GENERAL ITEMS.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 January 1916, Page 5

GENERAL ITEMS.

NOTES FROM THE TIMES. CLKRUiMEN WANT TO FIGHT. Times and Sydney Sun Services. Received Dee.' 3, 5.5 p.m. London, Jan. 2. ' A thousand clergymen are petitioning the Bishop of London to be allow ed to fight. AUSTRALIAN GOLD IN EGYPT. Financial papers state that the Au* tralasians left ibebind in Egypt one million sovereigns, and the populac* arc beginning now to feel the pinch of high prices and unemployment, and are reluctantly parting with the gold. • APPROACHING THE END. . The Telegraph's correspondent at Ne# York says that the Press are unanimous in predicting that Germany i» nearer defeat than Britain imagine*. American sources of information from the Central Powers prove that the reserves of food and men in Germany are almost ended, and when they' are exhausted she must cellaps'e. Wall Street is confieut that the Avar will be, ended in 1910. Bankers who are in constant touch with European capitals are most optimistic, and declare emphatically that Germany i a already beaten, despite her military successes. • All prominent American financiers say that commercially and economically Germany is tottering, and this is reflected by the extraordinary depreciation of currency. The necessities of life in Aus-tro-Germany have advanced seventy per cent, and are still rising alarmingly. (Financial authorities in America are firmly convinced that when the taxpavers were really hungry the war must collapse.

GERMAN LOSSES IN CHAMPAGNE. The National Review publishes the French General Staff's account of the battle in the Champagne. The Germans, at the beginning: of September, had seventy battalions on the Champagne front, anticipating an attack, and added twenty-nine, and after the battle they were compelled to send ninetythree fresh battalions. "We regard 150,000 men as under the estimate of the German losses," says the Review. "Germany lias used her resources .of men prodigally, and they are now extremely limited." GERMAN. PRESS ON COMPULSION. The Cologne Zeitung says that compulsion threatens to split the British Empire into domestic strife. The Frankfurter Xeitung says that the British acknowledge that their salvation lies only in the introduction of militarism which tlmy are trying to crush in Germany. THE ARCH-FIEND'S ILLNESS, The Kaiser contracted on the Russian ,front a number of virulent carbuncles, And the danger of blond poisoning it not removed. He is bedridden; his throat is inflated; and there is jjenei-al physical depression. New Year demonstrations at the palace were forbidden.