THE ARCHIVES

Private Alister Macnaughton, Canadians, is the first Atholl Dominion prisoner of war to return home. Private Macnaughton of Pitlochry fell into the hands of the Huns at Ypres, on April 24, 1915, when the Germans first used gas and our troops had no masks to protect themselves. After capture, the prisoners were handed over to Uhlans, by whom they were very roughly handled. For the last three years, Pte Macnaughton has been working in an iron foundry. President Johnson and President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz of Mexico settled an ancient border dispute between their two countries by setting off an explosion to change the course of the Rio Grande River. Together they set off an explosive charge which demolished a retaining dam and sent the waters of the border river rushing along a new watercourse named the Adolfo Lopez Mateos Channel after a former Mexican president. Rain and floods had shifted this part of the Rio Grande. Tayside Education department said that the apparently high number of so-called truancy cases from Dundee which were considered by a meeting of the authority’s school attendance subcommittee was “not exceptional.” Councillors met in private to deal with 12 school attendance default cases. Truancy is a problem on which the Government and education authorities are taking a tough stance. Headteachers classified 5% of pupils as persistent or casual truants.