GENERAL WAR NEWS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1860, 3 August 1918, Page 4

GENERAL WAR NEWS.

AN UNEXPECTED TREASURE. It would bo interesting (says a writer in the Daily Chronicle) to know the name of the most unlooked for book encountered at .the front. One that caused wonder to mi orderly officer was a copy of “Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities,” found in a sergeant’s mess about two miles' from the line. It seems it had been left behind by a previous inhabitant. Nevertheless, it found a diligent reader every night in a sergeantmajor who in civilian life was a wood-carver, and who discovered in the volume a mine of suggestion in the wood-cuts of classical ornamental features! CHILDREN SAVE WASTE. Saving up the cast-off and unconsidered trifles of life has materially helped the Huns to “stick it.” Up to March 31st, according to statistics just published, the school children of Frankfort-on-the-Maine had collected and sent to official depots for conversion into useful but scarce raw materials the following articles43s,ooolb. paper, 7,7001 b. rubber, 125,000 bottles, (10,000 corks, l(i,0001h. rags, 4,!)501h. leather, 42,000 gas mantles, I,loolb. tinfoil, 1,500 lb. women’s hair, 18,200 fell hats, 1,2001 b. celluloid. THE HUN IN BELGIUM. Deportations of the male population in Belgium are carried out with systematic brutality. The least thing suffices for being sent to the fighting zone. The smallest infringement of a German order, as, for instance, the cleaning of the streets, that must be done twice a week, or as regards remaining out of doors after eight o’clock, or the covering up of a light left huring so as tc be visible from without —any of these things ensures being sent to the hard labour of the front trenches. The mortality among those condemned to work’ in (he front trenches and behind the lines generally is enormous. Confiscation of property has long been known, and the copper saucepan was among the first: to go. It has been followed by all sorts of articles, such as the nails in armchairs, crucifixes, and even collar studs! RUBBER FOR GERMANY. Details of how rubber is smuggled into Germany through Holland were disclosed at Gravesend Police Court, when two seamen were each fined .CLOG for concealing SGIb. of dental rubber and 3Alb. of valve rubber on the steamship Marleybone, and the former was also charged with harbouring prohibited rubber at his house. Preventive officers boarded the vessel, which was bound to Rotterdam, at Tilbury Dock, and in the chain locker noticed tiie wood under the lining split. Forcing this open, they found rubber hidden inside. The prisoners admitted it was their joint properly, and that they concealed it to lake to Holland. They gave 25s per ib. for dental rubber and I7s per lb. for valve, and sold the former at £3 per lb. and the latter at £4 7s (id per kilo in Rotterdam. The defence was that accused were only doing what others were doing, there being an agent in Rotterdam who reaped the greatest benefit, THE WESTERN GRAVEYARD. Practically for the first time during the war the German authorities are now allowing relatives to have (he bodies of soldiers killed in action on the western front brought lo Germany for burial. Permission to that effect was in force until Mav 34,