GENERAL WAR NEWS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1750, 23 August 1917, Page 1

GENERAL WAR NEWS.

GREEK WARSHIP BLOWN UP. The Greek destroyer Doxa, manned by Trench officers and crew, was blown up in the Medifteranean on June 28th. Twenty-nine men, including all the officers, were lost. The official announcement of the loss of'the Doxa says that the destroyer sank as the result of a double explosion. The Doxa was then within 100 yards of a merchant vessel which she was convoying. A GROSS INTRUSION. An officer home on leave tells that among, the German prisoners he took recently was an elderly, bearded, spectacled, and greatly depressed man of learning, who said in perfect English, when they had rounded him - up: —“Please don’t ask me about the war, I am quite indifferent to it, and I have no idea what it is about, and I don’t care how it ends.” It seemed that, being still just of military age, he had been torn ruthlessly from a professorial in a neutral country to which he had migrated, and been compelled to go lighting with the rest. He regarded the whole affair as a gross intrusion on his ordered life, and my friend adds that his pathetic appeal excited universal compassion. BOY REARED AS GIRL. A novel case of a boy being brought up from infancy as a girl came to light at Carnarvon (England). While looking for an army absentee wild was supposed to bo masquerading in female attire, Sergeant Owen noticed a young woman who betrayed certain masuclinc peculiarities. Upon being challenged she denied that she was an absentee, and gave her name as Dora Lewis, residing at Byrnefail, near Llanberis. The police doctor, however, established the fact that “Dora” was a male. Inquiries show that the young man, who is 20 years of age, has always been treated by his grandparents as a girl. TUB DIVINER IN THE DESERT. .Modern engineering with all its devices, says a writer in the Manchester Guardian, cannot improve much on the ancient ways of finding wells in (he sand. A diviner with his rod regularly accompanies (he troops at each forward move, and where the rod heads in Ids hands the sappers dig. A continuous string of camels proeceds from the bourne of civilisation, as represent-, cd by pipes amt a filtered water supply, into the depths of the wilderness, loaded with trucks of fresh water for the troops beyond. Before the compaign is over the desert route from Egypt to Syria will be lined with japes below and wires above the ground, and a railroad running between them. REORGANISING THE GREEK ARMY. Following the announcement that the Greek Government had broken diplomatic relations with Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey, the Prime Minister, M. Yenizelos, in his speech to the people after taking the oath of office, said lhat Greece’s place was beside democracy. The nation was struggling for freedom of the world against" the two Central Powers, with whom Greece’s hereditary enemies were allied. “We realise (hat unless wo drive the Bulgarians from Eastern Macedonia, that part of Greek territory will ho always exposed to great danger,” he said. “Before, however, thinking of mobilising (hat pari of Greece which has not shared in our movement, we must vitalise its military organisation which has fallen to such decay and bring about a fusion of the two armies. In brotherly co-operation, therefore, we shall now call out the untrained classes of 1910 and 1917.”