GENERAL WAR NEWS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1760, 4 December 1917, Page 1

GENERAL WAR NEWS.

OXFORD IN WAR-TIME. Oxford to-day is practically given up to cadets in training for the front, and the British Empire Review, in a vivid sketch, wonders what would be thought of its present aspect by the pious founders, of Lincoln or Exeter, or by Dr. Johnson, who in 1784 jeered at air haloons as toys or a jest. Quadrangles accustomed to the walk of scholars and undergrads ring with martial commands and resound with martial tread. Christ Church Walk knows only squads and flights, and the river is no longer gay with club colours, but busy with lads in khaki keeping themselves fit. Lads eager for their wings and their commissions attend lectures and demonstrations with'Lewis and Maxim guns, and look to achieve in weeks the results which might occupy months and years of study. These lads, from almost every class of society, arc doing all this in the inspiring atmosphere of immemorial walls. FATHER DISCOVERS SON'S BODY. A remarkable coincidence is related in “Royal Flying Corps,” a record of R.F.C. casualties and honours since the start of the war. The incident concerns the death in action of a British airman, Captain Eldred Wolferstan Bowyer-Bower, East Surrey Regiment and R.F.C. who was carrying out a reconnaissance on March 19th, 1917, from five to seven miles behind the Hindenbnrg lines, when he was attacked by six enemy machines. The British advaneo name weeks later. In the vanguard was a detachment of. the Royal Engineers, which included the missing aviator’s father, Captain T. Bowyer-Bower, who hoard that not far away was a grave marked by a cross made from pieees of a wrecked aeroplane, which bore in pencil (he words, “Two unknown captains of the Flying Corps.” Permission was obtained to exhume the body, and it was found to be that of bis son, who was buried with his observer. The two aviators have now been buried in a village cemetery near by. WEALTHY AMERICA, Speaking in Chicago at the meeting of the National Hay Association, Mr William S. Kios, vice-pre-sident of the National City Bank, said the wealth of the United States is now about £48,000,000,000, which is more than the combined wealth of England, France, and Germany. BEAUTY AND DEATH. A wounded officer at the Prince of Wales’ Hospital (the spacious Great Central Hospital) tells that his most vivid impression of the Western front was seeing the new French guns coming up garlanded with flowers. He poetically described the spectacle as “Beauty encircling Death.” DOCTORS’ FEES. Doctors have decided to increase their fees. In London medical men in various districts have come to <in agreement, and patients are being asked to pay more. The practitioners have to pay more for everything used in connection with their practices, and the greatly increased cost of petrol made higher visiting charges necessary, especially for country doctors. The increased cost of drugs seriously affects doctors who do their own dispensing. A 25 per cent, increase is the average, and this does not affect people on the medical panels. GERMAN COURIER DOGS. It have seen two or three orders found upon captured German prisoners (says a writer in the Pall Mall Gazette), and was struck, on reading them, with the fact that courier dogs are in very general use as a means of communication between different battalions and regiments of the enemy. To all appearances this particular branch of war service has reached a high state of development on the other side of No Man’s Land. The animals are German sheepdogs, a breed well known for. their great strength and endurance. Four or five are attached to every battalion, under the care of a special officer, and they are exercised daily in the task of carrying communications. MORE COAL PRODUCED. There was an increase of 2,565,000 tons of coal produced from the coal mines of the United Kingdom in 1916, compared with 1915, the quantity raised being 256,348,000 tons. Tungsten ores obtained amounted to 388 tons, an increase of 61 tons, for the year.