INTERESTING ITEMS.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 208, 13 May 1915, Page 8

INTERESTING ITEMS.

GERMAN SAVINGS AND DQINGS, Just now the world is talking about the new German i'ashion in hats Berlin ladies ar e wearing torpedo-toques a.s a sign of their hatred of England, Another section of society is wondering why Australian soldiers in Egypt are so busy falling off Pyramids, An anti-Australian German professor asserts that men born in flat countries become wildly irresponsible when brought into contact with varying perpendiculars, These wicked German professors! GERMAN INFLUENCE IN THE UNITED STATES. I wish you could hear the big German shoutingl machine which Jiert Dernburg has organised in the United States. Every German with a shout is now placing it at his country’s disposal. And when one considers that there are between eleven and twelve millions of him in America, the machine is going to raise the roof, unless President Wilson brings his spine to the front, and puts the shout-ma-chine out of order. The machine is

dfman-diaig that 'America {shall do things in the interests of the Fatherland. It' is asking that copper and cotton and foodstuffs be sent to the Kaiser’s array. It demands that Uncle Sam shall sing “Deutschland über Alles” —with tear s in his voice The American people are becoming aiervously aware of this voice-machine. Many influential journals are beginning to ask Wilson whether the German shoutcylinder is going to destroy American nationalism and ideals. Just at pre sent there are signs that the Academic President may succumb to the clamour of the shout-machine,unless the national spirit forces him into kicking Dernburg over the sky-line. THE LITTLE MOTHER. They are two little Parisians—a brother and sister —and they are warorphans. Their mother died just before the cataclysm, and their father was mobilised in the first days. Since then they have been quite alone. Fortunately, she is a managing little lady—almost grown-up she calls herself, for she is thirteen. He is eleven, quite a child, and in need, she feels, of her mothering. They have a franc a day;—ten sous each—between them. And on that they live, and sometimes laugh, and go to school. She gets up in the morning first, of course, just as her mother did—ad sees that her little man has something to eat before he goes to school.

Sometimes she herself has time t«; eat before she accompanies him. At school there is a canteen, fortunately, which solves the troublesome lunch problem. At three o’clock the "menage *’ returns home, and while "be’' sits down quietly to his lessons "she” prepares the evening meal of bread and soup.

They spend Sunday, their holiday, at the church recreation rooms, where there are any amount of interesting things to be done, but she alwajtj makes sure that the *‘pot-aa-feu’ s is simmering on the fire before they go out, so that there will be something hot ready on their return. And so they live quite happily, jn«t like gown-up peoplef—more happily than many grown-up people—lire from day to morrow, without worrying about rent, for the moratorium has drawn the sting from the landlords of the poor. Plucky little war-orphans!-' London Daily Telegraph’s Paris correspondent.