GENERAL NEWS ITEMS

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2440, 13 June 1922, Page 4

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS

Labourers working on (lie foundations at, Brunoy, on flic line to Fontainebleau, discovered several sarcophagi of the Merovingian period, buried only a little way below the ground. They have been removed to Brunoy cemetery, where they wjll be, preserved. A. similar discovery was made recently at Tassancourt, near Melun, just on the border of the Fontainebleau Forest by a peasant who was^digging up the ground. Unfortunately he broke the sarcophagus and the potteries contained in it, but a pair of golden earrings was unearthed in - tact. Merwig, King of the Western or Saliaii Franks, from whom (he word Merovingian is derived, reigned A.D. 448-457.

Sentence has been passed on the two signalmen who were judged responsible for the accident in the Batignolles tunnel on October sth last. The signalman Maledant has been sentenced to six months’ imprisonment and the signalman Auvray, who was in charge of the signal box at the entrance to the tunnel, to four months’ imprisonment. Both men were fined 300 francs. It was proved that, by means of forcing the levers the two men signaled the line clear, whereas in reality there was a train stationary in the tunnel. A tenable collision followed giving 'rise to a fire which made the tunnel a furnace, rendering rescue worlf, impossible. Thirty people were killed as a result of the accident and 17 were inju/ed. The consequences of “shaking hands with murder and robbery” were seen at Leipzig reeentv when the court, which had forbidden the auction of furs stolen by the Bolsheviks frpm a Dutch company, reversed its decision. The fact that

the furs had been the property of a Dutch company and had been protected by the seals of Dutch Legislation was not disputed. The decision of the court was based on a Bolshevik law of January 1919, to which the Bolshevik- Trade Delegation at Leipzig drew its attention. This law provides expressly that property may be expropriated even when under the seals of representatives of foreign powers. As Germany is cultivating friendly relations with the. Bolsheviks on commercial grounds, there was nothing for the court to do but to become a party to their crime. An old Belgian dame, Micke Deboeuf, who has just died at Dixmude at the age of seventy-four, was one of the little known heroines of the war. She had an inscrutable smile, which won her the name of “La Joeonde de l’Yser,” but, in spite of her nickname, the smile was in no way malicious, and Mmc Dehoeuf made her-ruined house a real home for Belgian troops. She passed eight months with the army in the sector south of Dixmude, and actpd as a “mother” to the troops, carrying for them such devotion that in 1915 King Albert decorated her with the Civic Cross of the First Class. ,