JOTTINGS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXX, Issue 39, 2 October 1914, Page 2

JOTTINGS.

At a meeting' of the Otago Hospital and Charitable Aid Board last night, representatives of the Hospital Saturday Association waited as a deputation to ask that at least a portion of the money to be collected by the Association be diverted to the elleviation of distress in Britain and Belgium caused by the war. After the deputation had stated their case, the Board considered the matter in committee, and expressed its willingness that half the sum the Board would receive from the Association's collecuion should be forwarded for the relief of distress in Britain and Belgium.

An English officer who was in Belgium when the war broke out says:— "The Belgians were at first extremely dubious of our intention to send troops to Belgium to support them, and night after night, at a certain well-known seaside resort, they crowded about the British Consulate for news. When it was definitely known that the British Expeditionary Force had started, Belgian men and women asked for the Union Jack to be brought out by the Consul, and when this was done they filed out, kissing it. I saw this with my own eyes."

The Dardanelles is closed, by treaty, to all warships except Turkish. The strait is, however, open to all merchant ships. Till 1771, when Russia compelled Turkey to open the Black Sea and the passage to it from the Mediterranean, it had been the practice of the Porto to forbid the passage of ships of other Powers through the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. After 1774 the straits were still closed to men-of-war, though the restrictions were later modified to allow the passage of light cruisers employed in the service of foreign Embassies at Constantinople and a few other small warships. In 1871 the Sultan was granted power to open the straits in time of peace to warships of friendly Powers if necessary. It is part of the law of nations that a passage between two seas is part of those seas, and is as free for navigation as the sea themselves.