LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2417, 24 March 1915, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

The Telegraph Office advise that soldiers' week-end cable messages (EFM) may now be accepted for Gibraltar and Malta, via Eastern, subject to the conditions of similar messages notified previously. The rate is niaepenco per word with no minimum. Troopers returned from Samoa speak in terms of the highest praise of the good work done there by the small staff of nurses and the remainder of the hospital staff in the occupied territory. The nurses, they 6a.v, worked very' hard, were exceptionally attentive to the sick, and altogether the hospital was an exceedingly good institution of its kind. There i 6 a movement, afoot among the ■Tewisli community of Now Zealand to raise funds for the relief of their suffering co-religionists in Poland. A new room has recently been added to lUI. Trade Commissioner's offices in' Nathan's Building. In this room are filed oliicial publications, trade abstracts, English and Indian newspapers, and other printed material that, may be of service to the business community. The room is at the disposal of interested rwiis who may dosirn to refer to the •books aiid papers there.

The Postmaster-General announces that in the present exceptional circumstances correspondence dispatched via Suez is subject to a heavy delay. Letters, etc., posted for later mails dispatched via San Francisco or Vancouver generally reach their destinations before those dispatched via Suez. In order, however, to provide for the requirements of banks and other business institutions, where the dispatcli of duplieato documents by different mails is desired, the Department advertises dispatches via Suez for specially addressed correspondence only. Large quantities of letters, evidently not duplicates, are being posted superscribed by the Suez route, and ill order to remove misapprehension it i« announced that at the present time the best routes for the transmission of correspondence for the United Kingdom are those via San Francisco and via. Vancouver.

Messrs. J. B. Laurenson and S. J. Harbutt, presidents respectively of tlie Canterbury and Auckland Industrial Associations, arrived here yesterday to confer with the executive of the Industrial Corporation of Neni Zealand on the matter of the proposed New Zealand Board of Trade. A meeting was held last evening in committee, and today a deputation representing the Corporation will wait upon the Prime Minister (Hon. W. F. Massey) in connection with the same project. The Telegraph Office advise that from March 22 the following three codes may be used in cable messages for the same places and under the same conditions as already apply:—A BC, Lieber's, Scott's and Western Union codes, namely, Meyers, Atlantic Cotton, 39th edition; Bentley's Complete- Phrase Code (not including mining and oil supplements); Broomhall's Imperial Combination (not including special rubber edition). In no case may any spare oode words printed in code books without interpretation be used. Messages must be capable of being so coded, as when decoded, to have a clear meaning to the censors. Messages in plain languages mus: have a clear meaning to censors. All messages are accepted at senders' risk, and are liable to bo stopped without notification. Therefore strict compliance is necessary.

A young girl, 17 years of age, appeared before Mr. D. G. A. Cooper, S.M., yesterday.afternoon and was sentenced to imprisonment for 14.days, to bo kept apart from other prisoners, on a vagrancy charge, in that she was consorting with undesirable characters. Steps will be taken to place her in a home.

His Honour Mr.' Justice Stringer, President of'the Arbitration Court, has given an interpretation of a clause in the engineers' award respecting the duties of an employer towards an apprentice. Tlie clause provides that an employer taking an apprentice to learn, the trade shall bo deemed to undertake the duty which he agrees to perform as a duty, enforceable under tlie award. The question was raised as-to whether it was competent for an employer to employ an, engineer's apprentice on work coming within the scope of the metal workers' assistants' award —heating and throwing rivets. The answer given by the Court was that tho apprentice in question being apprenticed to the fitting and turning trado ought not to be cmployed on work not properly belonging to that trad£. Heating and throwing rivets formed no part of the fitting and turning trade, and therefore it was not proper for the employer to employ the apprentice in question on such work.

There was only a short sitting of the Magistrate's Court before Mr. D. G. A. Cooper, S.M., yesterday morning to deal with,police cases. Frederick Williams, for having been drunk while in charge of a liorso and vehicle, on the King's ■\Yharf, was fined £1, in default three days' imprisonment, and two first offenders were dealt with in tile ordinary manner. A boy was brought up in the Juvenile Court and admonished for smoking cigarettes.

One firm of music publishers in London which has always gone in largely for editions of standard composers had all its printing done in Austria, admittedly 011 economic grounds. After the war broke out tile firm endeavoured, through the American Consulate, to gain possession of the metal plates, a large and very rare stock, valued approximately at a quarter of a million sterling. Inquiries were set afoot, the result being that the whole of the plates had been commandeered by the Austrian Government, to melt down and cast as bullets.

At the Petone Police Court yesterday a young man named Wm. Langridge pleaded guilty to a charge of assaulting James Costly on Saturday evening in the grounds of the local Working Men's Club, and was fined os.

Cabled advice was received in Wellington yesterday that the Japanese Trade Commissioners, at present in Australia, who had arranged'to reach this city next Tuesday, have postponed their visit until after Easter. Our Masterton correspondent writes: A large number of applications have been received from this district for a section of land at Hinekura that is to be balloted for at Wellington on Thursday. Complaints are being made that the applicants have to go to Wellington to 'be examined prior to the ballot. It is considered that the ballot might more conveniently have been held in one or other of the Wairarapa townships.

Some time during Sunday afternoon a large oil launch belonging to the Union Steam Ship Company sank near the breastwork at the Northern Wharf, Auckland. It is thought probable that the craft bumped on some of the concrete piles, and knocked a hole in her bottom. The launch, which was worth between £400 and £500, was used for general purposes on the harbour. _ According to the Sydney "Bulletin." Victorians are cheering up over the find of a professional athlete, R. M'Kenzia, who, at Shepparton recently, arrived first in a half-mile handicap, in lmin. 49sec., from 38yds., and eecond in a mile, from 25yds., in 4min. 15 3-5 sec.—which is excellent travelling. The "Bulletin" also says: —"Money is behind a venture to include M'Konzie in the triangular match' over 880 yds., between W. F. Trembath and A. .Dormer, at Auckland, and unless the watchcs were sleeping at Shepparton, the Victorian ought to be adjacent when the cotton is broken." However, the Trembath-Dormer match is off. Tlio East Prussian horse butchers wore some time ago advertising "fresh-ly-slaughtered and officially-inspected horseflesh, without bones, at Is. 63. for 101b., or l}d- for lib." The Metropolitan Trotting Club has, says a Press Association telegram from Cliristchurch, decided to giro the net profit derived from totnlisntor investments on the Autumn Hnndicnp on the first day of the approaching meeting to die Belgian Relief Fund. Colonel A. do B. Brandon and two other officers of the stli (Wellington) Regiment paid a visit to Karori last Friday for the purpose of inspecting the site at the park, where regimental camp is to be held, commencing April 10. The ground, buildings, and the water supply were oxemincd, and Colonel Brandon was able to express his approval thereof.