GENERAL ITEMS.

Taranaki Daily News, 15 January 1916, Page 5

GENERAL ITEMS.

NOTES FROM THE TIMES. ANXIETY FOR BAGDAD RESIDENTS. Times and Sydney Sun Services. Received Jan. 14, 5.0 p.m. London, Jan. 1.1. There is anxiety felt concerning the Britisli colony at Bagdad. Two men, nine women, and numerous children whom the Turks cast out were last seen travelling by primitive methods towards Mohul, a distance of three hundred mile?. American Consuls are everywhere inquiring inland.

THE ATTACK IX THE NEAR EAST. Mr. Hilaire Belloc declares that the German menace at Egypt and Suez is aimed entirely at Britain. It is intended to cut off the canal route to the East, compelling a considerable proportion of the Empire's sea-borne trade to go by the Cape route. They will possibly use half a million troops who are available in the Turkish Empire. Most of the units already in existence cannot be equipped before the summer, and are entirely dependent on Austro-Ger-man munitions, which are transported by rail and the river Danube to Bulgaria and thence to the Bosphorus. Tiiey are mainly for the Bagdad railway, but a new line has been constructed from the Holy Land to Beersheba for a distance- of 175 miles. A canal \i Beersheba is serving as the base of the force attacking Egypt, and large stores of munitions have already accumulated. From Beersheba to the frontier, on the Elandja line, a surveyed road lias been made.

CORRUPTION IN RUSSIA, Petrograd reports that the Government is stamping out bribery and speculation in food, and has arrested sixteen high-placed speculators at Moscow and Petrograd, and two councillors in Nijninovgorod, concerning flour and sugar. Further arrests arc pending.