CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 45, 2 June 1910, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

THE MONORAIL. The name of Louis Brennan will probably occupy the importance in future history given to those great men, George Stevenson (the inventor of the locomotive engine) and Marconi (the wizard of wireless telegraphy). Louis Brennan, a simple Irishman, whose sole interest is in his work, and who has hitherto not sought any aggrandisement from his lifework, has applied the principle of gyroscopy to passenger traffic. Some years ago Mr. Brennan showed by a practical demonstration that a model monorail car supplied with a gyroscope of his own invention could with absolute safety traverse a long line of rough leaden pipe run in zigzags across his own lawn. Mr. Brennan was a modest mechanical engineer, and possibly because he was modest he was unable to push his invention forward with the speed it deserved. Fanciful writers, understanding the revolution that might ensue if Brennan's monorail ousted the dual rail system of railway traffic, wrote articles showing that gyroscopic transit would immensely simplify the engineering difficulties now to be overcome. Capable Germans, enthused with the idea that a balanced car could obtain unheard-of speed on a single line, experimented with the idea, finding that the principle was so sound that it was possible to transfer passengers over a great distance with absolute safety. It is now proved beyond question that the monorail is the railway of the future. The reasons are: that cuttings and deviations are unnecessary; the monorail will follow the natural course of the country; the gyroscopic arrangement will ensure perfect steadiness in any car containing it; the wear and tear will be immensely minimised, and the safety of transit will be greatly enhanced. Fortunately, human intelligence is of a, higher order to-day than during those times when an inventor was fought for having ideas, and so the Indian Government, realising that gyroscopic single line railways would be perfectly applicable to its hilly and diffi-

cult country, subsidised Brennan and made it possible for him to continue his experiments. The War Office (generally credited with 'being occupied 1 by fools) also saw the immense advantages to be obtained by a cheap, safe, and rapid method of transit superseding the old methods, and so gave Brennan his opr portunity. The simple facts are that a gyroscopic car can be run across any kind of country on a single steel hawser; that risk is minimised; tliat speed is increased, and that cost is decreased by one-half. A great inventor has to face conditions that presume that the prevailing methods are perfect. George Stevenson had to insist that his locomotive engine was superior to the sixhorse coach, and Marconi had to show that his wireless method was not merely a scheme to extract money from the pockets of the public without reward. The monorail can be laid with incredible speed, and without the formation necessary with ordinary two-rail railways, and, this being so", the future railway traffic will in all probability be gyroscopic monorail traffic. To' illustrate what is possible with a monorail, it is only necessary to say that a cable might be run from New- Plymouth to Stratford on Friday and light gyroscopic cars run on Saturday. The only safeguard necessary is the proper support of the cable.

THE ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIAM'K. Britain's diplomacy is more far-seeing than the diplomacy of any other nation. If it were not so Britain could not maintain her place as the Mistress of the Seas and the Leader of the Nations. The diplomacy of Britain is less secret than that of any other nation. It is unBritish to carefully exclude other nations from an examination of Britain's methods. Britain welcomes examination and invites competition and defeat from the nation that takes up the gauntlet. We were struck a day or two ago 'by the ideas of a contemporary who was sufficiently un-British to assume that because Japan played a low-down game in respect to the Anglo-Japanese alliance, that this upstart nation was "outmanoeuvring" Britain. Some Britons have a (particularly bad habit of mistrusting John Bull, concluding, in a minority of instances, that the greatest commercial nation in the world is a born fool, who ought to learn his business from the wise men of Auckland or the seers of Wanganui. John Bull possiblyhad his reasons for a tacit agreement with Japan, and it is no small point of diplomacy to obtain the transitory friendship of a mushroom nation, whose collective head is "swelled" to the inordinate extent that Japan's head is swelled. It is shown that Japan has shut the door of trade to Britain. Theidea that John Bull will run to Thread-needle-street and there weep is ridiculous. If Japan did not exist, the Bank of England would still have its old gold reserve. The point to he remembered by alleged Britons is, not that Britain was honored by an alliance with Japan, but that Japan, which carefully imitated all the institutions of our country, was honored hy being permitted to ally itself to the greatest Power in Christendom. The peopje who persist in an endeavor to believe that any imitative heathen, by exercising animal cunning, can at a single blow "'beat" the greatest traders and the most subtle diplomatists in the world, is disloyal and silly. It matters so little to Britain what Japan does that she permits its officers to study in her universities and to attend her naval and military schools. Britain is the reason of Japan's progress, and might be the reason of the country's downfall. If Japan lets us know that she will be the dominating force in the Pacific in five years' time, she also reminds us that Britain is Mistress of the Seas still, and that ungrateful imitators are not necessarily conquerors in disguise. Also, that it is not a good thing for any Briton to constantly decry the common sense of the stock'from which he springs.