Notla and Events.

Manawatu Herald, 8 January 1895, Page 3

Notla and Events.

The death of the late Mr John Walter, proprietor of the London Times, has brought forth many interesting facts. One of the greatest compliments paid to the power of the Times was paid by Sir Edward Bulwer«Lytton in the House of Commons — an honour which no other newspaper had to that date received in a legislative assembly. He said that "the e^iajbing newspaper press is an honour tjn*"B (country for the ability its <JR m PQfeitions, the integrity of the m^iWJho adorn it, the vast aiid various v#ffiormation it diffuses, and, makin&4air allowance for the beat of party spiriE and the temptations of anonymous power, for its general exemption from wilful calumny and personal slander ; and if I desired to leave to remote posterity some memorial of existing British civilisation, I would prefer, not our docks, not our railways, not our pubbuildings, not even the palace in which we hold our sittings ; I would prefer a file of the Times." There has scarcely been a more striking instance of the change in the position of women — it may be an advance—than the scene in the Chamberof the i London County Council last Friday (26th Oct.) when Mrs Ormiston Chant held everyone spellbound by her impassioned statement of the case against the Empire Music Hall, says an English paper. As everybody knows, she carried her point. An Englishman who was ordered to active service by the Dutch in their late Kaffir war, has given them anything but a pleasant character. He writes " I allowed myself to be commandeeied partly from policy, and partly because I wanted to see these Dutch on the warpath, and really I am glad I went. You could not believe the utter meanness and cowardice of the race. They shoot every Kaffir they see, man, woman, girl, or child. Yet the moment there is the least danger, the friendly Kaffirs are ordered forward and the Englishmen asked to volunteer. . . . You really cannot believe what sickening brutes these Dutch are in the war with natives. To give two examples. One day we flushed a party of Kaffirs at fifty yards in the mist. One fell. On coming up it was a girl, and a pretty one, about fifteen, shot mortally through the stomach. I saw nothing could be done and felt sick. One Dutchman said to me ".-Mr— our cartridges are too scarce to shoot her, can't we throw her dead with stones ?" Only last Thursday a man was shot dead carrying a child about four. Well, the .Yoorman of the Woodbush men on seeing the child made a friendly Kaffir stab it to death."