GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 2067, 13 December 1919, Page 1

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Eighty Indian officers and over 2,000 men recently made the pilgrimage to Mecca. During their four weeks in Arabia they were the guests of the King of the Hedjaz. The British Government provided free return passages.

Shortage of male labour at Leeompton, Kansas, recently resulted in a feminine addition to the contingent. The unusual sight of women swinging pick-axes, wielding scythes, and smoothing out ruts on the roadway was witnessed, and as a result Lecompton roads are all in good shape now.

City departments in Detroit requiring motor cars in the future may have their needs supplied from the assortment of stolen cars recovered by the police but never claimed by their owners. This suggestion has been made to the city commission, and probably will be acted upon favourably. The police department has been selling these unclaimed cars at public auction every year.

Some ancient relics •have been discovered in the course of the excavations which are being carried out under the auspices of the Cambrian Archaeological Association at 1 he old Roman camping-ground near Yarmouth. The excavators, who arc working under the supervision of an expert from Condon,-came across some pieces of earthenware and two horseshoes, which, in the opinion of the expert, are over 2,000 years old.

A mysterious foe of plate-glass is giving the police force in Newark, New Jersey, a great deal of work, and has caused damage estimated at more than £1,400 within a few days. More than a score of plateglass windows in the business district have been broken. The only (due is the fact that alt are apparently smashed by a .32 calibre Indict. In spite of details of extra police and detectives, the smashing continues. No one has heard the sound of an explosion, and it is believed that the vandal is using a new and more effective silencer than is known to modern firearm experts.

The most popular people at many English house parties this season are said to be spiritualistic mediums —professional or amateur. Since Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir A. Conan Doyle gave the catehet of their approval to spiritualism it has become a cult among certain people, who sit night after night holding seances in which they are far more interested than in bridge, music, or dancing. There is one particular house where the billiardroom has been turned into a spiritualists’ chapel, and where some of the bestknown people in society attend frequent seances.

A magnificent black opal from (he mines of Southern Nevada, which is said to he the largest single uncut gem in the world, with the possible exception of the royal opal in the Vienna Museum, has been taken to Washington for the formation of expert opinion as to its value. The opal was discovered about two years ago, but its owners desired to wait until a favourable lime arrived for its sale. It is now valued at more than £115,000, It is a solid (lawless mass, free from matrix. It measures 3 15-10 in, in length, 3Jiu. in width, and 2sin, in thickness. It weighs 1(5.95 ozs. The scuttlers of Be apa Flow have been immortalised in a dramatic two-act-play written in blank verse by Reinhard Goering, one of the leading lights among the newer German poets. The first act shows the German sailors sitting on the deck of their flagship, bewailing their fate, the night before the armistice expires. The occasional rays of a searchlight illuminate the wan faces of the disconsolate men. The German admiral waits vainly for a sign from the Fatherland, After apostrophising his country lengthily, he expresses in a dramatic peroration his resolve to sink the Meet.

Mr William C. Browne Ims arrived in London on a 25,000-mile walking tour of the British Isles, to be completed in three years. Mr Browne is from Darlington, and left his native town on his walking tour last May. Since then he has covered 4,000 miles in reaching London, and at every town and village he has had his diary vised by the police. From London Mr Browne walks to Brighton, and thence along the south coast. “What is the object of your walk?” asked a pressman. “I am out to beat the record of 4,000 miles I set up in America in 1913. I want to be admitted world’s champion walker. In 1914 I started on a similar tour, and when war broke out I took train to the nearest recruiting centre.”

Childwell, the famous factory near Nottingham, where was built on open fields the largest shell-filling works in the world, presents an extraordinary sight to-day. Hundreds of thousands of pounds' worth of material lie uncovered and unprotected and red with rust. There are huge slocks of barbed wire, innumerable lengths of angle iron, thousands of army carts and vehicles of all descriptions, ambulance waggons, guns, motor-lorries, field kitchens, rows of cart wheels, and great heaps of goods indistinguishable from the roadway because they are all one colour —rust-red. For Bronchial, Coughs, take Woods’ Great Peppermint Cure.