CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 162, 18 October 1910, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

THE STRIKE IN FRANCE. j Our exuberant friends the French are rarely as serious as we, but, as an\ J shilling history will indicate, when they become stirred to the depths, they are very serious indeed. Although the classes in France are sharply divided and defined, there is much greater freedom and amity between folk in separated stations than elsewhere. This is one of the good effects of the French Revolution. Ihat amity can be as easily distorted in a republic as in a kingdom, and that master and man, each a citizen enjoying equal rights, may quarrel is shown in the railwaymen's strike. It is a little unusual, too, that Labor Premier Briand should be the one man who has been strong enough not to yield to men to whom he might have been almost pardoned for showing sympathy. It is in a country of small things almost impossible ,to conceive the confusion and inconvenience that a great railway strike may cause. But ifc is possible to conceive that the strike fomented by agitators found no sympathetic echo in the people of France. It may be taken as an axiom that the sympathy of the public with a mass of strikers is evidence that the strikers are right in striking. In France, outside the ranks of those on whom the agitator battens, there has been no sympathy. When the suspension of railway traffic came about and the men left their posts, the position of the men was being considered. The result of tlia negotiations between tho Government and the railway companies iflVigM have given the men what they required, but the professional agitator got in his fine work, which, as cmiit-l, 'gave the strikers, their wives and their families more worry and trouble than anybody else. Probably ,the period of industrial unrest that is at present world-wide may, like other evil visitations, eat itself out. It seems almost time that King Workingman called a truce. AUCKLAND SCORES.. Auckland is probably sorry now that it leased Admiralty House as a boarding establishment. As the British naval base in the South Pacific, the Queen City could almost do without Government House and the custom in loaves and fishes thereunto appertaining. Auckland never, could quite understand why Sydney should be the base, and 'it is extremely gratifying that neither New Plymouth, Waitara nor Wellington seeks to wrest the distinction from the Queen City. Presumably, the withdrawal of the base from Sydney is a result of the policy of Australia to have a navy of her own. In peace time after 191-2, as far as the Imperial Navy is concerned, Australia \yill evidently not exist. Possibly New Zealand statesmen were sound enough in their diplomacy when they'concluded that the British Navy or a part of it was still a handy thing to have around. Part of the Eastern fleet headquartered at Hongkong will be stationed in New Zealand and Auckland will be glorified by naval docks, naval repair depots, food and fuel stores, and so on. Auckland will gain socially and in trade and the local Chamber of Commerce will most likely advise the Admiral occasionally to demonstrate that (the 'N|avy belongs to Auckland. It seems that after all its white elephant, Calliope Dock, may have a sphere of usefulness, but one trembles to think what the Auckland Harbor Board will do if the Admiralty wrests control of the dock from its hands. One is afraid that .the Admiralty is not concerned with the wail of Sydney in its loss or with the party and parochial strife this side of the Tasman Sea. It is possible that visitors to Auckland from the South will not be debarred from gazing on the naval station and that they will have a mild share of the piece of navy John Bull is lending to the Harbor Board and the Chamber of Commerce. ■MORE FISH. A strong appeal for the frequent use ol fish as an article of diet was made by Sir James Crichton Browne at a conference held by the Sanitary Inspectors' Association in London. He said that tins eating of fish would do a great deal to check tho ravages of consumption. "There can be no question," he remarked, "that a substantial addition to the food of those living in primary poverty, and whose earnings are insufficient to obtain minimum amount necessary for the maintenance of full physical efficiency, would be protective against tuberculosis and contribute to a still further reduction in its prevalence. To render fish foods, rich in protein, accessible to the very poor would be to take another step, and a long one, towards the abolition of the great white plague, and we must", therefore, very earnestly wish success to every effort made to bring cheap fish food within the reach of our poorer classes, and to awaken them to the sense of its utility." Sir James added that he did not think men should be satisfied to depend on the natural harvest of tha sea. The aid of science should be invoked in order to establish marine fish farms and to increase the quantities of edible fish. The time would come, he said, when at sea, as already had been done on land, the human race would abandon the seas in favor of the ranch and the fold. There would be marine farms bordering the coasts of the civilised countries, and breeders would pride themselves upon their -prize turbot and pedigree cod." Sir James probably was peering very far into the future, as the methods that make it possible to stock a river would be absolutely inadequate when applied to the vast areas of the ocean, but there can be no doubt that the organisation of the fish trade on even less ambitious lines would be an enormous advantage to the whol® community.