GENERAL WAR NEWS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1855, 20 July 1918, Page 4

GENERAL WAR NEWS.

INSECTS AS AERONAUTS. According to Lieutenant Depret Bixio, of the French Army, who is a naturalist as well a.*} ■a. flying man, many insects follow captive balloons in their ascent. He has seen flies go as high as 2,970 feet, after which they die. Grasshoppers cling to the basket of the balloon until the air becomes too ratified for them when they let go and fall. He says the swallows have a glorious time catching these insects. AIR NETS OYER PARIS. Paris is preparing in various ways, (says the Paris correspondent of the Field) to make things ho! for the Germans in the great air raids expected in the future. Some of these preparations cannot be described, but one of them, in which Parisians have taken much'interest, must be known to the enemy because it is carried out in public and commented on by the newspapers. Little yellow balloons began to appear recently in various parks and squares throughout the city. Attached to them were formidable mazes of wire. Crowds gathered, and were puzzled. Rut on the first clear night they all rose into the sky, the network of cable disentangled, and formed a screen of metal, invisible to prowling night marauders, whose end will be sudden and inglorious if any of them strike these protective strands of steel. THE ROUMANIAN ROYAL FAMILY. Pan-German fanatics, not satisfied with the humiliating peace imposed upon Roumania, are now demanding that steps be taken to banish the ruling dynasty, or at least to reduce it to power!essness. A typical utterance is that of the Hamburger Nachrichten: — “Public opinion among the Germanic Powers is unanimous that it is impossible. for the present ruling house to remain in Roumania if a genuine peace is to be established. It is therefore highly regrettable that the peace terms did not include the regulation forthwith of the dynastic question. The Queen and her supporters must never again be allowed to have any power whatever if the whole work we have accomplished is not to be endangered. Mercy was never more misplaced than here.” FAT WITH LOOT. “Germany has won £4,000,000,000 thus far in the war in loot of captured countries. The Frenchman has lost the fear of death and won immortality.’’ In these words Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis, recently returned from the western front, contrasts, in the San Francisco Chronicle, the spirit of the powers now in death grip for the mastery of the world. “I have seen the Frenchman, covered with slime and vermin, climb out of a trench for the attack with a divine light on his features. And I have seen the German soldier, fat with the loot of ravished lands, spending but eight hours in the twenty-four in the trench, and idling the rest of the day while his prisoners do Ihe work behind the lines in disregard of solemn covenants of the nations.”

THE SAILOR’S DITTY-BOX

Dilly-boxos are plain whilewuod boxes measuring 12in. by Sin. by (iin., and every sailor in the Royal Navy owns one. In it lie keeps his purely private and personal belongings. Other items of kit abide the commander's question at inspection, but this, is free. To a great extent Hie ditty-box takes the place of furniture in the Spartan economy of the mess-deek. Stood on end, it is a seat; with the lid up and a folded towel placed over the contents, it is a pillow; and four boxes placed together form an excellent card-table. The ditty-box may serve as a library. One stout mariner carries “The Pilgrim’s -Pro gross” and a “Seamanship Manual” with him wherever he goes, and has been heard to express the opinion that ho is set up for life in the matter of reading.