NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 2062, 2 December 1919, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

The beer vats of the United States consumed yearly 143,285,580 lbs. of broken rice, which equalled three times the amount of barley and corn consumed.

The original advocate of a league of nations, it is declared by a learned Chinese writer, was the great Chinese philosopher, Confucius, who lived some 2,400 years ago. Chinamen have live buttons on their coats to remind them of tho principal .moral virtues recommended by Confucius —humanity, justice, order, prudence, and rectitude.

Detroit and Cleveland both claim fourth place among American cities in the next census, having admittedly displaced St. Louis, which was fourth, and Boston, which was fifth.

More than sixty-six people in Great Britain had incomes of more than £IOO,OOO a year in 1914. In 1917, after paying income tax and super tax, 500 people hud each £40,000 a year.

Not a scrap of writing lias been kept of the negotiations of the Council of Pour (President "Wilson, Mr Lloyd George, M. Clemenceau, and Signor Orlando), which decided the fate of Europe.

Standing 250 ft. high, a chimney stack at Northampton, which contained 2,000,000 bricks, and took two years to build, was felled recently. It was the third highest in the kingdom.

Seven hundred entertainments were given at Scapa Flow during the war on the Ellerman liner Gunrko, which acted as a itoaliug theatre, and they were attended by 300,000 officers and men.

If a theft takes place in a Japanese liouseludd all Ihe servants are required to write a certain word with the same brush. The conscience is supposed to belray its workings in tho waves of the ideographs written. It is a curious fact, and one that lias never been explained, that civilisation goes the way of the sun. In the east, man first emerged. Westwards he has travelled since, carrying tiie torch of progress in his hand.