The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 14. 1912 THE LOAN PROPOSALS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 42, 14 February 1912, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 14. 1912 THE LOAN PROPOSALS.

This evening His Worship the Mayor is to address a meeting of rate .payers jin tiny TptVh Hall, iir connection with the proposal, to raise a, loan of '£14,000 to acquire the business and undertakihg of the Stratford Electrical Supply Company. We hope to see the meeting very fully attended and also that Mr. Masters will he able to put the loan proposals -clearly ■before the ratepayers so that they may he in a position to fairly judge as to the merits of the scheme, and thus be able to vote with lea soli foi or against the Council’s borrowing proposals accordingly. We are-most strongly of opinion that such a 'service as the lighting of the town ought to be municipalised and that undo; judicious management the acquisition of such a service should be a relict rather than a burden to the ratepayers. But at the same time the interests of the ratepayers must be most fully safeguarded bofoyc any loyal body takes over a private concern, and it must bo beyond doubt that the price to lie paid is a fair and reasonable one for the property under offer. Mr Masters has doubtless assured himself that the bargain the Council proposes to make is an eminently satisfactory one for the town—he has too much common-sense and business acumen to take any other course, apart from the fact of his personal interests in Stratford and its progress. It remains, however, for him to place such facts and figures before his audience as will make the position as clear to every individual ratoupayer as it is tohimself, for the matter is too important to be entered upon lightly. ,

A PROTEST.

\ M. Pierre Loti, a noted French writer, has published in the .“Figaro’’ a passionate protest against the war in Tripoli. Ho recalls a sudden attack of a panther on a buffalo which he witnessed one night in an African thicket, and says:—“My l mind has brought into juxta-position this incident in the thicket and the ItaloTurkish war. The same brusquerie, the same agility of the assailant, the same inequality of arms, and the same heroic fury of defence. But now it is human beings! And Europe as always when people are being massacred, looks on calmly! What a derision all those big empty words “progress,”, “pacifism,” “conferences,” and “arbitration!”. M. Loti is aware that the 'French, too, had in flu l past a hand in such conquests. “Let us bow our heads!” he exclaims. It is not against the Italians only that he raises Ids protest, but against all of the so-called Christian peoples of Europe. “It is always we who are the biggest killer;;, it is we who with words of fraternity on our lips are every year inventing some new and more infernal explosive, we who put to lire and the sword for purposes of plunder the old African or Asiatic world and treat men of the brown or yellow race like cattle. Everywhere we are destroying with our mitrailleuses civilisations different from ours, which we despise without understanding them, simply because they are less practical, less utilitarian, and less heavily armed. And when wo have finished killing we bring our unbridled exploitation, our gangs of workmen, our large factories which are destructive of the small personal industries. ’ ■ ’ a, ugli-

ness, clrnnkeness, cupidity, and despair. ... In the eyes ol Europe the Moslems ol all countries' are but so much game which it is permissible to shoot, and lids shooting is generally successful, thanks to the superiority of Europe’s killing machines. In

i'rica the shooting business is wellnigh complete - from Zanzibar to Morocco, and in Persia two terrible hunters are finishing their work--mm in the konth and the other in the north.” M, Loti continues: ‘ A g ,- cat din ban been raised naturally in Italv about the Median atrocities, Granted. 1 know the inhaiiitauts of the desert. I certainly do not regard them ar very tender persons, and I deplore with all my heart the fate of the pool little soldiers who fell into their excited hands. But how I understand the fury of their hatred, their exasperated thirst for vengeance! All. those strangers who without tic. slightest provocation disembarked one sinister day like demons to cut down, to burn down, and to kill everybody! And the Italian atrocities? Alas, there was much of that too, and less excusable certainly. In those infamous days of October did they noi dare, in contravention of the law of nations and of the strict rules of the Hague Convention, to shoot down in a mass the Arabs merely because they wore suspected of having taken arms? Ami then they killed as if in amusement, and the bodies of several hundred inoffensive cultivators were thrown about the oasis, which became a human slaughter-house. And tin savage scenes which attended the exe cut ion of the kavass Marco! And the humble sailing-boats of the Arabs in the lied Sea, burnt -by the Italian warships on the pretext that they might perhaps he used for the transport of troops!” And >n concluding, after an eloquent appeal to the “poor, bountiful, and spruce Italy, the friend of our own nation,” Loti turns once more to the tragic spectacle in the African thicket, and recalls the

appearance of the hyaenas after the buffalo had been left hy the panther. The behaviour of “certain European States” in demanding at this juncture “compensations” from Turkey reminds him of those hyaenas. “Compensations for what ?” lie exclaims. “What has Turkey done to them, at any rate? Verily, I prefer the hyaenas of the thicket, who at least did not use any formulas.”