New Toulouse

Federal officials have broken up a plot of the I. W. W. at Detroit to tie up the Great Lakes commerce through strikes.

Under the prohibition law of West Virginia its inhabitants are restricted to the importation of one quart of liquor a month.

A bill to prohibit Sunday golfing in North Carolina failed to pass because some representatives insisted on exempting two popular hotel resorts.

While gangsters shoot each other upon the street and daylight robbers escape, the police of New York in one day arrested 400 persons for spitting in public.

The governor of Florida is a clergyman. He says he has been so busy since his election that he has not had time to “say my prayers at night or to read my Bible.”

Secretary of War Baker told the House Committee on Military Affairs that he broke many laws after Congress adjourned in order to speed up the manufacture of equipment for our new armies.

Heads of the labor unions have united in a huge protest to President Wilson against the adoption of national prohibition, assailing the Prohibitionists as “a fanatical and bigoted element of the population.”

Second-class mail, for transporting which some Congressmen propose to charge newspapers and other periodicals 4c a pound, is carries 438 miles by the Pennsylvania railroad every day for ¼c a pound.

Rear Admiral Chadwick says that foreign-born women in the United States have twice as many children as the native-born women and that women school teachers are causing young men to become effeminate.

(By Associated Press)

LONDON, Oct. 30—The war threatens soon to become a struggle between mere boys. The pace is said to be entirely too fast for the older men long to endure.

It is declared here that next year the Entente Allies will be facing boys of 17 in the German army.

General Sir Douglas Haig, commanding the British expeditionary forces, is said to have objected to the sending out of men of middle age. He wants young men of from 18 to 25. After the latter year it is said the fighting value of the human unit shows a rapid and steady decline.

The good soldier of today it seems must be of the age which excels in the more strenuous athletic games—the football player type. The older men have their place, but generally speaking it is said now to be in “the army behind the army”—the men back of the line, in the supply and transport divisions where the strain is not too great. These older men are too susceptible to trench diseases to be of great use on the firing line.

England already is registering boys born in 1899 preparatory to calling them up when they attain their eighteenth year.

The Great War was in full force, and the German High Command was puzzled after receiving a strange telegram:

GREETINGS FROM THE PARISH OF NEW TOULOUSE STOP
THIS IS BOUDREAUX AND THIBODEAUX STOP
WE HAVE DECIDED TO DECLARE WAR ON YOU STOP
WE SUGGEST YOU SURRENDER IMMEDIATELY STOP

The Germans, not knowing what to make of this, decided to have some fun, and replied:

GREETINGS FROM GERMAN HIGH COMMAND STOP
UNDERSTAND YOU INTEND TO DECLARE WAR STOP
BE ADVISED THE NAVY OF THE HIGH SEAS HAS MORE THAN 40 CAPITAL SHIPS AND A SECRET NUMBER OF U BOATS STOP
WE WILL NOT BE SURRENDERING AT THIS TIME STOP

Boudreaux and Thibodeaux were not impressed. They replied:

THIBODEAUXS COUSINS HAVE MORE PIROGUES THAN YOU HAVE U BOATS AND WE DONT KNOW WHAT CAPITAL SHIPS ARE BUT WE HAVE SOME BIGASS SHRIMP BOATS TO CHASE YOU FROM THE WATER STOP
DON’T FORGET TO WEAR YOUR LIFE PRESERVERS STOP

The Germans replied:

WE HAVE MORE THAN 100 FLYING MACHINES AND 15 ZEPPELINS STOP

The Cajuns replied:

WE HAVE GOOSE GUNS STOP
GAME WARDEN SAYS IT IS OK WITH HIM IF WE LOAD BUCKSHOT STOP

The Germans played their trump card:

LOOKING FORWARD TO MEETING YOU IN FIELD STOP
BE ADVISED WE HAVE MORE THAN 12 MILLION MEN IN THE FIELD STOP

At which time our heroes decided to quit:

WE WILL NOT BE GOING TO WAR AT THIS TIME STOP
SORRY TO BOTHER YOU STOP
THE WAR IS OFF STOP
THE SHERIFFS WIFE SAID THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL SHE WILL COOK FOR 12 MILLION PRISONERS OF WAR STOP