NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 978, 11 April 1911, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

Verily there are strange ups and downs in colonial life, the truth is often stranger than fiction. Away up in the north, a couple of men are engaged with others scrub-cutting. One is an exarmy captain, and the other was a private in the same regiment—a famous one of the line. Both served in the South African campaign, and did good svork, but misfortune overtook them, and alter a lapse of years captain and private met in New Zealand. Dame Fortune had not been kind to either, and each bad experienced vicissitudes and suffered hardships. Necessity formed and mutual sympathy sealed a compact of partnership, and many thousands of miles from the Old Country both are laboriously but happily working out their destinies.

Baron Destburnelles de Constant, one of the French representatives on the Hague International Peace Tribunal, who is visiting San Francisco advocating the cause of international peace, ridiculed the possibility ot a life and death struggle between Japan and the United States for leadership in the Pacific. Not only would it be a crime, but a folly. It would be resultless too, except that it would cause revolution and ruin. japan would antagonise Europe if victorious, and the United States if she won would be unable to make her leadership effective.

Recently the cables told us briefly that Jack Johnson, the world’s champion pugilist, had been sent to gaol for twenty-five days for “ excessive speeding ” in his motor car,. Additional information cabled to the Sydney Sun states that Johnson conducted his own case, aud when the punishment was recorded by the judge he appealed. He had been smiling very broadly during the hearing of the police-officer’s evidence, and, incautiously, had pleaded guilty, meanwhile ostentatiously displaying a bundle of notes with which to pay his fine. When he heard tbai he was to go to goal the smile came right off his face, and his mouth closed with a snap. Johnson was an extremely mad man for a moment or two. Then he said to the judge, “Can I appeal, sir ?” “No,” replied the judge, who was now doing all the smiling. “You conducted your own case, and you advised yourself badly. You cannot appeal after pleading guilty. More than that, you have violated all your promises. Go to gaol.” The coloured pugilist departed from the court a sadder but wiser man. He says he will never plead guilty again. Arrangements have been made by his wife aud other friends to get him special accommodation at the county gaol, aud his food will be taken to him from an adjacent restaurant. Chickens, champagne, and watermelons will comprise the major part of Johnson’s diet. He says he’d have been unhappy without chickens, and he meant to pass away the time by starting on a work which he has long thought of writing, dealing with his experience in and out of the ring.

The harrowing circumstances under which Mrs Blackburn and her child met their deaths at Niagara, near Waikawa (Southland), last week, was narrated at the inquest on the following day. Mr Blackburn had gone to Wyndham to arrange for his wife’s removal there, she having been in delicate health. He left Mrs Mclntyre, a neighbour, with his family. About four o’clock Mrs Mclntyre (as she stated iu evidence), went out, milked the cows, and placed the milk iu the kitchen, where Mrs Blackburn and her baby were. On going to put up the sliprails she was followed from the house by her two children and Liuda Blackburn. Mrs Blackburn went to the gate and called the children back, and the child, Linda Blackburn went. On returning to the house she heard screams, aud saw smoke issuing from the house. Witness ran to the back door aud opened it. In the scullery, which was all in flames, she saw Mrs Blackburn and her boy Archie. When she opened the door Mrs Blackburn fell back. She could do nothing to either, the flames rushing out of the door, Mrs Mclntyre then thought of the other two children (Linda and the baby), and rescued them from the front room. Only about three minutes had elapsed from the time she had spoken to Mrs Blackburn until she returned to the house. There was very little fire in the kitchen fireplace when she left, and it was the only fireplace in the house.