JOTTINGS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 20, 25 January 1915, Page 5

JOTTINGS.

Early in November a sentence fo 20 years' penal servitude was passed by a Council of War at Boulogne on a German soldier, taken prisoner i.f war, who was convicted for pillaging. The name of the accused was Henri Falk, of the 4th Dragoons. He was a native of 4he Grand Duchy of Hesse. When captured in the neigh, borhood of Lille he was in poa session of a woman's gold watch and chain. The representative of the Government asked for a heavy sentence, pointing out that Fa-Ik's' regiment belonged to a division of German cavalry which had been guilty of outrageous conduct towards the peaceful inhabitants of Bailleul. It was stated in court tlvt 30 women living in Bailleul had been violated by the cavalrymen and that several of them had since died. An. other Gorman cavalryman of the 7th Regiment of Chasseurs, captured at Lens, who had in his pockets v pair of ear-rings, a gun-metal watch, mid two medals from Arras, was senteueed to live years' hard labor and a rtn'e of £2O. A similar sentence was passed upon a trooper of the same regiment, who had stolen a pocketbook, a pacKet of cards, and some money, at Bailleul.

American powder and arms factories are running day and night, and Germans in Washington charge that they are making immense quantities of wat supplies for the Allies. In reply to this charge an official says the reason why his factories are so unusually busy is that they have fallen heir to the trade with South American and neutral European countries formerly held by England. While not directly denying the charge made by the Germans, he says that, as it is estimated that France and Germany together had approximately one thousand million pounds of smokeless powder in their magazines at the outbreak of war, if the total output of his factories were to be turned in their direction the supply they would send the Allies would hardly supply the basis of a sensation. Wars, he says, arc not won by powder manufactured during the contest, as was the case when black powder was used, but by the supply on hand before the contest begins. He

explains that, it takes months to dry smokeless powder after it is manufactured, and a still longer time to enlarge a plant to meet any very large increase in orders.