GENERAL WAR NEWS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1805, 23 March 1918, Page 1

GENERAL WAR NEWS.

BATTLEFIELDS AND AGRICULTURE. An American farmer, writing in Land and Water on the restoration of the farming land of the battle areas in Prance and Belgium, contends that the physical difficulties x —great as they are —are not going to prove insurmountable. “To those, scientists who hold that the land of the battle area has been ‘poisoned’ beyond remedy by gas and shell fumes I might point out that,” he says, “while these fumes occasionally bleach and cause fresh gra,ss and foliage to wilt and die dotvn, the effect is only temporary. If the roots are injured it is from being torn up by explosion, not from the fumes. In any event, the soil itself is not deleteriously affected. As to' the effect of the constant churning of the earth by bursting shells, I might point out that subsoil culivation by the use of dynamite has been practised with invariable success in America for several years.” AUSTRALIAN BOY’S ROMANCE. A touching little romance has just had 'the'■following pretty sequel. The story was recently told of Ted Wharton, the heroic Australian boy of 16, who, at the age of 131 managed to get into the army, and who, whilst convalescing, sent to the Queen a treasured photograph of Her Majesty nursing him as a baby in a Malbourne hospital, (bo result being that he was sent for, lunched with the King and Queen at Buckingham Palace, and was sent away happy, with autographed portraits of Their Majesties. After discovering the lad’s age, the military authorities must send him back to the front to be adjudged unsuitable as a combatant owing to his tender years, and then to be repatriated. The plucky boy, however, if not allowed to fight, still wished to “do bis bit,” so, remembering the Queen’s parting promise of help if he needed it, wrote to Her Majesty again, asking to be given war work in England. The outcome is that he is nbw in London on leave waiting for the employment to bo arranged for him through Her Maj-» esty’s kindly influence.

THE WEALTH OF THE SEA. The North Sea has never been so productive as now. The inference is that the restriction of fishing has permitted an unchecked multiplication of fish. No matter how we fish the seas the harvest conies bounteous to the nets. There are great rythmical waves of productivity in the ocean. Early spring and early summer heat in the waters increase numbers incredibly. Given such conditions the sea holds such an overfloiving wealth of life that two or three times a century we find herring swarms on the west coast of the country. And the Skagerack knows its “winter herring,” which appears once every 111 years in teeming millions, and has dieen doing so for the last twelve centuries. 6,000,000 MILES IN A MONTH. ' During a recent month the mileage steamed by His Majesty’s battleships, cruisers, and destroyers, amounted to .1,000,000 ship miles in home waters. In addition to this there is the eeaseless patrol of tho naval auxiliary forces, amounting to well over 6,000,000 ship miles in home waters in the same month. During a recent month the blockading squadron performed in the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans the almost ificredible feat of intercepting and examining every single merchant ship trading with neutral countries. They missed not one.