LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Taihape Daily Times, 27 December 1918, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

An ■officer just lade from Palestine tells some amusing stories of the capture (Of Jerusalem. When the troops entered they were received with enthusiasm by the Jews, who said they had waited three years for the day, and at the end of the procession they were trying to to do business with matches at Is a box|

A British officer who has had much to do with captured prisoners, writes to a friend that he interrogated one of the Huns just taken in an advance. “How long were you "up the line before you surrendered?” “Just half an hour, sir,” he replied, in perfect English. An interesting sidelight on German moral-

Thc body of a single woman named Jean Hunter, ia barmaid, at the Post Office Hotel, Wellington, who has been missing since Monday evening, was found on Wcdesnday 'hiOrning on the roof of premises near the hotel, whence she had evidently jumped or fallen. When last seen deceased complained of‘feeling ill, but refused to see a doctor.

Hon. G. W. Russell ’s scheme for a Government monopoly of the sale of benzine, tobacco, and certain other commodities is treated with scorn by a number of business men in Christchurch, where the scheme was first propounded. One of them described it to a reported as <£ fantastic nonsense, uttered with an eye to the coming general olcection.” The general opinion was that State trading in the past had had not tended to decrease the cost of living, and that when peace conditions returned and supplies became equal to the demand, competition would be quite keen enough to keep prices at a reasonable level so far as the consumer was concerned,

Notwithstanding the loss of parents and the destitution caused by the influenza, it is with pleasure we learn that the children who were afflicted did not go short of the toys and p’aythings usually forthcoming during Christmas. Rev. Mr McDonald got busy with a subscription list, and in a very short time had collected between £7 and £B, which were quickly translated into toys and delivered to those children bereft of parents or who were in destitute circumstances. Every child, as far as Mr McDonald could discover, received some article seasonable to Christmas, and thereby many a young heart was made glad. Mr McDonald states the money was subscribed most willingly, he not having had a single refusal.