GENERAL.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVIV, Issue 72, 1 March 1916, Page 7

GENERAL.

Hawera’s fund for the relief of sick and wounded soldiers now amounts to £‘4076 .‘is 3d. The .Manaia Patriotic Committee has decided to make a thorough canvass of tiie whole district lor donations. The Education Department has awarded senior free places at the Huwera Technical School to Olive Clement. Dulcie Nairn, and Hilda Squire. Tl\e Waverley Co-operative Dairy ■ Co. has again put up a record, suppliers having received the large amount of 19d per lb. for butter-fat, and in addition live-eighths of a penny is now being paid out as a bonus. The secretary of the Hawcra Hospital Board has been advised of four more cases of infantile paralysis in the district, two having been reported on Saturday, and two on Monday. None of the now eases are believed to he serious. Wellington vital statistics for February were: Births 180 (last year 108), deaths 09 (53), marriages 103 (70), January and February totals are: Births 374 (355), deaths 145 (110), marriages 193 (163). Soldiers in uniform will be admitted free to the A. and P. Show at New Plymouth to-day arid to-morrow. Arrangements are also being made to motor any wounded soldiers at present in the hospital who are able to visit the show. “It is the silliest lot of drivel that !a Government has over been guilty of,” remarked Councillor Anderson at jj» the Petone Borough Council meeting on Monday night, when the issue of - armlets for exempted recruits was mentioned. “II a man is weak he is not going to advertise the fact by going about labelled like a prize fowl.” A young lieutenant in all the glory of ids first uniform, stepped into a car on the London underground the other day. A few seats away was an old soldier, who from the state of Ids cape and other clothes, had evidently just come from the trenches. Furious at not receiving a salute, the young officer shouted out, “1 say, soldier, don’t they teach you in your regiment to salute a superior officer?” Without a word the old warrior opened his cape, and it was seen that he was a colonel. Stuttering out an apology the stickler for etiquette subsided into ,lds seat. Tbc colonel quietly asked, “Young man, have you been to the front yet?” “No!” was the answer. “Then I advise you to go at once. It will do you good—much good.” “llailwayrnen throughout the Dominion are in an extremely ugly mood, rhore lias never since 1890 been the mine pressing demand made upon tbe executive by the men for some definite action. The executive is using all the restraining influence that it can, tint 1 "ear that it will bo unable to hold the men much longer.” This, statement was made to a Wellington Post reporter on Monday by Mr M. J. Mack, general secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants. For some time past it has been evident that there is a marked degree of unrest in the railway service. Some of the resolutions adopted by branches of the A.S.R.S. have been published in daily papers, hut a perusal of the Railway Review, the official organ of the society, indicates that the dissatisfaction is more widely spread than would he gathered from the press. In the course of her address at the Exhibition in Wellington on Saturday night, Madame Boeufve insisted that there were official Austrians and Germans in New Zealand who should have been interned at the outbreak of war, whose sons were holding commissions in our army and in our coastal defence force. She asked who was responsible for this state of affairs? In any other country a word or a suggestion of suspicion would be accepted by the military authorities, but here, if a communication of that sort were made regarding the enemy alien parentage of soldiers in the army, one felt one was absolutely offending the military authorities, which it was extremely hard to understand. On one occasion, when siie had made a complaint, she had been [ told that the authorities were too busy to set up an “Intelligence Department.” ■ The Aliens Board was practically a farce, ft had no power to call people before it, and no can- ■ clidate for the army would he brought 1 before the board unless the military authorities asked it. She protested against-the King’s uniform being worn by a German.