THINGS THAT HAPPEN IN WAR TIME.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XL, Issue 12540, 11 May 1915, Page 2

THINGS THAT HAPPEN IN WAR TIME.

The Russian Duma has already lost 22 of its members on the battlefield.

The Mayor of Dresden has resigned ■his office owing to ■'misgivings as to the wisdom of continuing the war." A flask of ether was found in the knapsack of each of 23 Germans taken prisoners by the French at Vauquois. Three .well-known playwrights are serving with distinction at the front —Mr \V. .Somerset Maugham, Mr Hubert Henry Davies, and Mr Harold Chapin. The Middlesbrough Corporation have agreed to allow all men in uniform to have free use of the baths, on condition that they take their own towels and costumes.

"No bread to-day" is the hotjieo affixed to Cologne bakeries which confronts intending purchasers on an average three days a week, says the Kolnische Zeitung. Too old to join the colors himself. Mr James Barnett, of Pendleton, has given his pot dog, a magnificent Great Dane, to the 19th Lancashire Fusiliers as a mascot. ■

Private Ellis, of the Yorkshire Regiment, has spent four birthdays on the battlefield —one in the Khyber Pass, two in South Africa, and one, a- few days ago, "somewhere in France." The Berlin City Council, after deciding -.. to increase the official price of cakes and pastry to such an amount as to render the purchase of these articles prohibitive to the general population, has now forbidden their sale altogether.

The German newspapers indicate I that soldiers at the front who have been [accustomed to farm work are freel.y receiving permission to go back to.'Gert many and engage in the usual agricultural operations of the spring season. Franz Latuscher, aged five, and Karl Homme, aged six, were found unconscious in the commissariat van of a German military train, where they had concealed themselves, as they subsequently stated, in order to go to the' front and • see the- fighting. In her frantic fear of espionage, Germany has issued a proclamation intimating that letters- will only be transmitted to Denmark if written in the German language. The ordinance has created an extremely bad impression among the Danes.

[ -Though soldiers' wives and dependants are now better off, in many cases, than they have ever been before, there has been a remarkable recrudescence of "shop clubs" in certain country districts, with the result that mueiv unnecessary expenditure .is - being incurred, especially among young girls.' The War Prisoners' Gazette; a journal printed in French, is now being circulated in the internment camps in Germany. The sheet is filled, with stories of the hatred of the English for the Irish, of their contempt of the French, and of equally imaginary

mutinies among' the Allied troops. Protesting against the continued refusal of the' Censor to permit the transmission of letters written from the front to parents who know no English, the father of four Welsh soldiers says: "If Welsh blood is good enough to be spilt on the plans of Flanders, the Welsh language is good enough to bo written." Captain J. W. Bell, the hero of the Thordis, has been presented with a gold watch by the owners in recognition of his achievement. Captain Bell has received a letter.from the Admiralty asking -him to name, a day when it will be convenient for him to be personally decorated with the Distinguished Service Cross by the. King. A Welsh miner, James Bawden, of Glyncorrwg, who re-enlisted in his old regiment, the 2nd Dovons, has just died of wounds received at the front. The village .schoolmaster broke the news to Private Bawden's son, a boy of 10. "When lam old enough, sir," said the child, with tears streaming down his cheeks, "I will be a soldier, too."

Mrs Woods, the wife of the vicar of Bradford, referring to her experience with the woman patrols of that city, says:—:"After walking in the streets for two or three weeks we have to admit that the soldiers' behaviour is all that it ought to be. It is the girls who are the problem. At present their patriotism seems to consist in runningafter soldiers."

Several Belgian refugees have found employment in the Harrogate hotels, which up' to the outbreak of the war were numerously staffed with German waiters. The Belgians are doing exceedingly well. Some are working in the kitchens, while a few have been supplied with dress-suits by t-he_ local committee, and have been transformed into splendid waiters. Among some German trophies brought home by Lanco-Corporal Hardy, of the Coldstream Guards, who is now lying seriously wounded in a Manchester hospital, is a large linen handkerchief on which is printed a maj, of France and Belgium, showing the cities and towns, with forts marked by red clots, roads, rivers, railways, etc. •In one corner was piinted the words: vom Deutseh-Franzosisclien Kreigschauplatz. 1914."