The Daily News. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1911. THE MENACE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 230, 3 February 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1911. THE MENACE.

The elephant is stronger than a hundred men, but he can be controlled by one of them; the bullock does not revolt because a puny human being smites him with a whip; the human underdog stays where he is because he has got into the habit. There have been times in all countries and among all peoples when the underdog has objected to his thraldom, when in the glimmerings of an awakening mind he has come to feel the awful power that is in his hands. The whole of society the world over is an illustration of the domination of the powerful majority by the weakling minority. There is only one word that describes the awakening of the allpowerful people—revolution. There are folk who see in a possible recognition by the masses of their fearful strength greater danger than from the biggest guns of a foreign foe. Recently, Jerome K. Jerome, who sometimes abandons his humorous mission to speak gravely, commenting on Anatole France's epigram, "Society is based on the patience of the poor," remarked that it is not a safe foundation and it might crack. He said:

"We want to drain the morass of wretchedness on which it stands, to turn it into the dry land, where a man can walk without fear. We want to Temove the menace of that dumb mass of brutalised despair that stares at us out of the shadows with hungry eyes. We want to turn them into living, hopeful fellowmen, working with us for the future of the world. Yes, it is going to cost money. Somebody has got to pay for it. You can't have the luxury of a sound and healthy nation without paying for it. WHo is going to help? The man with £ 1000 a year and upwards, or the man with £1 a week? These reforms have got to come; we want a safe England, we want a decent England. Listen to their talk in the clubs, in the drawingrooms. It is a little different from what one hears on the platform. Oh, yes, there the working-man is a fellow-citizer —sons of the Empire—honest, laboring men. But behind the closed doors? They the canaille, the rabble. They never ought to have been allowed to vote. Education! What has it done for them? Spoilt them for their place—as servants. 'The British working man,' is he ever mentioned in their drawing-rooms without a sneer? Class hatred! I say, God help the rich if ever the day should come when the workers hate them onehundredth part as much as they hate the working-man, on whom they live. I have seen my share of other countries, and I say, without fear of contradiction, that in no country in the world —not even in Russia—is the gulf deeper between the rich and the poor wider, deeper, morei menacing than in England. And it was not the poor that dug it. There are splendid men jimon« the rich—splendid men and women. Rich men and women who, with humbleness and pitv, go down into that nether world of misery—give thoir lives to help it. Rich men and women who give noblv of their wealth and of their brain. Rich men and women who labor for, who support legislation that can only have the effect of lightening their own pockets. It is not safe to permit around you millions of people living on the verge of starvation, it is not safe for a privileged few, living in luxury, to be surrounded by a dumb mass of discontent and despair. It is not safe for the fqw. It may have been safe in the days before the printing press, it may have been safe in the days when no man could read or write—it may have been safe in the days of scattered hamlets, each dominated by the lord in his castle. It is not safe to-day." That the hunger, the worklessness, the poverty and discontent of the poor arc the ingredients of a smouldering volcano that may destroy monarchy, aristocracy and domination by minorities, history has demonstrated. Whether the folk who sleep peacefully on such a volcano are really applying themselves to the business of preventing eruption, one is unable to see. It is true enough and pitiful enough that the drone has ever despised the worker, and has never seen any reason why he should not eat nine-tenths of the honey he doesn't gather. It is true that the "man with the hoe" feebly protests sometimes, and is regarded as a person of the basest ingratitude. The drones are able to eat most of the honey as long as the workers in the hive remain unaware of their strength. Isolated politicians, occasional philanthropists, individual altruists sometimes arise and suggest that the poor have some right to be fed, to be clothed, and to be received into the brotherhood, but great though the work

of individuals may be, there is as yet no general or organised attempt—at least in Britain—to bridge the gulf between classes or to rule that every living human being has the right to a full stomach. Inevitably in considering a question fraught with such grim possibilities the splendid words of Charles Marldiam's "'Man with the Hoc" are remembered:—

Bowed with the weight of centuries he loans Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, The emptiness of ages in his face And on his back the burden of the world. Who made him dead to rapture and despair A thing that grieves not and that never hopes, Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox? Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw ? Whose was the hand that slanted hack this brow? Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?

0 masters, lords and rulers in all lands, How will the Future reckon with this Man ? How answer his brute question in that hour When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world ? How will it be with kingdoms and with kings— With those who shape him to the thing he is— When this dumb terror shall reply to Cod After the silence of the centuries?

