GENERAL WAR NEWS

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1811, 9 April 1918, Page 1

GENERAL WAR NEWS

AUSTRIA HAS 5,372 GUNS. The total man-power of AustriaHungary’s armies now has reached 1,170 battalions of infantry, 240 squadrons of cavalry, 2,950' field guns, 1,500 light howitzers, and 922 heavy v g‘uns, according to approximately exact figures obtained by a correspondent. : ; aUs#3-£erman force -in ’ : ITALY. The strength of the Austro-Ger-man invaders in Italy is placed by official despatches from Rome at 60 divisions, or approximately 750,000 men. On the front line are 52, of which. 45 • are Austrian and seven German. Eight others, four German and four Austrians, are said by information from complete sources to be held back of the lines in reserve. WHAT’S IN A NAME? Howard E. Coffin is the man behind the United States big airplane programme, and his motto is, “Standardise it.” He is one of Uncle Sam’s dollar-a-year-men, officially known as chairman of the Aircraft Production Board, one of the most important subsidiaries of the Council of National Defence. Just at present his job is to turn out an air fleet of 20,000 craft inside of a year, Louisa Dominofsky, wife of a Russian Pole, but a German-born subject, with brothers serving in the Prussian army, was at Manchester charged with attempting to persuade Corporal Anthony Bautenbash, a Russian, serving in the Lanca-shire-Fusiliers, and now an inmate of Manchester Hospital, to escape. It was stated that accused said to Bautenbash: “If you are a Russian, why are you fighting for this country?” and she offered to find him civilian clothes in which to escape; He communicated with the police, and when, the .woman gave him a parcel containing clothes she was arrested. Bautenbash added that the previous day two men offered him £lO if he would not say much about the ease. Prisoner, whom the Bench described as a dangerous woman, was sent to prison for six months. TOTAL OF HALIFAX DISASTER. Fifteen hundred killed; 4,000 seriously injured, 20,000 homeless,, total property loss £10,000,000, is the latest estimate of the destruction in the Halifax disaster on December 6th. PARSON’S GERMAN SYMPATHIES. A Pekin despatch states that the Rev. Gilbert Reid, of Laurel, L.L, has been deported to Manila at the request of the Chinese authorities because of his activities as a German sympathiser. He was editor of the Pekin Post, and founder of the International Institute of China. GERMAN-NAVAL SPY CAUGHT.

Walter Sporeman, a lieutenant in the German Navy, was arrested at Norfolk, Va., as a spy. He is believed to have landed in America h'om the German U-boat 53, which touched at Newport in 1916. Sporeman is accused of having attempted to blow up the Government magazine at the aviation base at Hampton. Immediately following his arrest his brother, H. C. Sporeman, was taken into custody in Baltimore on a charge of violating the enemy alien regulations in regard to removal.