MISCELLANEOUS.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 321, 1 December 1888, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

, The Germans appear to' have /.treated Malietoa, the deported King of*Samqa, with every consideration, and although this by no means justifies their arbitrary and oppressive action in carrying him into exile,, it' shows that, they are not quite so black as, they have been painted. Whilst ,on ' board the flagship off Apia Malietoa shared the apartments of the commodore, and as long as he remained in the keeping of imperial naval j officers Ke appears to have bee"n treated with much" of t|he respect' duetto -a real king.»- His chiefs messed with the deck officer?, and they persist in saying that they were quite as happy as the circumstances would permit of. The ex-king and chiefs were fir&fc taken to Cameron, a email German I settlement on the West Coast of Africa. There are no horses' there, no wheeled vehicles and nothing better than bush tracks to answer the purpose of roads. ' But they have the nucleus of society at Cameron in the shape of a Government House, and there the -King and his chiefs were lodged, with servants to wait upon them, and nobody- but King Leo Africandus to proscribe their wanderings. During the five or six months Malieboa spent there he appears to have enjoyed all the sovereign privileges of his former &tate, with the additional advantages of unendangered security ; and the chiefs tell of the fun they had looking on whilst the " niggers " 'kept up a perpetual warfare amongst the tribes in the neighbourhood of Government House. But the climate at Cameron was even hotter than the temper of the natives; and in spite of the occasional diversions that proved such a relief to the monotony of life in exile ennui came at last, and after a dull though comfortable residence on the western coast of Africa the ex-royal party was heartily glad to proceed to Germany, They were only one day in Germany when they were again taken on board a steamer. Until this vessel arrived at Aden ex-King Malietoa believed that he was on his way back to his own picturesque home in the islands. So did his friends and probably the officers of the ship as well. But at Aden the pleasant delusion was shattered by a peremptory order from Berlin. The chiefs were at liberty to do what they pleased, but the" King was to remove, his quarters to a German man-of-war, and thus continue his aimless cruise. Presum- - able this was a consequence of the recent disturbances in Samoa, the Imperial Government desiring to insist upon Malietoa's absence until the Apian troubles were settled, with some prospect of continued peace. A correspondent gives the following account of the last engagement at Samoa :—: — On Tuesday morning the main body of Mataafa's army left their camp at Matauta and proceeded to Loulac, a village close to Luatuanuu, the seat of Tamasese's government. On Wednesday some of the Tuamasaga men attacked the King's fort at Luatuanuu, and were repulsed with a loss of of 13 men killed and between 20 and 30 wounded, some of whom have since died from the effects of their wounds. The firing on both sides was of a heavy description, but the splendid fortifications at Luatuanuu gave the King's soldiers a great advantage ovei their moi'e numerous opponents. Mataafa's men fought pluckily, however and the Manono warriors gob a cannon in position off the point at Laulii, which proved of great service to their side, as it kept the forces of Tamasese back irom using their big guns on Mataafa's headquarters. The meu-of-war belonging to Tamasese blazed away at their opponents on short;, but an account of the heavy swell in the bay their .shooting " was not productive of much damage. The shooting of the 'Manono men, on the other hand, being on shore, was much more effecti\e. The two Samoan chiefs who accompanied King Malietoa into his enforced exile and remained by the Samoan monarch until the latter was removed . at Aden to a German war-ship for an unknown destination were interviewed by a reporter of the Sydney "Telegraph," to whom they gave an account of their adventures since leaving Samoa. One of them, Aisake, is a venerable man who speaks broken English, and he emphatically contradicted the assertion that they had been ill-treated on board the steamer Nurnberg. Although on their way back to Samoa, these chiefs were by no means sanguine of that country's troubles being speedily ended. Aisake was asked :—: — (< Would you like Malietoa to be king of Samoa again ?" " No, no " (shaking his head and suggestively tapping the bald place above his forehead) ; ' ' Malietoa has no brains.'" "No brains ! Poor Malietoa. What about Tamasese V" "Tamasese no brain 3 either. My people cannot be kings any more. Big countries must rule Samoa, then all will be well." After a run of seven weeks the London " Daily Telegraph " withdrew the popular piece de rc^htance for the recess — the discussion on the marriage question — and allowed Mrs Mona Caird to sum up the controversy which she began. The " Daily Telegraph " in a leader say& that it has "received more than 27,000 communications on the subject, only a small proportion of which it printed. It sums up the conrroversy ttius : — ' ' The consensus of the letters is overwhelmingly ptrong against early marriages. Our law ought, we think, to forbid marriages to young men under twenty-one and to young women under nineteen. Among the working classes especially this would produce, we believe, an excellent effect. Then, also, it is deai' to our mind that the law of divorce must be enlarged to permit dissolution of marriage for desertion, tor lunacy, for confirmed inebriety, for conviction of disgraceful crimes, as likewise for established incotnpatability of temper and temperament, such as a just and prudent judge would admit to be inadequate. That the marriage service as it stands calls also for alteration has been abundantly demonstrated by these letters ; and the sooner His Grace the Primate finishes with the Abhanasian Creed and turns his attention to the passages in that service which shock young minds and disconceit older ones — the better." Several Paris papers publish articles on the population of France. Their tone is uniformly that of discouragement. "France" shows that ' the increase of births over deaths is due entirely to a diminished death rate. Men are living to, be older, but this cause of increase is from its very nature temporary. The tendency of the population is to decline, while England and Germany grow at the rate of 500, 000 ' a year. The Anglo-Saxon race, which was much inferior in point of number to the French' race, is now two or three times as numerous. Within a century for one man speaking French there will be teii speaking English. The 1 " France" passes i in review all the proposed remedies, and rejects <them as visionary-or impracticable, a'nid'cdncludes that the bnly one is to revive the 'old spirit of the' nation. This, however, cannot be done by decree. • The " Univers "- says : — " We can fix- the day, not a distant" day, 1 when by the perennial falling off Jof births I- France will have lost one-third of its population. The result is fatal. Within' half >a century France will have- fallen "below loaly i and Spain to the rank of a second-rate ! power. There is no denying the figures. ; If this continues, in addition to other causes lof decadence, we are a lost nation. i} f «. t