Lyons in a fairly safe position for the present. The immediate threat io his authority has been tragically eliminated. Within the Government Party is a group of able younger men who have been pressing for more virile leadership than Mr. Lyons has been able to provide.
Their unofficial leader, and a possible candidate for the Prime Ministership, Mr, Hawker, was killed this week in the worst disaster in Australian aviation, when an airliner crashed into a hillside in a fog and eighteen passengers were burnt to death. The shock of Mr. Hawker's death seems*to have produced a temporary truce in the Government ranks, Severe Drought Results Victorian wheat farmers are facing one of the worst droughts in the history of the State. The past two winters have been exceptionally dry, and the failure of spring rains has resulted in the total loss of crops in many areas and a poor harvest in others, Until recently the drought extended over a large part of New South Wales. Sydney was threatened with failure of the- metropolitan water supply, and in the Riverina stock was dying on the dried up pastures. There splendid rains have relieved the position at the eleventh hour, but in the Victorian wheatlands rain now would be too late to be of any use.
Ju the Mallee and Wimmera farmers have turned stock on to feed on the blighted crops, which will not even provide seed for next year's sowing, and the Governmentfis hastily passing legislation to afford' relief to the farmers to prevent them being driven off their holdings. Over fi whole State, the rainfall tu's season is the lowest recorded since the de-vacating drought of 1914, jand the normally dry months of summer lie ahead.
Riu. d PRIE
Strange birds are not popular 4 among the feathered world, Thus, after years of captivity, a snowy headed eagle, a native of the Andes Mountains, escaped from its, cage at the Zoo at the Southend Kursaal recently. The bird flew. out over the sea and was attacked by a huge flock of scagulls, which forced it down into the sea. Attendants went out in a boat, but to their surprise the hi took off from the water and was attacked ' again. This time they forced it down on to a barge. It was captured and put in a sack. The eagle ad not flown for years and apparently its wings were too weak to hold it in the air, Nurses of the Queen Alexandra Imperial Nursing Service place a cross on the Field of Remem-prance immediately after its dedication by the Deqn of Westminster on Armistice Day.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.