LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1812, 11 April 1918, Page 2

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

The Minister for Defence has been advised of the safe arrival at their destination of the 35th and 36th Mounted Rifle Reinforcements, The engagement is announced of Dr. Elizabeth Macdonald, Medical Inspector of Schools, Auckland, to Dr. Robert Bryson, of Levin. A special meeting of the Foxton Harbour Board was held at Palmerston this morning in connection with the loan proposals. ' An entertainment will he held in the Salvation Army Hall this evening, when a, varied programme will be submitted. The Mayor will preside, .and admission will be free. A collection will be taken up in aid of the Raetihi Relief Fund. .Probably the machinery for rounding up reservist shirkers and defaulters will be speeded up (states the Post). The police may ask men of the First Division and Class A of the Second Division to show leave passes instead of certificates of enrolment. Mr J. H. Stevens, of Palmerston North, who has just returned from a visit to Raetihi, stales that although numerous individual losses in the recent tires were severe, the general destruction is not so great as was at first anticipated. The insurance assesor has already completed 93 claims, totalling £20,000, and the work of restoration has been carried on with all expedition. A heavy flood is reported at Opotiki, in the Bay of Plenty. A heavy rainfall has occurred, and the rivers are fiooded.LVll traffic has been suspended. There is 6ft. of water in the highest part of the business area. The counters of the shops are covered by water, which has also reached the ground floor of the Post Office. The roads are blocked, and. telegraphic communication is interrupted. ' When carriers were removing furniture from a cottage at Archill, Auckland, last Saturday, which had been occupied by John Morgan, who died in November last, there were found a pickle-bottle containing 486 sovereigns, also £l3O in gold, notes, etc., in a handbag, and £2O in silver, wrapped in paper, under a harmonium. Deceased was believed to be in necessitous circumstances. His wife has been in the Costley Home for two years. During an informal discussion at the meeting of the Manawatu County Council on Tuesday, the chairman, speaking about the rush of motor cars on the day of the Bulls races, said fortunately there was no dust that day, which probably partly accounted for there having been no accident. Cr Boyce said owing to the practice of the courts onlyimposing light fines' 1 for fast driving, there was really no check upon it. The punishment should be imprisonment without the option of a fine.

The continuous warm rains have produced large quantities of mushrooms throughout the district. The members of the local Presbyterian Ladies’ Social Guild were en- 1 tertaihed by Mrs Claris in the Sunday school hall yesterday afternoon. Mr Greig, transferred from Dunedin to succeed Mr Daniell asj local stationmaster, entered upon his duties to-day. Mr Daniell will take up his diities at Lower Hntt in about a fortnight’s time. Tlie parishioners of All Saints’ Church are reminded of the annual meeting to be held to-night, at the schoolroom, at 8 o’clock, when the report and balance-sheet will be presented, and people’s warden and vestry for the coming year elected. Mr W. Sexton, of Foxton, has received word that his brother, Pte. J. Sexton, of the 34th Reinforcements, has been killed in action. Mr Sexton has another brother at the front. We extend our sympathy to Mr Sexton and his aged mother in the loss they have sustained. “Never answer a solicitor’s letter unless you get advice yourself. I learned that when I was about seventeen.” The above caution was proffered all and sundry by Mr W. R. Haselden, S.M., at a sitting of the Stratford Magistrate’s Court, and his Worship further stated that if the communication was hostile it was just as well not to send any answer whatever! There is one road (the.RongoteaLongburn) in the Manawatu County on which there is an abundance of grass —seventy chains of it at least —but where there is no trouble about wandering stock, for once they step into the 'drain from the metal they are liable to disappear in the bog. Cr Hunt, at the meeting on Tuesday, said cattle being driven along , this road were sometimes lost. It was desirable that the drain should be fenced off. The engineer was directed to make an inspection and report on the cost of the work required to render the road safe for stock. The Borough Council at its last meeting spent a fair amount of time “on the tank.” Of course, there are tanks and tanks. The tank the Council were 1 on had no connection with the larynx lubricant order, nor the monsters of war, but a wordy argument centred round the common or garden variety of corrugated iron household tank at the Council chambers. It was reported that the top rungs were rusting, and this would seriously affect the holding capacity and life of another tank. Tt was finally decided if the water catcher could not be repaired it was to be disconnected. A letter from P. C. Webb, M.P., to the editor of the Maoriland Worker contains the following,:—“Just a few lines to inform you that I have posted my resignation as M.P. for Grey to Jim Scott, and have just written to Geo. Hunter, requesting that the party should call on th« Win-the-AVar Cry Party to get at least 1,000 signatures to a petition to the Labour Party to forward my resignation on to the Speaker. If they fail, send it along just when considered advisable. It is quite certain I can’t represent and look after the interests of the Grey electors in this place.”

The commonest of all forms of; “nerves” among men at the front in Europe is, perhaps, the longing to he alone. It would he difficult to say how many men have had to he invalided out of the army hecau.se they cannot live near other people. To such, theatres, crowded streets, the. buzz of conversation in a room, the proximity of people in a train or in an omnibus become tortures that are almost unbearable. There arc men who have taken to solitary huts in the forest, to tiny homes by the sea, where they will live like primitive men until something happens in their brains to jerk them back into the old routine of life.

On Tuesday niglit the Wanganui Borough Council discussed a. letter from the Napier Patriotic Association asking for support to a resolution praying the Governor-General to remove from among his Advisers any men of enemy blood. The resolution further urged that men of enemy blood be removed from the Public Service. The Mayor condemned the proposal, and said the question was one that should be left to the Government. He considered the resolution aimed at a man whose loyalty was unquestioned. The council should not be a party to try to hound him out of public life. The majority of councillors took up the attitude that the time had arrived when no risks should beiaken, and it was decided to support the Napier resolution.