General News

Levin Daily Chronicle, 27 April 1918, Page 1

General News

The Sydney papers state that it was unanimously decided at a recent conference of the United Commercial Travellers' Association of Australasia, that no bachelor eligible for military service be admitted as a member of the Association or club connected with the organisation throughout Australia. A circular has been sent by Mr Hiram Hunter, secretary of the New Zealand Federation of Lbour, to various labour organisations in New Zealand expressing the views of the Federation regarding the question of the retention of Samoa, which the Federation regards as one of the stumbling blocks to peace negotiations. The circular remarks that the Federation does not believe Samoa is worth one New Zealander'e life, let alone the thousands that may have to be sacrified to retain it, and the Federation therefore suggests that our representatives to England should offer to surrender all claims on Samoa, and leave the question in the hands of the Peace Conference to decide ,our representatives being instructed to do all in their power to help on peace negotiations. All earnest men and women are urged to do all in their power to bring about peace. 'To date a number of endorsements of the circular have come to hand.

It is possible that Germany may yet produce a huge bombing plane, with four engines, about which a good deal has appeared in recent German papers. These speak of it as the Riesenflugseng, or giant airplane. It is said by an aviator contributor of the Manchester "Guardian" to be a very big biplane, intended to carry sufficient bombs to destroy a whole section of a city at one strike. "Instead of carrying two or three bmbs of 2001b apiece, .they, will probably carry two or three bombs of 100011) apiece, or possibly one enormous bomb' of even greater weight." Such a thing, it is admitted, is quite possible. Where British aviation experts decline to agree with the Germans is in regarding these huge machines as invulnerable to attack by hostile aircraft. On the contrary, they hold that "a practised fighting pilot in a small fast machine would look on a big slowmoving airplane as a good target," especially when the latter is held in t < beam of a searchlight. They refute , therefore, to be seared at the prospect of having to meet a Riesenflugseng.

. ."I do not know," said Lord Jcllicoe, at the Working Men's Club at Kew, '' how many times I took the Grand Fleet down the Heligoland Bight, 'dragging our coat tails' for the Germans to tread on, but they never came out, and never trod on our tails. 1 expected our men might get slack, but there never was a sign of it. Tiic thing that has struck me most has been the spirit of self-sacrifice shown 011 every occasion on which men's lives have been in danger. There has always been the desire to let the other fellow be saved and not youTslf, and that is the spirit that is going to carry us to victory. I think that the Germans will remain in harbour—not that he funks the business, for liis German seaman is a very gallant fellow—but the enemy knows he is making our task very difficult by stopping where he is, because there is always the threat that he might eomc out and there is no situation more difficult in deal with than what is known af naval defensive on the part of v weeker opponent. History has showi time after time that whenever the Xavy has been at war and has had to meet a defensive attitude on the part of the enemy, it has only been on rare occasions that the enemy has been tempted out. The Germans are wise enough to know this, and therefore I am not optimistic as to the chance of the Grand Fleet just yet. I have hopes that it will come in time, and when it does come I know quite well what the result will be."

On Monday the police at Port Chalmers were informed that a man answering the description of Onslow Mayhew, who is wanttd in connexion with the Kakanui murder, had been seen in the vicinity of Mihiwaka, three miles north of Port Chalmers, by Mr Bath, « dairy farmer resident in that district. Thd information was that the suspected man was carrying a rifle, that his whiskers showed a growth of several days, and that he was followed by a dog. Constables from Dunedin and Port Chalmers, including two mounted men, at once proceeded to Mihiwaka, which was reached in the afternoon. A diligent search resulted in the discovery 'of the "suspect," but it was at once seen that he was not the man who is wanted. The public are inclining to the belief that Mayhew must have done away with himself (says yestefday's ''Otago Daily Times"), & s the chances of his continuing successfully to elude such an extraordinarily thorough and systematic search are decidcdly remote. If he has taken his own life, either in the swiftly-flowing river or somewhere in the thousands of acres of gorsc wilderness in the district, the task of finding the body is almost hopeless, and quite conceivably it might never be found. There, is, of course, the usual crop of rumours and sensational false alarms in the district. One man, who ran for his life from his motor-car after being shot at, as lie believed, at close range, was in the end convinced that the "shot" was nothing more dangerous than a backfire of his engine.