NEWS BY MAIL

Hokitika Guardian, 19 June 1922, Page 1

NEWS BY MAIL

DIVORCE AGREEMENT. NEW YORK, May 5

An “amicable settlement” of the troubled matrimonial relations of Mr Alexander Smith Cochrane, formerly known as “tlie richest bachelor in the •United States,” and his wife, wellknown on the operatic stage as Mine. Ganna VValska, is announced in a joint statement issued to-day by tlie lawyers of tbo respective parties. Additional, details furnished by tlie newspapers are that :i divorce will be obtained by mutual consent in the French courts. Legal representatives of the Cochranes sailed Jn the Aquitania yesterday on their way to Paris, where both parties have long maintained residences.

The romance of the multi-millionaire yachtsman and the beautiful pritna donna has been in the public eye ever since the beginning of the whirlwind courtship which followed their meeting in the AquUnnin in July 1920. Six months after the wedding the pair separated Air Cochrane leaving orders that Alme. AYalska should he refused admittance to their Paris house. She obtained - admittance, however, through a ruse of her American lawyer, Air Dudley Field ATalone, and stayed in the house, resisting all efforts to oust her. CHINA PLOTS. PEKIN, April 7. The aiiti-Cliristian movement which broke out recently among students here is continuing and is spreading to central China. An American lecturer C New York ws at Changsha forced to cancel bis speaking engagements because

of native hostility. Ooveernmcnt teachers and college students at AYu-i'hang have undertaken the leadership of the movement, and foreign consuls at Hankow arc appealing to the civil and military governors to provide protection for foreigners. r Flie Pekin authorities are taking, ineffective steps to stop the anti-foreign mission movement, which has how grown to a very dangerous extent. Not only , Christians but nil foreigners are attacked verbally and in the Press.

CIRCUS ORIAIE SECRET. NEW YORK; May 5,

Tho mysterious murder of Air John Bt'tinen, circus proprietor, on March 10 lias apparently been solved. 'Flic police yesterday arrested Harry O. Molir, who since Brunen’s death lias managed the circus in partnership with his sister, the widow of the murdered man. H.riinen was killed byn shot fired by an unknown man through the window of the dining room at his country residence at Riverside, New Jersey. He was reading a newspaper at the time and the shot shattered the back of bis bead. Airs Brutioii was in her bodroom upstairs when the murder was committed. Tho murdered man a few days before his death wrote a letter to his sister in Chicago accusing bis wife of ruining the morals of his young daughter, and declaring bis conviction that fhe was plotting to have him killed. Yesterday Charles Powell, a circus performer, - formerly in the service of

Brunon, after being kept a secret prisoner in the Burlington county gaol for three weeks, made a full confession. Mo stated that j\l ohr reduced him to penury, then promised him £250 if ho would murder the circus proprietor, who, Mohr declared, brutally ill-treated iiis wife and daughter. Twice, according to Powell, Mohr drove him in a motor car to the neighbourhood of Brunen’s house, but each time Powell’s nerve failed him. On Mareli 10 Mohr took him once more to a street a short distance from the scene of the murder, and Powell says lie crept up to the dining room window, fired the shot, and lied across the, garden to the spot where Mohr was awaiting him. Mohr, he adds, then drove to tlie river, threw the gun into the wafer, and drove away.MILLIONS OF BATS. JOHANNESBURG, May 1 I have received a brief message from Mr Harold Scott Harger, (the best known geologist in South Africa, who is the leader of expedition of exploration to the Koster eaves) in which lie says that the oxploiation is proceeding satisfactorily. In one part of the eaves the party found millions of hats, which flew wildly at them, clinging to their faces and hair, and even getting in one man’s mouth. So far no end to the caves has been discovered. Apparently they run for many miles.