NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1750, 8 November 1917, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

According to the Dunedin Star, from all appearances Californian and Canadian fruit will be in short supply in New Zealand for Christmas and the New Year, and prices are likely to be very high, owing to the unsuitability of the steamers’ time-table and the San Francisco steamer not being able to carry apples, she not being fitted with cool storage. The last boat landed only 8,000 eases for the whole of New Zealand —not more than a ten days’ supply—and these apples are now selling in the North at from 19s to 2Qs a case. The next supply will not reach the Dominion till a month has elapsed, and it is predicted that those apples will be worth anything from 20s to 25s per case. The following lot vyill not reach Dunedin till Christmas Eve. The Wairarapa Age libels the hotelkeepers in an editorial which contains these sentences: In theory the hotels of New Zealand will close at six o’clock in the evening as from December Ist next. In practice, they will probably close at eight o’clock. Provision has been made that hotelkeepers may supply liquor with meals served between the hours of six and eight o’clock in the evening. There is likely, therefore, to be a great rush for meals, no matter how scanty they are. The six o’clock closing law will be almost as farcical as the anti-shout-ing regulations. The latter have never been respected, and there is not the slightest possibility of their ever .being respected. If the liquor laws are to be enforced, the police force will require to be trebled in strength, and the “man in blue” will have to sit constantly on the doorstep of the hotel. A notable feature of the Y.M.C.A. war work is the extraordinary variety of people who have united in using the Association as a channel of service to the soldiers. No one would have dreamed that the forces that have thus found their opportunity for service could have been brought together on any possible basis. Who could have thought that Forbes-Robertson and his wife (nee Maxine Elliot), Harry Lauder, and Lena Ashwell would have come to the platform of the Association huts for weeks of entertainment, or that the Bishop of London, of Chelmsford, and Oxford, Father Crampton, and Jewish Rabbis, Gypsy Smith, and Campbell Morgan would have joined in holding their services for men in British Association huts'? Who would have dreamed of Queen Mary, of the Duchess of Westminster, the Countess of Bessborough, and the Prince of Wales serving tea and buns, cutting bread and even washing dishes there? In a letter to his brother in Dunedin, Mr Thomas Sandilands, of Musselburgh, Scotland, tells of a visit he made to see Harry Lauder, after a matinee in the King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, on 18th August last. “After asking for.a great host of the old friends in and around Musselburgh,” the writer says, “I got him to talk about the death of his only sou, Captain John Lauder, who was killed in France. He told me how he found the grave of his son, and how he was buried in a plot of ground with about 250 of our own men who, like him, had fought and died for King and country. John’s grave is in the centre. He was able to pick it out at once. It had a large Union Jack floating over it. The cross seemed to be bigger than the other crosses, and there was a wooden border round John’s grave. They all seemed, out yonder, to vie with each other who could do most for the soldiers’ graves. Instead of the name and number being on some of the crosses, there was only the words, ‘British Soldier,’ ‘Somebody’s Bairn,’ ‘Somebody’s Son,’ and other simple epitaphs. ‘Man, Tammas, it’s an awful job when one thinks of it all!’ he added. I asked him if. he would bring John’s body home when the war was all over. ‘No, that would be pure sacrilege,’ he replied emphatically. ‘No, John will lie there for ever, with his men, in the glorious country of France, where they have fallen. Bless them for all they have done for their country. My heart is broken, but I must go on as an example to others. I may erect the greatest monument I like, but that will not bring John back. Still,’ he added, T would not like it to be otherwise; and, besides, I am no worse off than hundreds of thousands of others who have lost their sons.’ ” In a letter to the Mayor of Wanganui, Lieut.-Col. Cunningham tells how Sergt. L. W. Andrew Avon the Victoria Cross, Avhich Avas presented to him by the King at Buckingham Palace on Wednesday last: — “The battalion was given a difficult and important task to carry out,” he wrote, “and did all that Avas asked of it to the complete satisfaction of the higher commanders.

Andrew’s company was detailed to tackle the most ticklish part of the business, and he was given command of two sections with instructions to capture a Hun inachinegun post-that had been previously located. On the Avay he ran unexpectedly into another machine-gun, which he captured, killing some Boches, and the balance ran for it. This little unrehearsed fight rather disorganised his tAvo sections, and he could find only four men to go on to the other post that he had been told to take. He found the post very strongly held, and had to Avork round to the rear of it, throAving bombs and folloAving them up with a rush. Sergt. AndreAv had the satisfaction of capturing the gun, killing four of the crew, and seeing some dozen other Boches running for their lives as his party rushed the post. Both the machine-guns Avere brought in, and Avill in due course reach Wanganui, I hope. I have put in the usual claim for them.”