CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 168, 25 October 1910, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

A MAETYR. We have heard lately a good deal about a Royal Artillery subaltern by tlie name of Allan 'Sutor. He got into trouble for criticising Army administration while he belonged to it. It was learned per cable on Saturday last that S'utor had resigned his commission. Sutor was made adjutant of the Durham Artillery (presumably Territorial). The Army Council suddenly cancelled this appointment, and as it is strongly probable that Sutor is Hot a rich man—adjutancies being

erally given to wealthy officers —he objected. He wrote a little book, and what he said about British generals made it inevitable that he should leave the service. Said lie: "The Army system does nothing to discover good generals, but it does everything to preserve bad ones. A general to-day is a small, piece of cork with a feather sticking in it, gaily floating about on the surface of things. 1 ' Mr. Sutor, referring to one general who had been in the service for thirty years, said that no other institution than the Army would have tolerated him so long. It is, of course, not necessary that the colonial public should believe that a disappointed subaltern is a martyr, and there are indications that Mr. Sutor may do better as a journalist than as a soldier. ' There could be no better beginning for a journalist than this world-wide advertisement, and he will get a very large reading public if he sufficiently abuses the service he formerly belonged to. He would be helped, too, in the Home Country by the recent criticisms of General (ladke, of the Germany Amy, who has mentioned that nothing belonging to the British Army is any good except the material. There is some reason to believe, one having precedent for a guide, that, notwithstanding internal and external criticism, the poor old Army with its silly generals and no one who knows anything but subalterns will still blunder through to victory by the aid of the "material" that even Gadke does not despise. At least a "Kopeniek" incident has never happened in the history of the silly service that does not permit junior officers to criticise the administration.

SUGAR BEET. Much has been said and written lately about the growing of sugar beet in New Zealand, and there seems to be a probability of the Government spending money on its inauguration. Experiments in Britain have given occasion for discussion of the subject in this country, and both in England and New Zealand there has been much opposition. Recently the Pall Mall Gazette made the following remarks in this connection:—"English farmers must not be dazzled by the alluring, picture drawn for their entertainment by the British Association of the possible profits to be derived from sugar beet growing. It may be true that under favorable conditions as much as £0 10s an acre profit can be made in growing beet; but it is not certain that this rate of profit would be continuous. Beet js not a desirable crop from the landowner's point of view, for it is very exhausting to the soil, and is not adaptable to a rotation course of cultivation, since its returns nothing to the soil or to the farm. Of course, a farmer might substitute it for mangel, and abandon the feeding of bullocks; but in that case he would have no use for his straw and probably none for his oats. There is the further consideration that the present output of beet is being all sent abroad, so that if the home-grown beef trade is to be abolished there would be nothing to take its place. Our agricultural industry is in a fair way to prosperity just now, and without the aid of any new kinds of culture. If it can only get fair play in the home markets it will not nefed to fall back on so risky an experiment as the turning of the countryside into a sugar-farm."

ELECTRICITY FOR THE FARM. The use of electricity in agricultural operations was the subject of a lecture in the Royal Agricultural Hall in London recently by Mr. J. H. Priestly, lecturer in botany at 'Bristol University. Mr. stated that the first experiments in "electrical manuring" were made in l'So.O, when an ingenious person designed an apparatus that was to draw electricity from the atmosphere by means of a sort of lightning conductor. A later device was the spraying of plants with water charged with electricity. The operator stood upon a small insulated platform, mounted on wheels, and he was not immune from shocks as he distributed water from a can connected with a battery. Mr. Priestly said that there was no doubt that plants absorbed electricity if it were distributed in the air above them in the form of a slight discharge. Practical use of this fact was made bv an American Army officer who. in Californian field manoeuvres, carried a portable wireless receiving apparatus. He placed it against a tree, and was able to receive messages, the branches of the tree taking the place of the usual overhead wires. The lecturer referred to the experiments which have been conducted outside 'Bristol, where Mr. J. Xewman has applied electricity to about twenty acres of wheat land with notable success. By means of a small engine and a dynamo, in the absence of a local supply of electric current, a low tension current is generated and transmitted to the fields by wires. There it is converted into a high tension current by means of the induction coil, and is circulated above the p ants through a network of what looks like barbed wire. Each of the thousands of points provided becomes a distributing centre for the electricity. The »'enerai improvement in the growth of plants as a result of the treatment has been found to represent a 2!) per cent, increase in wheat, 18 per cent, in mangolds, and 25 per cent, in strawberries.