GENERAL CABLES.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 May 1920, Page 5

GENERAL CABLES.

By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. The Chinese Cabinet declines direct negotiations with Japan regarding the (shantung peninsula settlement. Martial law has been proclaimed in Madrid, following the pillaging of bakeries and food stores by mobs. It is reported to the State Department of the United States that the Mexican bandit Villa is holding Georce Millar, a British citizen, under a ransom of 50,000 dollars.

Buenos Ayres states it is understood a decree will be issued prohibiting the exP or t°f wheat from the Argentine until the high domestic prices for flour and bread decline.

Captain Burton, who will be sailine roaster of the Shamrock IV, has arrived m. New York. He said Sir Thomas Lipton, would arrive at the end of the month, and would probably sail on the ehal enger during the race. He added he would carry a crew o£ one man for each 250 fset of canvas.

Colonel Haskell, the Allied High Commissioner in Armenia, has advteed the United States State Department that the Bolsheviks have control of Alexandropol, the Armenian railway centre and rail travel is completely tied up in Armenia. The Bolsheviks control the Baku oil supplies.

The airship R33 flew from Selby to London and back as a trial for' the American crew taking R3B to America. They carried a Sopwith camel aeroplane, with motors at full speed, and released it at. fifteen hundred feet to test the petrol tank, which is designed to prevent fire after crashing. The experiment was successful.

Sir Auckland Geddes (British Ambassador to the United States), speaking at the National Citizens' Educational Conference at Washington, said the war had shown that the success of a nation depended upon a nation's schools, but one country cannot copy the forms of machinery for education of another. British education was general rather than vocational.

The Daily Express publishes documents captured from an aeroplane flying to Russia, which was' forced to descend in Lettland. The signatures of the British Sovictists' address to Lenin include Sylvia Pankhurst. Another document alludes to the payment of money to British sympathisers, and another contains a request for pearls for France and sapphires for England.

A new Agricultural Bill was introduced in the House of Commons. Its main principles consist of guaranteed prices for wheat and oats to be fixed annually, and a minimum wage for farm laborers. The State, in return, is empowered to control cultivation in certain directions, with a view to makin" the best use of cultivable land. The Bill increases the security of farmers' tenure by awarding compensation for disturbance on a greatly increased scale.