CURRENT TOPICS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 51, 9 June 1910, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS

NlO MOKE MTLTTAKY BANDS. The bandsmen are unquiet because Tbe bandsmen are unquiet because K. of K. has declared that there are to be no more bands. A bi.sr lot of us here imagine that, the object of the new system" of soldiering i= to make our men fit. for tbe struesrle with the enemv which one dfiv will be, in a rich country like this, inevitable. Now the ba.nds never 20 info action with the regiments of the British Army—at all events not as musicians. Our theory is that there is no need for anv artificial rourare. Other armies are- of a different way of thinking: for evamnle. the Russians are dewribed bv .Sir lan Hamilton in his bonk on the Manohurian camnaism, as mrching to battle behind th<?ir havAs.

But we are forming our army on the British model. The British model does not light with brass instruments, nor does it attack the enemy with wind, either in bags or any other sort ol package. What, then, do we want with military bands to draw upon the already inadequate sum we have determined to spend on the military system? The French, it is true, abolished their Ibands and were compelled by popular clamor to reinstate them. But we are not forming our men on the French plan, any more than the Russian. Moreover, the French never use their bands in ibattle. They use them for popularising the army, which is based on universal service. Our Army is not based on universal service —far from it, we regret to say—and our Army does not want popularising. These laments simply mean that all things British are the object of the conservatism which is an essential feature of the British character. •

WICKED WASTE. The New Zeal'ander who kills ten pounds worth of timber and plants eighteen- j pennyworth of grass is probably not open to the conviction that he is one of the world's worst fools, but there are a, few persons in New Zealand who have made up their minds to demonstrate that trees are more than cows, and saplings as much as sheep. In Christchureh lately the afforestation of bare spaces—carefully deforested by ambitious grassgrowers—has received much attention, mainly because some enthusiasts have shown the utter fallacy of burning a shilling to plant a farthing. England has been deforested to a large extent, but the wicked waste seen in this Dominion can never be observed in the Old Country. The idea of falling and burning timber never occurred to any Englishman, Frenchman, Russian, Norwegian, Swede or Dane. Men have made fortunes gathering rags in all those countries, and naturally do not spurn the great gifts of nature. Many wealthy aristocrats are accused of wicked grinding of the poor and heinous waste ot money, but one fact quoted by a southern paper is useful as showing that even aristocrats have sometimes as much ordinary everyday sense as tolling farmers or trades' unionists. Here it is: "The Athol family in Scotland has become celebrated for their zeal in the cultivation of the larch, and had planted 14,000,000 young trees in the neighborhood of Blair Athol and Dunkeld, on a tract of 10,000 acres, which during the owners' lifetime had reached a value of six millions and a-half, while the thinnings and trimmings alone had been worth about £7 an acre, and the land had increased considerably in value." The man who insists that the native timber of New Zealand is one of t'lie neM crops the land can grow is generally voted a bore, but, now that the timber is fast disappearing, there have arisen men, the majority of whom are not New Zealanders, who are using their greatest endeavors to assure a future supply of our unapproachable trees, if the New Zealander really understood that for utility and beauty the trees of this country cannot be approached in the world, that the daily destruction of these trees is a sin, and that 1 the replacement of them by foreign vegetable foes is a crime, they would perhaps become as national in their support of the native article as they pretend to he in relation to their politics. If the Athol estate in Scotland can produce fortunes out of tree-planting on ten thousand acres, how many fortunes could New Zealand produce by growing trees on the eight million acres of Maori land that is at present engaged in growing noxious weeds? We merely asic "i'aranaki farmers to plant a few acres of timber for the sake of the phijdren by way of experiment.