York. These are basic facts, and British and French leaders do not pretend to ignore them. The situation is in some respects full of sadness for them. All Western Europe has been shocked, weakened, wounded. Its long fight cost it a heavy proportion of its best men, its vigour, its intellect; the accumulated savings of a century had to be poured out, markets were lost, shipping destroyed. The morale of Britain and France suffered, though to nothing like the extent of Germany. During the last few months additional mortgages had to be executed, and the war ended with Britain owing the United States some 750 million pounds, and France owing her nearly a thousand millions. Thus Europe has come to lean, though only slightly, upon America. And in the contest of policies America has the double advantage of having rich power and support to bestow and of being alone in a position of independence towards European politics. She could go back to her old position of “isolation.” Or she could build a

navy predominating any single European navy, and usurp Britain’s historical pivotal position in the balance of power.