GENERAL WAR NEWS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1803, 19 March 1918, Page 1

GENERAL WAR NEWS.

FORGED ARMY DISCHARGES. “My own opinion is that charges of this kind 'arc far too serious to be dealt with by a court of summary jurisdiction, I can only inflict the maximum penalty the law allows, a, penalty I do not think sufficient for such'an offence,” said Mr Wilberforce, the Old Street (London) magistrate, when he sentenced Henry Hyams and Reuben Greenbery to six months’ imprisonment and a fine of £IOO each for forging army discharge certificates and selling them to a private in the many. Hyams, it was shown, suggested to a Private Smith, of the Machine-gun, Corps, whom he met at a fish bar, that the latter need not-go back to the front, and offered “to fix him up for a couple” (of five-pound notes),. Smith told the authorities, with the result that after another meeting, at which army discharged forms wore produced by Greenbery,' and the amount to be paid was reduced by bargaining to £B, the two men were arrested. EXCHANGE OF PRISONERS. Lord Newton and General Sir Henry Belfield have returned to England on the conclusion of their mission to Switzerland in order to negotiate with the Turkish delegates on the prisoner question. The two main points secured are the in? spection of camps by the protecting Legation (Dutch) and an arrangement with regard to the exchange of Turkish and British prisoners, the majority'of the latter being Indians. The Turkish delegates had no precise knowledge of the number of British prisoners, but estimated it: at 10,000, while we hold about 50,000 Turks as prisoners. 'There will be a preliminary exchange of 1,000 British invalid prisoners for 1,500 invalid Turks. A TRAGEDY OF WAR PROFITS. A verdict of suicide during temporary insanity was returned at an inquest at Dartford on a master stevedore named William Bates, a large employer of labour, whose body was recovered from Dartford Creek. It was stated that he had received a claim for excess profits amounting to nearly £6,000, and also a large claim for income tax, neither of which he had paid since the outbreak of the war.