JOTTINGS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 17, 21 January 1915, Page 3

JOTTINGS.

According to the Figaro, Count Basclueri has predicted that peace will be declared on April 27 next. Germany, he declares, will be vanquished, and the Kaiser will commit suicide .

Mr A. B. Clayton, Stratford, has generously donated the proceeds of the sale of the whole of his stock of Edison phonograph records to the British and Belgian Belief Fund. These are for-sale now his shop in Broadway, and people in search of records can satisfy their requirements and assist the fund at the same time.

At a meeting of wheat growers at Christchurch, under the auspices of the Farmers' Union, the following motion was carried: "That the Government he asked to remove the restrictions on the price of wheat as far as the farmers of New Zealand are concerned, this meeting considering that the Government has full control of the situation by having power to import wheat."

At the Magistrate's Court Wellington yesterday hearing of charges against Heinrich Wilheim Magnus Duerkop, produce merchant, of Auckland, of trading with the enemy, was concluded. Duerkop was further crossexamined on the letters which had passed between him and Gustav Witt, of Hamburg. In one letter he stated that Germans in New Zealand were being reproached for brutalities by German soldiers in Europe. He himself had to act diplomatically, hut he hoped the war would soon end, and the issue be favorable to Germany. Duerkop said he had not sent goods anywhere except to a "Dutch firm. He •had been advised that he could legally' do this. Duerkop wa§ committed for trial.

A remarkable point about th's war is the way the Quakers in EnV-iukS have taken it. Bound by their leligion to be pacifists they are yet rendering signal service in various ways connected with the wounded and those outside the .fighting line. In North east France, for instance, one unit of doctors and orderlies, all voluntary workers, are. seeing to the uurial of the dead, to the purification or Wells and other sources of water supply, and-to general sanitary and hygienic conditions of the houses on "the cites of past battles, so that civilians when they can may return to real safely in their homes. This is a very neces. sary work, and certainly deserves to be ranked with the services of loexors and nurses to the wounded, since it is always the civilian popiitation that bears the brunt of the war.

The drastic and far-reaching powers possessed by the military in Great Britain under the Defence of the Realm Act were, illustrated at Cardiff, where five women were court-martial-led for being out of doors after 7 p.m. Coloiiel East, commanding the Severn Defence, has not only closed public •houses.-in QardifT. vl to. r ,wojne}i^.a r fter r 7 p.m., but has issued notices to certain women prohibiting them from being out of doors between. 7 p.m. and ,8 a.m. Five, women who disobeyed tins order were tried by full courtmartial. Constables gave evidence as to finding the women, in certain streets and .other places t at hours varying from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. All the women .pleaded guil.ty,. One of them said," "Seven o'clock" seethed too early. It seemed like a dream .to me." Another-said, "I am very sorry, T shall go to a, convent." It, was announced that "the sentence would lie promulgated in due course." Meantime the women remain in custody.

"Zamiel," the writer of Random shots Jr. 'he Auckhr.d Star, Fays — One., of the by-pnl'i':,* of war, so to speak,, is claimed to be an added knowledge of geography; and I daresay that, despite; the most determined efforts, of the censor to suppress all reference to places, British people are learning something regarding towns on the Continent. The pity is that war, instead of teaching how to pronounce correctly the names of places, has quite an opposite tendency. Take Przemysl, or example (I really wish the Russians; would ''take'' it and re.christen it); there are several equally authoritative and impossible ways of pronouncing the name, ranging from "Prhemeezl" (two syllables) /.' to "Pirrts-amy-zel" (four syllables). Another terrible hurdle ,to . get over is Ypres. The correct sound of this is "Eepray," but the natives more frequently give the word but one syllable, thus—"Eep." The, British "Tommy," who has converted Compeigne into Copenhagen, has found a way of his own to pronounce Ypres in one syllable. According to a war correspondent's letter (passed by the censor), Mr Atkins pronounces it "Wipes." Probably the adoption of this euphonious name follows the law of association of ideas. Thus: Ypres had a celebrated old and magnificent Cloth Hall; evidently the town was a great centre of cloth manufacture; among Shots in the Auckland Star, says:— kerchiefs—there you are—" Wipes," in one syllable. Ypres, by the way, was once besieged by English troops, under Henry Spencer, Bishop of Norwich, who had to abandon the attempt, owing to the impenetrable thorn-bush "entanglements" that lined the external slopes of the ramparts. In honor of Our Lady of the Garden thus saving tho town, the people of Ypres have ever since observed the fair of Thuindag on the first Sunday in August.