The Chronicle LEVIN: FRIDAY, OCTBER 20. 1916 DANGER FROM FLIES

Horowhenua Chronicle, 20 October 1916, Page 2

The Chronicle LEVIN: FRIDAY, OCTBER 20. 1916 DANGER FROM FLIES

The need for a thorough campaign, against flits is being insisted upon by the Health Department of New Zealand. So much sickness has been experienced in 'New Zealand during the last two years that a detormied campaign against flies—the chief disseminators of the germs of disease—is absolutely necessary for the improvement of this dominion's health conditions. A long and instructive article on this topic was reprinted in Wednesday's Chronicle, and to-day we make extracts from an article on "Fly Control in Military Camps," written by Professor H. B. Kirk, of Victoria University College, Wellington. The information giren in this article is applicable in chief to military camps, but there is a side aspect to the notes that can be applied helpfully by every householder. On the subject of flypoisoning Professor Kirk remarks that the beet poison-mixtures are the arsenic sugar mixtures and the formalin sugar mixture, both well-known. The latter is to be preferred on account of its being practically harmless to man in the dilution (1 in 6) in which tile formalin is used. But the arsenic mixture is extremely efficacious, and can be so cheaply made as to permit of it being used in quantity. A ready means of making a very good arsenic mixture is to buy arsenical sheep-diip, 6Uch as Murton's and dilute it with 150 parts of water as required for use. Branch"* preferably of ett-

calyptus, or manuka, or some other ] plant that horses do not eat, can bo soaked in this mixture and exposed overnight. The mixture may be sprayod upon suitably retentive surfaces (as noted under the headings, "Horse-linee," "Manure," etc.) For indoor use blotting paper may be soaked in the mixture in shallow dishes. It is of the greatest importance that fly-killing should be as far as possible automatic. To thi6 end the places that are most attractive to flies should be made the places that are most fatal to them. Of such places garbage tins are the most important. Flies will visit garbage bins; andi if, by some miracle, the lids of all bins were to fit well after wear at the hands of cookhouse orderlies, and if, by a miracle equally imposing, lids were always replaced promptly, they would have to be content with the outside of the bin, as its designer fondly intended. But the miracles referred to above do not happen in camps, and flies get to the garbage, and no harm will be done in allowing them free access if they are caught as they leave it. What measure of success can be secured depends mainly on how nearly the second miracle can be achieved. On the subject of "Baits for Fly Traps," Professor Kirk has a good word to say for beer, with a proviso that suggests an intimate knowledge nf no-license districts. "Stale beer and sugar makes excellent bait," he says; "the beer is not always obtainable, however. Sugar mixed with 'Glaxo' and enough water to make a thick paste becomes attractive to flies t:n the second day. Fish is excellent bait, but soon becomes offensive. Many other substances will suggest themselves to any one that wants to ba.it

a trap." "NATIONAL BANKRUPTCY." In the opinion of the Saturday livening Post—a- United States journal of considerable standing and dis- , retion—neither Germany nor France is likely to be irreparably injured, financially, by the groat cost of the present war. Commenting upon the general aspect of the probabilities, the New York journal saye:—ln retiring from the editorship of the London .Economist, J)\ W. Hirst said that bankrupt-cyi threatened some of the great belligerent powers. The same thing has been said many other times. Bankruptcy for an Egypt, a Turkey, a Latin-American republic, a shattered southern confederacy, is easily imaginable, but it is not easy to imagine how a state like Germany or France —with all its indebtedness owned by its own citizens, and retaining full national sovereignty— could become bankrupt in any sense which that term commonly conveys.

In two years the belligerents have borowed forty billion dollars, but far the greater part of it has been borowed at home and spent at home. The important exceptions consist of loans by England to her allies, by Germany to Austria, and of about a billion dollars of credit obtained by the allies in the United States. A part of this billion dollars, however, presumably half of it, is secured by collateral; the remainder is a comparatively trivial item.

As lor borowing at home, if the interest charge pinches taxation will offset it. Already when an Englishiimxt draws the interest on his war kan the Government takes out a quarter of it for income tax. If his U:t;tl income is below a certain rate he can claim a rebate, but there is nothing to prevent the Government from levying the full 2o per cent .011 small incomce or from raising the rate to 50 per cent. In a word, war debt held at home is simply a problem ot taxation. It is easy to see how every belligerent will get into a deep slough; but it looks as though exhaustion wouldi stop the. war before either side — with unimpaired power to tax. and issue paper money— reaches a state of actual bankruptcy.