CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 224, 4 January 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

RAIN BY WIRELESS. Some people in Great Britain are firmly convinced that the extensive use of wireless telegraphy lias been responsible for the unusually large number of wet (lavs experienced during the last two years Their belief is supported to some extent by Sir Oliver Lodge. In the course of a lecture at Birmingham University last month Sir Oliver stated that if the nation would grant a sum of £IOO,OOO a year to the universities for purposes of experiment he would undertake to apply electricity not only to accelerating plant growth but to dispersing the fog from harbor stations and influencing weather as regarded clouds and rain. "I showed in ISB4 to the British Association at Montreal," he said, "that the discharge of electricity into smoky air, or air laden with metallic dust, would coagulate the particles, and so cause it to be deposited much more Tapidly than if it were not electrified." The famous scien. tist stated that a steam cloud blown from a boiler into a bell-jar could be eon. densed and turned into fine rain bv a discharge of electricity, llinuto particles of water came together under the influence of the current and formed drop's. The process went on in the neighborhood of thunder-clouds and caused the heavy rain usually associated with thunder. In countries where rain was desired, added 'Sir Oliver, it would seem, therefore, to be a practical plan to erect electric discharging stations, in order to persuade passing clouds to give down their burden of moisture. An excessive rainfall might be remedied by the placing of stations at points from which the penetration of clouds into the interior could be prevented. Sir Oliver Lodge expressed a hope that some person would be able to find the means to conduct experiments on a large scale and ascertain whether the artificial production of rain could be undertaken with any reasonable assurance of continued success.

NEW TYRANNY AND THE OLD. To-day there is only one burden in all the news that leaks out of Macedonia (writes H. N. Brailsfonl in the Manchester Guardian). Nothing is altered in the spirit of the government, and the only changes are that the new tyranny is much more efficient than the old, while the check of European supervision is removed. The Young Tui'ks are engaged in an attempt to create in a hurry an essentially artificial Ottoman unity. "But to unify the various races and religions of Turkey with a non-existent Ottoman patriotism as its spiritual bond and with Turkish as the language of its culture and its official life is at present a crudely chimerical conception. Patriotism in the European sense of the word is not an Eastern sentiment. The loyalty of creed takes its place, and levels distinctions at oiice of race anil nationality. Among the lloslems of Turkey only the Albanians and the Arabs have the sense for race and; nationality, and it makes tlum anti-Turkish . With a generation of tolerance, forbearance, and education the little group of Positivists and thinkers who control the Committee of Union and Progress might have bred among all races a seasoned sentiment of Imperial loyalty such ( as the French Canadians feel. But they have chosen to set to work to crush out the sectional loyalties that stood in their way. They are attempting to destroy the nationalities precisely as the Ma.tfiars do in Hungary, but without even. J"' ■soor excuse of a superior culture » Magyars can allege. A formation oij 1 , society,whether political or 1p.,,* Irol has a nationalist basis. Tj ft F%of the churches over their (>s which dates fruiti en . f >gh 'jk is gravely threatened. i ln ..to impose *mtuvies the Turks have, /,'lwkish M oß ' t «hcir speech even 011 'icuage of „ 0 f f] ir , Empire ,\s/ e imnon iutcro°illu ure and the medimkj.-JJ , .'Mpe. At

a moment when policy dictated the most tactful efforts to win the confidence and the gratitude of the non-Tui'kish races, they are attempting to force it upon all the higher schools not merely as a subject of study but as the medium of instruction. Nothing could display more dearly their obscurantist hostility to every alien culture than their attempt to force the Albanians to write the Tryan language with the Arabic script. The'old regime, when a race grew too strong, used .to thin it by massacre. The Young Turks are making war upon the Greeks by means of a boycott of their shipping and their commerce. The Bulgarians are being checked by the systematic planting of Mahometan colonies in the districts where they predominate. There are doubtless European parallels and precedents for all these things. Cromwell planted" in Ireland, and the next generation reaped rebellion.