CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 42, 30 May 1910, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

POWELKA. | Unquestionably the whole of the people j of New Zealand have been anxiously! waiting to know the verdict of the jury trying Powelka for the murder of Sergeant Maguire during the unexampled scare that took place in Palmeraon. The jury has decided that there was insufficient evidence to convict L'owelka of the shooting of the Sergeant. The case is a remarkable one in many respects, and, in the circumstances, few of the public will feel disposed to question the soundness of the jury's verdict. The fact that Powelka's life hung in the balance, and that his fate might have been decided by the weight of a bullet, makes it unusually dramatic. According to the evidence, Sergeant Maguire did not meet his death from a bullet from the revolver of Quartermain, while the jury hold that there is a doubt about Powelka being the cause of the Sergeant's death. Was some promiscuous shooter the cause of the fatality? It will probably never be known. The immense excitement that prevailed in Palmerston when Powelka was described as a desperate character was in the I first place highly farcical, but the larce was turned to tragedy when irresponsible persons were armed, and two good lives were lost. Under ordinary circumstances a man who was being- hunted, and against whom the public had been roused by indiscreet persons, would naturally arm himself, and he would •possibly be in a state of high nervous tension. Now that it has been decided that Powelka is guiltless of the death of a man, it is sincerely to he. hoped that the persons' responsible for magnifying the scarce will in future act with greater discrimination.

THE GOVERNOR'ON WORKERS'' DWELLINGS. Lord Plunket at Dunedin, speaking in appreciation of Lord Islington, who ?s to succeed him, said that he took a great interest in the housing of the workers and had paid muoh attention to model dwellings. Lord iPlunket, commenting, said that New Zealand needed more model workers' dwellings than the country now- possessed. Frankly, the ordinary everyday city worker's* dwelling in New Zealand has few equals in the world for rubbishy construction and inconvenience, and, to some extent, this state of things goes farther than the cities. Although the worker is supposed to be on a very superior footing in New Zealand, he certainly does not live in a superior house, and in each of the four centres there are slums that would be a disgrace to Sydney, Manchester, Liverpool or London. There is at present no redress. for although municipal authorities do sometimes get qualms of conscience and raze a. few ramshackle pest spots to the ground, there is no really well-organised plan of forcing speculators to build sound permanent residences. The fictitious value of urban and suburban lands 'has been created by speculators, and, as usual, the tenant has had to pay the piper. It may be apposed that the woful accommodation free and independent working men have to put up with in many New Zealand towns is represented by old buildings, ibut it is probable that during the past ten years more rubbish has been put into dwellings than at anv previous time. New Zealand is a wide, sparsely-settled land, and yet we 'have the anomaly in many towns of terraces of wretched shacks crowded on to tinv sections. The State talks much of the necessity of raising a large crop of healthy children, but by inaction permits the overcrowding of people to nip the crop in the bud. In many New Zealand towns ibuil'ding-inspection is of the crudest description. By-laws exist setting out width of passages, air-spaces, and ithe like, but are frequently more •honored in the breach than the observance. In all the cities it is a common circumstance for two, or even three, families of working people to inhabit the same house, in order that the eternal rent difficulty may be divided. Is it anv wonder that home life is infrequent? The worker is expected to be satisfied if for a heavy rent he is permitted to live in one of a series of ugly weatherboard boxes with a yard in the rear \m enough to fly a handkerchief in. There is no country in the world which permits "scamped" building work to the same extent as New Zealand, and the reason is, as usual, greed. Fortunately, the houses in many of the country towns of the Dominion are of a type very superior to those of the cities, and the municipalities of rising towns have the matter in their own hands to make or mar the dwellings in their jurisdiction.

ANGRY NTCARAGUANS. Niearaguans got Home Rule in 1821, and have not .known what to do with it ever since. The red-hot little republic, with its half million of people, has been in a state of revolution, plot, counterplot, sedition, disturbance and murder since 1865. A Nieara?uan would rather have war than breakfast. It is easy to understand how. dear to the Niearaguans a fight is when it is known that half the population are Indians, and the rest are a mixture of ncsroes and Spaniards, the i bad "half-breed" generally being something of a desperado, ready to cut anybody's throt for half a. dollar. Raciai and political disturbances arc the root of the eternal trouble in Nicaragua, and the position of president is not a healthy one. Like many other of tho mosquito republics in Aiiierim, this particular -one worries hard all the time to get a dictator appointed, and then to get him murdered. The dictator who can steal all the money in the Treasury and escape with his life generally retires to Europe, and gives the rest of his life to the pursuit of philanthropy. To the outside world the fate of Nicaragua does not seem important. If half-bred slays half-bred, and rebels use warships to attack the Government, tlie people who are not concerned will probably refuse to be interested. But it is remembered that an American company began a great canal, by war of the San Juan river and Lake Nicaragua in 1889, and although they abandoned it, the United States yet takes a fatherly interest in the nest of human hornets who are stinging each other, and so has taken a hand. Britain also has sent a gunboat and with the probability of further fighting the Nicaramuans should be perfectly happy. Perhaps benevolent interference bv means of combined action on the part of the United States and Britain will quell the turbulence of the Government and the rebels, and America may even,'

out of fatherly regard for thi> republicans, annex the little State, mid be on hand to use th:.- mailed fist when internal political strife leads to the division of the navy 'between (ioverninent and revolutionary.