NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1819, 27 April 1918, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

An English nurse home on leave from France recently related a striking story of a German airman’s fatal funk in the presence of danger. The aviator had taken part in a recent raid on London. On the return journey his machine was crippled, and was forced to descend in France. The crew was captured, and it was found that one of them was badly injured in the knee. He was sent to a hospital, where he boasted of the ruin and deaths caused by German bombs in London. Two nights later an air raid by his own comrades took place in the neighbourhood of the hospital in which he lay. So terror-stricken was the wounded man that lie clambered oiit of bed and tided to seek refuge in a room below. In his condition of helplessness and fright he fell headlong down the stairs, sustaining fatal injuries. “We say, for instance, that our men are lighting for England today. So they are. But I wonder how much of the land of England many of them will ever get, if they Jive to come back (said the Rev. John C, Harris, in a recent sermon at the Congregational Church, Kin-gston-on-Thames). Just a bit, six feet, by two, to be buried in, and then someone will have to pay for that! Look at the hovels some of them have to live in, the slums some of them will have to pay high rents for when they come home. Home! Here is a land system which allows less than 200 men to own half the land of England, less than 20 men to own half the land of Scotland. Here is a system which for the past thirty years has been driving people off the land, crowding them in foul cities, forcing thorn to emigrate, until we discover to-day that we have not grown enough potatoes and corn to last us more than a few weeks, and tilled dukes and noble lords send us circulars frantically bidding us dig our backyards. 1 want to know who made us a nation of landless people, who made the laws that moI the rights of properly above the rights of man"? Why is it that in an age so full of invention, so widely extending the productive powers of man, and in which the fruits of human labour have been so enormouly multiplied, that there is not enough to go round? There must be something wrong when bread is so dear, and llcsh and blood so cheap.” The party of Aucklanders who recently journeyed to Spirits' Bay, near Cape Maraia Van Diemen, to witness the flight of the godwits, lias returned disappointed. On arriving at Paerengarenga by boat, they were informed by the residents that the birds, apparently taking advantage of a favourable wind and fair weather, had left on their long journey to Siberia a month before. Tliy only birds they saw were odd weaklings, which, according to local residents, are always left behind. The migratory iiigbt did not start from Spirits’ Bay, but from the mud Hats, around Te Hapua, in the Paerengarenga Harbour. One reason for this may be that the birds have been shot at in the vicinity of the .North Coast Bay, and another may be that the mud Hats on the shores of Paerengarenga Harbour make splendid feeding grounds for the long-billed godwits. Residents who saw the Ilight begin told the party that it was a wonderful sight. It continued for several days, but for some time on the first day the sky was literally black with birds, all “squawking” at once and making a great noise. Before actually leaving the land the birds Hew to a. very great height, and then made off in a northerly direction over Tom Bowling Bay, on the north coast.