TOURIST AND TRAVELLER.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1573, 17 June 1920, Page 5

TOURIST AND TRAVELLER.

“Plenty of returned soldiers have been placed on land that the best farm-

ers could not make a living from?” said Mr. A. T. Donnelly to a witness in the Christchurch Supreme Court. “That is so,” the witness replied, “and they will go back to the Government.”

In a wooden shack that serves as an estaminent at Lens, drinks are served by Mme. Marthe, sister of Georges Carpentier. Photos of Carpentier’s victories are pasted on the walls. “A Bas Dempsy!” is scrawled in chalk across the side of the hut.

Ypres boasts of a good hotel the Splendide. It is built of wood, but the rooms are large and the food is good. The proprietor owned a vanished inn in the old Ypres. Nothing has been done to the ruins of the Cloth Hall and the cathedral. The British have proposed to restore the Cloth Hall and make it a war memorial to the 600,000 Britons who fell on the Ypres battlefields. - The Belgians prefer that both ruins be left as they are for- posterity.

Four million tons of coal were produced in 1913 by the mines around Len, later destroyed and flooded by the Germans. Pumps of 30,000 horsepower are working and will have the mines dry in two and a half years. In five years mining can be recommenced; not for 10 years will production here reach the 1913 mark. These estimates were made by the manager of the Society of Mines at Lens, which before the war furnished one-tenth of the. French coal output.

“For fifty years you have been the holder of an hotel-keeper’s license,” remarked Mr. S. E. McCarthy, S.M.. to Mr. Benjamin Perry, when he applied to the Christchurch Licensing Bench for a renewal of his license for the Occidental Hotel. “During the whole of that time no convictions have been recorded against you. The committee have taken note of that fact, and when you receive your license from the local authority we propose to frame it as a memento of the fact that during the fifty years you have held a license there have been no convictions against you.”