GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 1994, 24 June 1919, Page 1

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Ukrainia lias 40,000,000 inhabitants.

The phrase, “a baker’s dozen,” or commonly known as thirteen, is said to have originated in Italy, though there it is called “ a cobbler’s dozen.” There is a tradition that in Italy there was formerly a law compelling cobblers to put twelve nails round the edge of a boot-heel, and that when the nails were cheap a thirteenth was to be driven in the centre for luck.

A diverting story of how a distinguished divinity student not unknown in Dunedin accomplished the fall of Jericho was recounted by Mr

D. N. MacDiarmicl at a business men’s luncheon (says the Otago Daily Times). The story, Mr MacDiarmicl said, was current in British circles in Egypt, but unfortunately he could not vouch for its literal truth. The officer in question was in charge of a light car section, and when approaching Jericho he was able to turn his theological studies to excellent account. Remembering a previous occasion on which the city was captured, the officer instructed his drivers to encircle the city as noiselessly as possible. On the second day they repeated the manoeuvre, but having less time to spare than had Joshua at the earlier siege, the officer gave the word on the third day for the Eord cars to be driven round seven times with tooting of horns and aU possible noise. The device was effective, for in a short time the inhabitants rushed out crying, “Come in; we can stand this no longer.”

The New York Times’ correspondent, visiting Amerongen, reports:—“For two hours I watched the former Emperor and Empress silting in a summer house in the garden at Count Bentinck’s castle. I could see them clearly. The exKaiser looked at me but we did not

speak; a hnvn and the moat separated us. Tie was wearing a dark blue suit and yachting cap. The ex-

Dmpress, dressed in white, was reading to the ex-Kaiser from a Roman newspaper. The ex-Kaiser does not seem to suffer from what happened to Germany, but the exEmpress grieves over (ho fallen fortunes of her country. The Bent inch family seem to think the Royal couple will return to Germany soon. A Dutch professor who visited the ex-Kaiser recently was surprised at the alertness of his mind. He is familiar with what is happening in Ihe scientific world.

Nearly every country in the world (says Mcreutio in the Auckland Herald) is at the moment wrestling with the problem of the “idle rich,” and Chancellors of the. Exchequer everywhere are doing their host to make everybody so poor that they must work to live. Why should not New Zealand join tho campaign? It is true we have few millionaires and fewer persons still who do not work in one way or another. Our “idle rich” are the miliums of acres which, under the protection of State or native ownership produce a luxuriant growth of noxious weeds but add nothing to national wealth. Why should not this idle land lie made (o work for the good of New Zealand and give of its primeval richness to the payment of our war debt ? Why not indeed. To keep land idle is as uneconomic as to keep men idle. The laud is the source of all wealth, and ultimately of all human progress. Are we so well off in New Zealand that we can afford to have only onethird of our national estate in use to subsist as a nation on one acre when we might be cultivating three ?