THE OUTSIDE WORLD

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8355, 15 February 1913, Page 9

THE OUTSIDE WORLD

"I’ll put a girdle round about the earth In forty minutes.” The annual budget of the French Prefecture of Police in Pans has qust been published. It is. full of which .throw considerable light en tho development of traffic in city. In 1902 there nen.TO.JOO carriages in the city. In 1909 (the last year for which figures arc given) the number increased to 32,000. Besides this there are 29,000 hand-carts and 50,000 other four-wheeled carts. At the present moment there are, moreover, 270,000 bicycles in Pans, which brings the number of wheeled vehicles circulating in Paris up to a total or 430,000. “ Since mothamcal traction, continues the report, “ is stealily taking the place of animal traction, the greater part of the vehicles cover three limes the space formirly travelled. This is a sufficient reason for the acuteness of the traffic problem at present in Paris. The vast increase is even more clearly seen in tb© statistics for travellers. “ The number of persons carried in vehicles of all kinds was, in 1870, 138 millions; in 1880, 270 millions; in 1890, 323, millions; and doubled in the ten yeais from 18901900, when it reached 636 millions. In 1910 the figure was 942 millions. Thus the increase during the last forty years is one of 700 per cent.” A considerable portion of the increase may be explained by the introduction of the electric underground systems (Metropolitan, Nord-Sud); for the Metropolitan, which carried only sixteen millions passengers in 1900, carried 252 millions in 1909. But the net traffic increase remains cufficientJy remarkable.

Mr Stewart E. White, in an article in “Harper’s Magazine” for January, tells that there are no horses or draft animals in Mombasa: the fly is too deadly. Therefore all hauling is done bv hand. The tiny tracks of the unique street-car system run everywhere anyone would wish to go, branching off even into private grounds and to the very front doors of bungalows situated far out of town. Each resident owns his own street-car, just as elsewhere a man has his own carriage. There are, of course, public cars also, each with its pairs of .boys to push it, and also a number of rather decrepit rickshaws. As a natural corollary to the_ passenger traffic, the freighting also is handled by the blacks on largo, flat trucks with short guiding-poles. The men pusn from behind, slowly and steadily and patiently and unwaveringly, the most tremendous loads. Particularly appropriate in view of the election of _ a new President of the French Republic is an article in _ the “World’s Work” for January, entitled “The New France.” The France of to-day, we are assured, differs as much from the France of the latter' part of the nineteenth' century as the Island Empire differs from the Japan of fifty years ago. The sparkling speculations of the fin de sieole, the philosophical attitudinising, the drifting of society it knew not whither, the indifference as to the future crystallised in the apothegm, “After na the Deluge”; the ever-present introspection which, corroded activity; and from 1871 to 1890 the shackling approhensiveness which prevents nations as'well as individuals from reaching their full development—all these, says the writer, have disappeared. Gone, too, the article goes on to assert, is that boastful scepticism which ridiculed all that was elevating in ethics and all that was lovable in religion. For the expression of Louis XIV., “I am the State,” is at last substituted, "We are the State,” and that from' the mouths of the whole people. A nation more confident of herself does not exist, and the view of every Frenchman is that so well expressed by tlie former Prime Minister Clemenceau when he called France the Garden spot of this planet. “At last the words, Liberty, Fraternity, Equality have a meaning. France has evolved into an authoritative nation, h nation of order and the rights of the race. Even minor domestic troubles like May Day terror? and the Apache difficulties have disappeared.” The State lottery as a means _ for swelling the national revenue is still to a great extent in favour,upon tho Continent; and tho system dies hard. In England it is now almost exactly one hundred years since two chosen_ Bluecoat boys were employed in their historic office of drawing the winning num. hers in the last British State lottery. In France, although the State lottery itself has been abandoned, there _ remain scattered over the country casinos whose revenues help to meet the municipal and national expenditure. Tip to the present these have been strictly limited in number. It has been left for M. Pourquery de Boisserin, a French deputy, to lay before the Chamber one ot the most extraordinary financial proposals yet made, which would have the effect of turning France into one vast national casino. The proposal is that all the capital towns of departments and districts, and all towns with a population exceeding 10,000, should be empowered to found a municipal casino, and the net receipts from these institutions should be subject to a tax on a sliding scale. A casino making less than £4OOO per annum profit would be subject to a tax of 5 per cent. A casino making between £4OOO and £12,000 profit would v in addition 10 per cent, on the profits above £4OOO. The rate increases until those caisnos making more Han £200,000 yearly pay 46 per cent, on the profits above that amount. There is little doubt that since gamh■rs and gambling are always with us > scheme probably would bring into 'nng an inexhaustible source_ of revenue. Monaco manages to live very comfortably upon the same system; but it is difficult to form any idea of the moral chaos and degeneration into which a nation living by this means would be plunged.