General News.

Levin Daily Chronicle, 16 November 1918, Page 1

General News.

"Dearer meat," with, which we are now menaced, will have no terrors for our descendants, if we can believe a prophecy which M. Berthelot, the famous French scientist, once made at a banquet of manufacturing scientists, says the "Daily Chronicle." "When energy can be cheaply obtained," he said, "food will be made with carbon taken from carbonic acid, hydrogen taken from water, and nitrogen taken from the air. Beasts need not be bred for slaughter, and barren regions may be preferable to fertilo as habitable places, because they will not be pesti•ferous from ages of manuring. There will be no need to disfigure our planet ■with the geometrical works of the agriculturist or the grime of factory chimneys, and the earth will become a vast pleasure garden." Unluckily, M. Berthelot 's delightful millennium is ' not due till the year 2000. An "Old Medico" writes to the Ohristchurcli '' Press'' to suggest a unique "remedy" for influenza. Here it is in his own words: "Let the patient go to bod and keep warm, avoid antipyrin and all other reducing medicines, as well as spirits, but let him drink a small or large glass of beer every few hours. This treatment often cuts short an attack. If he can stomach bread and cheese along with the beer so much the better. There is something in the malt or hops which seems to act as a direct antidote to the influenza germ. Try it. I should like to sign my name, but my brethren might object." Well, urn yes!. . . . Perhaps they might. The 'Dunedin "Star," in discussing the Kaiser, puts his position in this way:—"The one garment that protects 1 an autocrat has been stripped from him. The pious belief in his invincibility has been shattered for ever. And with invincibility passes inviolability. His own people will never forgive the betrayal of a weakness that makes all their long homage delusive—nay, derisive; and the last excitements, of which every hour is prolific in this day of crumbling prestige, may lead to acts of the utmost fury against this personage, once so sacrosanct. Many moments there have been, especially in the earlier days of the long agony of four years, in which, could they have caught him in 'the very noon and carnival of his bloody revels,' the Allied people's would have torn this Kaiser into little pieces. It may well be that this act of retributive justice has been reserved for his own awakened vassals. But, escaping that, what place on earth affords prospect of shameful sanctuary for him? Where, out of hell, will ho be received?" Mr J. T. Hornsby, M.P., writes to the Masterton "Times":—Statements have been made in the House that soldiers' wives and children in this country were starving, and that I flatly deny. It is true that until the Second Division reservists got to work, there were wives of soldiers who had volunteered, and who had left children behind theni, who were in a very bad way. But for the assistance given by Patriotic Societies these women would have sometimes been in want. Owing to the good work of the Second Division League these worthy women and their children had the same allowances given them as have been granted to the Second Division dependents. Many women to-day whose husbands are at the front, arc in receipt of more money that they ever had when "hubby" was at home; and I repeat hero—on the authority of business men themselves —that in Wellington City, on the day the allotments and allowances are paid out, the drapers' shops are so busy that the assistants cannot gat away to luncheon, and that only the •ostliest goods are purchased by these patrons. I did not say, nor do I say now, that ALL soldiers' dependents are guilty of extravagance; but when I hear that soldiers' dependents are left to starve, I call it "fudge"—and worse.