CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 146, 29 September 1910, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

THE WORRIED POLITICIAN. In case a misguided public should believe that politicians do nothing ibut talk, the fact that Mr. has to answer one hundred and fiftv letters weekly may cause them to alter this view. Some time ago it was suggested that Mr. Massey should be regarded as a servant of State and ibe paid £IOOO a war and permitted the privilege of a private secretary or two, who, as in the case of private secretaries to Ministers, would have a wide view and would be aible to expatiate on those subjects of which the chief was most uninformed. The average politician who has 'been solely engaged in trade up to the tumultuous day on which he becomes M.P., hardly knows what he is undertaking in the way of work. Naturally and necessarily, in a country where the State is' the father of the people, he is expected to be a cyclopaedia of knowledge, a philanthropist of the deepest dye, and the sturdy advocate of every one of his constituents. It is only necessary to recall the experiences of a one-time member to point the moral. This member asserted that apart from admiring young New Zealand in its bib and' "pinny," he was on various occasions asked to shoe a settler's horse, to prescribe for a sick working-bullock, to write a love letter for a young settler, to act as legal adviser, to read the burial service over the body of a man found dead in 'the bush, and to generally show cause why he should be a statesman. The torrent of correspondence that falls into ithe box of the average member should convince the person who sees dt that the member has to be. exceptionally busy during session time. He j knows that a slip in answering any. letter f'of the bunch may be visited with the displeasure (and loss of votes) of one or A whole group of his constituents, so tihat correspondence is a good exercise for him, even if it does not pay him. The politician is. not only expected to stet right every g'rievance that may crop up among his constituents, but he ft expected to take innumerable slabs of

advice as to how lia should run the country. One lias never met a politician yet who has not wearily remarked that there was '"nothing in politics," and very few who have not gone liaek to the House if they have had a chance. From which evidence one comes to the conclusion that as an educational means the House has its advantages, and has supplied a need to quite a number of our most prominent politicians.

WHERE THE DEAD MEN LIE. The foody of a Russian man has been found in the Darling river, N.S.W., and the police have caught the supposed murderer. The mysteries of this river arc many and the stories told of it romantic and gruesome. In times of drought the river dries down to a series of waterholes that may be crossed by jumping with vigor. In times of flood the country is inundated for miles on either side of the river, and the coach driver or bushman who travels that way may need to be a sailor as well as a back-country man. The country on each side of the Lower Darling is comparatively dreary, the river fringed with great grey gums, fading into box flats and so into the great expanse of ring-barked trees and undulating plains, very often bare as the palm of a hand or covered with dry native grass or uninviting saltbush. Here, remote from the whirling world, the outcast is to be found. The shearer in the Darling sheds mysteriously informs a newcomer that a man becomes "dilly" after being seven years on the river. It is a place of great spaces and of the infinite solitude of awful distances. It is here that the weird traveller, with a necklace of shear blades slung round his neck, demands sustenance from the station cook; it is here tfllat the weary police trooper looks eager-eyed for the escaped murderer; here that the outcasts of all Europe steal into the 'bush and try to forget and to remain unseen. It is here, too, that iniquitous shanty-keepers lie in wait for shearers and their cheques, and it is at the back of the shanties that there are private cemeteries where lie men who are shot, poisoned, hunted to death or the victims of self-destruction. Here, too, the wanderer finds the lonely shepherd or 'boundary-rider talking' wildly to himself—his reason departed through long solitude,-a friend only to his dogs and hating his kind. It is in the Darling country where the passing swagman may stir up a body when dipping his evening billy in the dam or indulging himself with si necessary hath in a sluggish billabong. It is here that the shearing riots occurred, where the police and shearers met in conflict and 'fought till many died. It was here that angry men fired millions of acres of grass and burnt out many squatters and their homes and woolsheds.

"Deep in the yellow, flowing river, that's where the dead men lie, Under its banks where the shadows quiver, that's where the dead men lie, While -the platypus twists and doubles, leaving a train of tiny bubbles, Rid at last of their earthly troubles, That's where the dead men lie." The man who wrote that had lived on the Darling, and he hanged himself to the tie-beam of a hut with a stockwhip. i. - ~ THE POPULATION PROBLEM. Dr. Thomas Hodgkin, a distinguished historian and member of the Society of .Friends, after spending a year in Australia, has returned' to London satisfied that Australia's crying need is for British emigration. Writing in the Contemporary Review, he says that Australia is an "Alibut Europe," meaning that with Russia subtracted the two continents are practically of equal size. But Australia has only a population of one andi a-half persons to the square mile, while Belgium has 036; the British Isles 363, and even the enormous United States can boast of 28. The writer, therefore, argues that what Australia wants is men. "It may be asked, he says, "what does it matter if we are rather a long time about developing our country? Perhaps in three or. four centuries we shall be as thickly populated as the United States with its eighty-four millions of people. But it is questionable whether we shall have these three or four centuries of undisturbed, peaceful development. We have taken possession of this magnificent 'No Man's Land,' and must prove our right by effective occupation. By the rough justice of the mining camp we shall not be allowed to squat there for ever. If we cannot, or will not, work the claim more-efficiently, we shall have to give place to those who will." Dr. Hodgkin does not pretend to say whether "the challenge will come' from Asia or from Europe, or even from America. But ihe points out that at the present rate of progress the population of Australia in the middle of the twentieth century, will amount to only something under eight millions,- or an., average of fewer .than three people to the square mile. "Can we hope," he adds, "that if the conditions of the- problerfi remain unaltered our descendants will be permitted to reach' the year 1950 without the' of our calculations revealing its terrible personality ? It is admitted that Australia offers a. great temptation to the Powers, owing ,to its 'being a feebly-garri-soned outpost of the Empire, but prognostications of this sort seem to lose count of the fact that population in the newer worlds increases much more rapidly as civilisation progresses.