The Daily News TUESDAY, DECEMBER 11. CURRENT COMMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 81890, 11 December 1906, Page 2

The Daily News TUESDAY, DECEMBER 11. CURRENT COMMENT.

South Africa lately found it necessary to light the Zulus of Natal. At this end we are hardy in a position to say whether the outrages by the natives deserved punishment or wholesale slaughter, but the fact that the whole of the trouble was fomented by American negro missionaries, cannot for a moment be gainsaid. In faeL it is the civilised or half civilised nigger who always goes wrong, Mostly it is the Kanaka, the New (luinean and the coloured person generally, who has basked in the sun»hine of the missionaries' teaching who murders the missionary and his family. People who know the heathen in his blindness, also know that when he is taught to see he usually looks for civilised weapons, and it is therefore rather appalling to read this clause in the programme of the Transvaal National Association: "by making provision for the development of the native races, civilising them and adopting a just and consistent policy towards them." Ka ther quaint that the Natalians a few months ago did not adopt a "develop ing" policy in regard to the uncivilised Zulus, 'ihe danger to Africa and to all other countries where coloured races predominate or are likely to predominate is in civilising tlieni. Civilising them means an awakening of the physically splendid coloured men not wasted witli the diseases of civilisation, to their own power. It may he very altruistic of the Transvaal National Association to civilise the heathen. civilisation has curiously wiped out many subjugated races. It doesn't wipe out the Ethiopian, who is a highly emotional fanatical person, ,who wants to wipe out the white man and have a black king to rule the earth. ft is a hit of a problem tu decide whether the future kings of the earth will be black, brown or yeliow.

Ono may be pardoned for wondering what will"happen when all the roads, bridges public buildings etc., in New Zealand are Jinished, and if those politicians who are at present merely agent* for the supply of necessary or unnecessary public works will be succeeded by men of' another class, fcume of our Ministers out of session are like so many peregrinating bagmen, crying the beauties of the wares they luue to sell. It really would be interesting to have disclosed the travelling expenses of these .Ministers the cash value to the country of a ministerial stonelaving, and whether u lot of baiujnetting, for which a minister will travel at express speed and at the expense of the eul'tny to accomplish, couldn't be done liv "a professional and cheaper banquetter. it is pathetically eviucni ill the all too formal and sometinies whining addresses read to visiting mini-deis that the reasons for the addresses and promises of loyalty are wrung out ol the presenters by the sense of fasora received or to conn-, in 110 other country do ministers act a> advance agents, and in no other country is the necessity less obvious. We are looking to Sir Joseph Ward, who already has knocked on the head some of the pernicious customs of the past, to deal this particular practice a death blow.

Canadian prosperity and Canadian prospects is a theme that has been absorbing much attention in the American i'ic>s, more particularly the commercial newspapers. lVople in America haxe the greatest lailh iu tiie splendid future of the Dominion, and tin: number of American ciiizens especially j'rom North and South .Dakota and Montana, who go across the border to live under tiie L'nion Jack increases rapidly. That Canada will be to the tweiUielh century what the Stales have been to the nineteenth is a proposition which most enlightened Americans believe will be vcriiicd, The report of the chairman of the Canadian Oram! Trunk J'acilie Kailroad, which is penetrating the Canadian North-West, and feeling its way over the mountains to a great new seaport on the Bacitic, is attracting extraordinary attention. The new line, which the chairman depicts in glowing colours, will do splendid work iu developing the great wheat region of Manitoba." Assiinibuia, and Alberla, those vast grainerioa, :-niiieieut to sup ply the requirements of the emire British Empire, us well as developing tj*e mineral legion between it and Hie coast. There is to be a great and deep harbour at Brince Bnpert, from which the Oriental trade with Canada is to be built up. There a model town is to be built, and by way of that great ocupurt the distance iieon New Vork to lokohama will be I.'jOO miles less than via San FianciM-o. Americans clearly recognise tsays a correspondentMhut the new line, which is JargeIv liiuuiced in London, must tend to make Canada still more independent commercially of the United States, and that prospect is no.t particularly attractive. ' It b equally recognised, however, that Canada, ' in spending' hugh sums to keep her railway system apart from that of the States, and in reaching out to distant lands for cIom; ! trade keen compelled to ■ that course by th- short-sighted AmorTea u policy which divcrteu to the Dominion lailvay enterprise and business which might. i;avc been retained, it is contended, by American railways, That, to quote commercial experts in New \ori\. represents "the greatest American mistake."