The Carlisle independent., 1918-01-17

registered nurses in the country and about 100000 other graduate and prac- tical nurses.
 The equipment of no soldiers is com plete without emergency food rations. United States troops are supplied with three different parched maize-meal packets and three chocolates. The former is a revival of the maize-meal of the American Indians, on which they could exist for days while hunting or on the warpath.
 The "chain-shot" ration furnished Belgian, French and Teutonic soldiers is a winter food of compressed meat. There are more than a dozen varieties of compressed teas used by the Rus sian cornmissary. Compressed rice and maearoni is supplied Oriental forces. Oat bread in sausage form is used by some of the north British troops.
 A curious ration is the compressed fig coffee of the central powers, which may either be utilized for food as it is or converted into a coffeelike drink. Smoke-dried pears are used in the same armies. The Swiss soldier re- ceives an emergency ration of white chocolate, made entirely of cocoa but ter and sugar.
 An Italian army chocolate is in saul sage-length form, while their plum duff goes into beef membrane.
 Up to December 1, $29 S24. .655 had been paid cut to farmers on , per cent longtime loans, according to a report covering the operations of the F fed eral land banks. The total of loans approved, including those closed and those awaiting verlfcation of title and other formalities, is $105, ,136,529.
 The interest rate under the farm loan system has been increased from , to 512 per cent, to apply to all applica- tions which have not yet been ap proved.
 Borrowing is done through co-opera- tive farm-loan associations organized by farmers, each association being composed of ten or more farmer bOr- rowers and each group borrowing at least S20,0e0. Up to December 1 the farm loan board had chartered 1889 such cooperative associations.
 From the annual report of the secre- tary of the interior:
 Tn this department we have during the past year had a glimpse of the ex- banding romance of chemical study. We have found adventure in the search for the hidden secrets of petroleum, natural gas and coal tar, of coal smoke and the refuse from a hundred fur naces and smokestacks. We appear to have suddenly driven into a chemical age or perhaps it would be more ac- curate to say that we have suddenly realized that we are such an age. New explosives, new fertilizers, new sources of power. of food, new materials for construction and destruction, new conservatives of life, and new agencies for the sweeteni1g and wh0lesoming of Hfe-these are to the credit of the modern chemist, and as by-product of this war we are to have higher ap- preciation of this branch of science and our genius for discovery which has so greatly been applied to problems of mechanics will find in analytic and synthetic chemistry a field of oppor- unity subject to almost infinite ex- p&nsion."
 All wooden Christmas boxes for sol diers of the expedidonary forces re- ceived too late for shipment will be re- turned to the senders If return postage is mailed to the superintendent, rail- way mail service, New York, N. !.
 To aid in supplying suitable material with which to illustrate sermons, lee | lures and school work, the division of | pictures, committee on public informa- ton, Is preparing official stereepticon | slides showing Americas participation | In the war.
 | These slides will be made available soon for general use, at nominal | charge to cover actual cost.
 An embargo has been placed on the
 exportation of butter, except to nations | associated with the United States 1T war