Northern Weekly Gazette. — 1906-10-27 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

DRLIII3IOND.  25 22 27 23 21 17 26 30 17 14 30 25 22 18 2522  8 12 b-27 24 11 16 24 15 7 10  3 19 c-26 22  13 24 28 19  22 17 Draw.  (a) A weak move. (b) 27-23, 6-10, and Black wins. (c) 26-23 or 21-1? would lose. (d) 18-14 doses. (e) 22-18, 5-29, 32-28 draws If White plays 25-22 or 31-27 instead of 32-23 Black would win (f) 29-25, *42-16, and Black wins. (g) 6-2 loses. (h) 5-9 loses.  The siege that seems to epitomise all the horrors of such contests, forming, as it were, the last crowning scene of a. nation's tragedy, was the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, A.D. 70.. The city then contained, according to Tacitus, 600,000 inhabitants. Titus by the use of heavy battering-rams, and after about three weeks' varying fortune, retook the second wall, and then waited for famine to do its work within the city. The Jews began now to desert to the enemy in great numbers, and all these wretches the Romanis tortured and crucified before the walls (at one time 560 a day), 63 that, as Josephus says, "room was wanting for the cresees, and croeses wanting for the bodies." Famine, in the meantime, was ravaging the unhappy city. Whale families perished daily, and the, streets were strewn with dead bodies that no one cared to bury. Thieves plundered the half-deserted homes, and murdered any who showed signs of resistance, or who still lingered in the last agonies of starvation. The dead the Rem threw down from the walls into the valleys below. In the meantime the Rornau soldiers, abundantly supplied with cons from Syria, mocked the starving men on the walls by showing them food. Inside the city the seditious grew MOTO violent, the partisans of John and Simon murdering each other daily, and plundering the Temple of the sacred vessels. The famine within the city grew TRITSI3 and worse. The wretched people ate their shoes, belts, and even the leather thongs of their shields. Josephus even rnenticais a well-kale wit case of a woman of wealth from beyond Jordan who ate her own • child. The walls of the Temple were so massive as to resist the hattering-raans for six days, so Titus at last gave orders to burn down the gates. At last, after a desperate resistance, the Jews were driven into the inner court, and the Temple was set on fire and destroyed, in spite of all the efforts of Titus to save it. When the Jews first saw the flames spring up, Jceephus says they raised a great shout of despair, and 16,000 of the defenders perished in the fire. The The fmal reeistanee was very feeble, for the Jews were now utterly disheartened. The Romans, once masters of the wall, spread like a deluge over the city, slew all the Jews they met in the narrow lanes, and set fire to the houses. The Romans weary at last of slaying, Titus gave orders that no Jew„ unless found with arms in his hand, should be killed. But seine soldiers still went on butehering the old and infirm, and driving the youths and women into the court of the Temple. The males under seventeen were sent to the Egyptian mines; several thousands were given to provincial amphitheatree to fight with the gladiators and wild beasts; but before all could be sent away, 11,000 of them perished from famine. Altogether, in this cruel siege, there perished 1,100,000 Jews. This MOTrnou.s multitude is accounted for by the fact that when Titus sat down before Jerusalem, the city was full of people from all parts of Judea, come up to celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread.  In Ahyssinia it is considered a, crime to smoke. The law forbidding tobacco was at first intended to preve.nt priests from smoking in church, tint it was taken too literally, and nowadays even foreigners have to be careful not to be seen smoking.  Printed by ARTHUR PICKERaNG for the