CURRENT TOPICS A SERMON ON CLOTHES. God made man and man made clothes. Man made clothes because he was ashamed of Gods handiwork. A bare le<j is anathema to some modern men, but a heavy overcoat, a bell-topper and other paraphernalia of respectability are almost, holy in their eyes. A bather in a state of nature is a natural and beautiful thing to a normal being, but to the person with the squinting intellect he is shame in large letters. Modern morality is judged apparently not by what he is, but by what he or she wears. New Zealand is a young country, but in the matter of prudishness many of her citizens cannot be taught by the folk of the oldest nation on earth. In all seaport towns or in towns where it is possible to indulge in the finest of all exercisesswimming—there always arise folk whose obliquity ol vision leads them to quarrel with Nature. This sort of person sees the death of morals in a small naked boy, danger to the community m a bathing dress that does not suit his ideas of envelopment, and plain downright wickedness in "mixed" bathing. Because of these things the average youngster is brought up to believe that he himself is shameful, but that the clothes he wears are not. It could not. be expected that the Canterbury centre of the Royal Life-saving Society could escape the attention of the person who complained of tne "unblushing boldness" of some lady swimmers at the recent water carnival. The worst of it is that nobody seems to understand that such complainants themselves sin against decency by exhibiting a salacious interest more healthy swimmers would be unable to take. The dreadful allegation was made that lady competitors had "lain on the edge of the municipal baths to be gaaed at by hundreds of people." This has been denied, but wherein lies the evil of ladies sitting on the edge of a bath in bathing costume is hard to understand. Apparently they should have at once lied into obscurity as soon as they left the water. If "to the pure all things are pure" (even those tilings created by God), the alleged moralists who wander the earth seeking for "unblushing boldness" should be carcfullv examined for abnormality of mind. Officials, unhappily, found it necessary to defend the ladies referred to, which is some sort of a victory for the complainants who have effected the purpose such people desire — to make innocent people uncomfortable. Mock modesty is an evil to be fought equally with immodesty. Apropos a story. Years ago a lady complained to a certain local body that swimmers who were, in her opinion, insufficiently habited, disported in the water opposite her residence. Said an oflicial, "But the beach is a quarter of a mile away from your house. How do you know?" "1 can see them distinctly through my fieldglasses," replied the lady with heat. The world is full of pinchbeck moralists with field-glasses and a belief that clothes are purity,

NOTHING WRONG WITH NEW ZEALAND. The other day the Prime Minister, in smiting the pessimists with the blade of optimism, said that they might find out the advantage of living in New Zealand by 'going out of it. By this means comparison would probably favor life in this Dominion. The average man who has lived and worked in New Zealand, if he is a fair man, will admit that chances are strewn more thickly here than in most countries, and this reflection reminds us of the words of an old Taranaki settler in conversation with a "News" man the other (lay. We will not attempt the dialect. "I suppose I would have been in the workhouse now if I had stayed i.n the Old Country," he began. "Doing pretty well?" he was asked. "A-l. I was only a laboring man for many years, but I belted in and used my head as well as my hands. Yes, right enough, I suppose it must have been grit and determination. Health? Why, of course, that's the most important thing of the lot. iiadn't got a 'bean' in the old days —and now I wouldn't call the Queen my aunt—l mean the King my uncle. i laid the foundations of my bit of a fortune long before blokes with corns on their hands began to talk about 'classjconsciousness,' or before they cursed capital for causing the corns. It was corns as bought me my home and grounds, corns as reared the kids, corns as gave the missus a better time in her old age than she could have got if I'd knocked oil' work to talk 'class-conscious-ness.' New Zealand is as good as ever it was for the young bloke with health and strength who if he can't make a do of things here can't make a do of things anywhere." That is the sort of evidence on which to base opinions regarding the prosperity of New Zealand. Whirling masses of figures sound very well and look very nice when set down, but it is to the homes of the individuals that one must go to glean the true facts about, New Zealand and her future. More is heard from the small section of discontents in this country than from the great army of people wlio work too hard to have any time for growling. Vague generalisations about the superiority of chancos in New Zealand do not carry conviction, unless the deponent can base his comparisons on actual experiences of other countries. So many people who "finally" tear themselves away from this country return to end tlieir' days here that the pessimists sustain defeat 011 the arrival of every over-sea boat. The history of the country to date is a history of individual work and achievement. The optimist with strong arms and an abiding faith in the future of New Zealand has 11 chance of achievement not given to the ancient pioneer who "supposes T would have been in the workhouse now if T had stayed in the Old Country."

THE STRAITS SETTLEMENT. Mr. T. E. Raeburn, a Victorian journalist, who has been employed at Singapore for some years, has returned °to Australia, and tells a rosy story of the prospects of the Straits Settlements, which are being quoted by the Opposition just now as successful borrowers in the London money market. He describes the little colony as a paradise for children. The climate is remarkable for its salubrity, and infantile diseases are seldom at all malignant, so that the deathrate among children is the lowest in the world. Singapore is about eighty miles from the Equator, and has a rainfall averapirng 92in. a year. The range ot temperature throughout the year scarcely ever exceeds three degrees, varying from 79 degrees to 82 degrees, so thai there is no difference between summer and winter. The heat is great, but Mr. Itaeburn did not find it excessive. The trade of the Straits Settlements, he says, is increasing by leaps and bounds. The little country rejoices in the possession of rich soil, which is made surprisingly fertile by the copious rainfall and the generous warmth of the sun. Mr. Raeburn is no less enthusiastic over the possibilities of the country than is the Governor of the Settlements, who recently remarked to a party of tourists, "We can guarantee to grow anything here except roast potatoes—and we would even try to do that if required." The Victorian journalist believes that in the near future the Malay States will be of great commercial importance. He says that China, which is now rising like a giant out of sleep, is beginning to look with covetous eyes in that direction. A very large proportion of tha inhabitants are Chinese, and in Joliore the Chinese outnumber the 11a-

lays and Javanese put together. It is the general belief in Singapore thai. Japan intends to seize the Philippines, perhaps in less than two years, and after that China naturally will turn to the Straits Setlements. Mr. Raeburn foresees that China's awakening will create a demand for expansion in trade and in other ways, but he has the trained caution of his profession, and he does not presume to discuss the question further.