GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 1991, 17 June 1919, Page 4

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

35,000 ASKED TO A BALL. New York women are arranging an air ball to be given at the BitzCarlton Hotel, invitations have been sent to 35,000 persons throughout the country. It is expected that many airmen will lly to New York to attend.

FIRST U-BOAT SUNK IN WAR. For the destruction of Uls, the first submarine sunk in the war, by firing at and ramming her, on August 9th, 1914, the officers and crew of H.M.S. Birmingham have been granted a bounty of £lls, representing £5 per head of the U-boat crew of 33, none of whom was rescued.

WILSON WIRELESS. A story of how President Wilson broke diplomatic precedent on October 20th, 1918, by direct parley with the Germans is told by Mr C. M. Ripley, wireless specialist of the General Electric Company. It was exactly noon on October 20th, Mr Ripley said, when the operator in the naval wireless station at New Brunswick, New Jersey, started the American and allied ' Government wireless operators with a call to the German Government wireless station at Nauen. Visions of daring treachery on the part of some naval wireless operator or equally daring German spy operations, Mr Ripley imagines, flitted through the minds of operators who were not aware of Mr Wilson’s plan. Almost immediately there flashed back from Nauen station a .patronising comment: “Your signals are fine, old man.” Then the New Brunswick operator began sending President Wilson’s first message to the German people, couched in plain, terse English, and informing (hem that no peace negotiation could be considered until the Kaiser was out of the way. From that time until the signing of the armistice, Mr Ripley said, the President maintained direct wireless communication with Germany.