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i I 1 i t t I GENERAL NEWS NOTES OF THE DAY. Says a London dispatch of yesterday: Although i the British troops have been withdrawn from the e Suvla and Anza - districts of Callipoli peninsula, . it is lielievid here that operations in other sectors of ihal trout will be eouCmtied. An official statement regarding the withdrawal hints that the peiiey euderlying the Dardanelles operation expedition may be carried on in some other quarter of the near r east. The British continue to occupy the lip of the e peninsula at Seddtil Baltr. commanding the entrance ■ to the straits, where many British have declared a » i • ! i I ; . , I 1 • i I ; f . i 1 ; • • " r ■ J " P . % - ; - •, , f s s - v r ■ ■ " r n t e e i . 1 . ■ r I i e . new Gibraltar some day will arise. The position here is protected by a double line of ships and it is assumed this will be held. The official statement regarding the withdrawal of the troops and their new field of operations says: All the troops at Suvla and Anzac, together with their guns and stores, have been successfully transferred, with insignificant casualties, to another sphere of operations. Without the Turks being aware of the movement, a great army has been withdrawn from the Callipoli peninsula, although in the closest contact with the enemy. By this contraction of the front. ojK-rations at other points of the line will Ix; more effectively carried out. Sir Charles Monro gives great credit for this skillfully conducted transfer of forces to the generals commanding and the royal navy. The war office statement leaves the public to draw its own conclusions as to the destination of these Australasian and Inited Kingdom forces, which must be well over 100.000 strong. In giving the house of commons information of the withdrawal, as announced by the war office. Premier Asquith added that the transfer was made in pursuance of a decision reached by the cabinet some time ago. The Suvla Bay and Anzac Cove iiositions are on the north coast of Callipoli peninsula. An- zac Cove is alxiut sixteen miles from the tip. Suvla liay is five miles farther on. The United States has protested to Great Britain against interference with parcel post shipments be- tween this country and Sweden. Secretary Lan-i sing, who made the announcement, added that the • Swedish minister had complained to the state de-i partment of parcel post shipments being held up 1 by British warships on the high seas. Besides fil-i ing a protest the state department asked Great Britain for an explanation. In cases of similar complaints in the past the allies have contended i that abuses of foreign mails by German agencies in the Inited States made it necessary to examine certain classes of mail, particularly parcel post packages, in which rubber and other contraband I products were found. The postoffiee department an-, nouned that, to meet the Christmas demand, it had made persistent but unsuccessful efforts to re-[ establish parcel post service between the United , 1 States and Germany and Austria. The Boer general. Christian de Wet, one of the i leaders of the South African rebellion against the British government in 1914. who was convicted of 1 treason at Bolemfonteln, Union of South Africa, , last June, has been released from prison, as have US other high treason prisoners, says a dispatch » to Renters Telegram Company of London from i Johannesburg. The prisoners were permitted to go on payment of their fines, and on condition that 1 they abstain from participation in politics, that t they neither attend nor take part in public meet- - ings. and that they do not leave their districts j without ixrmissi.in. General de Wet was sentenced 1 to serve six years and to pay a fine of 0,000. According to the Nieuwe Rot tenia msche Courant, , the latest Prussian lists of losses contain 42.S25 » names, making the total Prussian losses 2.2S7.0S3. , says the Amsterdam corres]«»ndeut of Renters Tele- - gram Company. He continues: There are besides * 234 Saxonion. 315 Wuerttemburgian and 240 Ba-1 - varian lists, fifty from the navy and some lists of t German officers and n-on-comraisslned officers in the I Turkish army. The paper adds that the lists are published in the form of small newspapers and i comprise lO.tilO small printed pages. Printed as a book they would form 45,000 pages, or 1O0 volumes of 450 pages each. The Standard oil Company of New York has an-j - noitncid tie- advance of another cent a gallon in the price of gasoline, making the price now 21 cents a i gallon, a record-breaker. Predictions of a 25-cent t price are made. The reason given for this is the I decline in production of oil fields of Pennsylvania « and of wells in Oklahoma, with the closing of the I Russian and Galician supply in the face of an in-J - creased demand abroad because of gasolines use I in the war and an increased demand at home be-j - cause of the rapid increase in the number of automobiles. - Tong King Chong. president of the Chinese repuh-f . lie association at San Francisco, received a cable- gram from Shanghai Monday night which stated ] that five Chinese provinces had declared their in- dependence against the rule of Yuan Shi Kai. The P provinces were said to be Kwangtung. Kiangsi. Yuannan. Szcliuen and Kweichau. Mr. Tong said j he believed the action of the five provinces would J be followed by similar declarations from all parts s of China, bra sums, he said, had been pledged | bv California Chinese to finance a general revolu-. . tion. More mail was handled in Chicago Monday than II in any single day since the establishment of the e postoffiee. It was estimated that approximately S00 tons had passed through the office. Assistant Postmaster Hubbard complained to Chief of Police 1 Henley that auto mail trucks are being delayed by other traffic in the loop. A request was made that the trucks be given the right of way at street intersections, especially during the Christmas rush. • The chief said he would issue an order granting the request. The steamship Cambria, formerly owned by the e London nnd Northwestern Railway but recently in the service of the British admiralty, has been sunk in the F.nglish Channel, according to the Ti.rot.to Star. The news was contained In a cablegram from l Lieutenant Charles F. Hanner. a Toronto man. who was on board the vessel. The cable said: "Ship lost: am safe." The Cambria was believed to have been in the hospital service at the time of the i disaster. It is stated on competent German authority, says the Berlin Overseas News Agency, that since the i beginning "f the war to the end of Novemlxr 731 j enemy ships with a tonnage of 1.447.82S tons were destroyed. Of these .".6S with 1,079,492 tons were destroyed by submarines and ninety-three with i 94.709 Mtis by mines. Of the ships destroyed 624, . with 1.231.944 tons, were British, which means a l loss of 5.9 per cent of the total British tonnage. .
