INTERESTING ITEMS.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 247, 8 July 1915, Page 2

INTERESTING ITEMS.

GERMANS SEIZE RED CROSS FUNDS. Tho "Matin"' (states that Gfmeral von Hissing, the German Governor of Belgium, wishing to secure the capital of th a Belgian Rod Cross Society, requested that society to co-operate iu the social works which the German authorities proposed in Belgium. On receiving a refusal the general at once issued a decree suppressing the society, and on April 14 confiscated the Red Cross funds at its headquarters in Brussels. i ! Discouraging recruiting. A fine of £3O was at Hereford inflicted on Stanley Georg e Powell, a local member of the Independent Labour party, for making statements pre. ucieed to recruiting at thy local May Fair. oPwell displayed a placard advising young men not to enlist before they had thought the matter v/elll ever. Il e told the Bench that his idea was that men should not b e bullied or rushed met enlisting. He was not personally ;ci|.tosed to recruiting. 13,000,000 RUSSIAN PRISONERS. The Austrian police at Trente, in order to impress th e inhabitants, caused large posters to be placarded announcing Austro-German ictories, and th e ''capture of 150,000 Russian prisoners." Some of the inhabitants have added the number of prisoners and guns which have been announced as captured sinc e the beginning of the j war by the Austrian authorities, with the result that the fantastic total is reached of 13,000;.000 prisoners and 3,600 guns. FIGHTING BY THE CLOCK. "This is a methodical war," writes an English soldier who served in several Indian campaigns and in the South African war, and who is now at th;* front near Ypres. "In South Africa," he explains, "wo rode gaily ■a.r in the morning, never knovriivs whether we would meet an enemy over '.h'» fire' hill or never see one all d?,y. Here we go to the fight by the G o'clock • -.er.ibes from VJamerunghe. \T Q knowthat we. shall be in the firing lin e at a certain hour and out of it at another. It is all cut and dried. The Germans are even mor e methodical. There is a town about two miles behind our line that they shell regularly every Sunday from 11 to 3 ana every Wednesday from 1 to 2.30, and at no other time. This ha?s gone on for months." HOSPITAL COINCIDENCE. Here is a strange coincidence arising out of the war. A young soldier Was severely wounded in the fighting somewhere in France. He lost consciousness, and when he regained it he was lying comfortably in a bed in a ward of a large hospital. His first words were: "Where am I?" The nurse tcld him that he was in London, that tiring the period of his, unconscousi;-.? il ll'.l b.-i*:- ■:•:.;; -;u>it< ;: ;\r-..r 1 th e Channel, and that his wound had been tended. He asked the name of the hospital, the number of the ward, the day of the week, and the hour. Th e nurse told -him. "I say, nurse, you might tell my dad I am here." The nurse looked at him thinking the poor lad was in a delirium. "All right, nurse, my dad's in the next ward now. You j know he is th G surgeon there, and j this is his visiting day." And so it j [ was. The father was in the next ward ] performing his work, thinking all the! time, that his son was in France. He did not even know that the boy was wounded, far less that >he was being tended a few yards away. WIRELESS WONDERS. An article in a weekly newspaper calls attention to the operations in the Dardanelles as illustrative of the value of wireless telegraphy. Were it not for th e wireless installations in the aircraft of the Allies this writer points out, the forcing of the Straits | might well be doomed to failure. Per- ! haps this is a trifle exaggerated, since

I \\'e know the Dardanelles were forced ' by a fleet under Sir John Duckworth long befor t wireless telegraphy was thought of, and the same principles upon which Sir John went to work in 1807 hold good still,although the means for giving: them effect are altogether different. What is true, however, is that the method of indirect fire could not bp adopted without wireless and nir-craft, and it is a matter for satisfaction that the problem of fitting aero.' ohi.nes with installations of a reliable character was solved in time. Four

••r five years Bgo it would not have been possible for our naval gunner? ' bom bard i?ig the forts in the Narrows B "rn t, «pot gfc which they could no* "•-"•> 'heir to be boot ns well !'• ? o-'mr s of !bfi afreet of their fliells ?' HioK-ih th ?y T -ore in direct te1eph0nic,■>.,„,«».,..,},.,„;.j. a ;,-?*]] a qtatfoti on t-h* 1 Afi regards the other naygi ~>"p-">Hr!-ng -f j-'-.o " s 'ox, 'ivirr'ar-s 1x35 ■• •'• r* T.! ? *"'st-??>cc on'y to or."