GENERAL.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVIV, Issue 10, 15 December 1915, Page 7

GENERAL.

In one of the largest London stoie.. the other day (states a writer in the Evening Standard), I asked a manager how business was during war time. He replied instantly that the chief demands were for pianos and small billiard tables, and that those were all going to the small homes, into which war conditions have brought a prosperity hitherto unknown. This is one aspect of the war, and perhaps not the least interesting.

A-story is told of a southern member of the expeditionary force who sums up his experience of the campaign in the succinct phrase, “well punctured.” At the outset he underwent the ordinary vaccination as a precaution against small-pox. He was subsequently inoculated twice to guard against enteric, and there were also two anti-cholera inoculations. He was wounded twice, one of the wounds being in the baud, an injection of an anti-tetanus prophylactic was added to the list. Finally the. man contracted dysentery, and was given the usual treatment for that complaint, including another inoculation. The two wounds brought the total number of punctures up to nine, and the man has survived them all! ’

Many sacrifices are being mad© during this- time of war, and many strenuous efforts to help along the funds. Not the least among the latter was the feat of a young lady in Chain’s last week, who drove unaided a wild two-year-old heifer to the fete (says the Akaroa Mail). It appears that a farmer informed the young lady, Miss Bain, that if she could drive down a two-year-old heifer without dogs ,sho could give it to the fete. The heifer was almost unmanageable. The young- lady spent a number df hours in winning her wager. The heifer was driven out of the paddock by her six times, and each time jumped the fence again. Finally, after seven and a half hours’ strenuous work, she got it down to the fete, where it realised in sale the sum of £26.

Every French soldier’s ration includes a daily issue of wine (states an Australian correspondent at Lemnos). It i s often an immature claret, about two years old, and comes in the greater part of it, s bulk from Algeria. Numbers of them dilute it and sell it to their “camarades allies” at Is or 1 franc the bottle. In exchange they take English soldiers’ jam, clasp knives, badges, spare underclothing, matches, hoots, and so forth. Al! this sort of bartering, of course, is strictly forbidden, and the penalty is anything np to “death, or such punishment, etc.” Do not think that the French' soldiers quartered hero are more mercenary than we are. Having no ready cash ,like ourselves, they do the best they can to vary the monotony of food; and even the business of bartering i s an intellectual distraction. It whiles away an hour in the short evenings before “lights out.” and gives some insight, however slight, into tho lives of other men.