CURRENT TOPICS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 238, 13 February 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS

BACK TO NATURE. A cablegram lately published shows that a "wild man" has been captured in the backblocks of Ontario. It is not known why he was captured, except that he was a ''wild man," whose special sin was that lie wore skins insteads oi tweeds and trapped his food instead of buying it in a butcher's shop. Modern civilisation is quite sure that it is much better to confine a wild man in a lunatic asylum than allow him to put in his harmless existence in the woods, and the fact that he is to be deprived o( his skins and coerced into clothes is a reminder that official interference is frequently used to effect harmful results. For instance, twenty years ago some stockmen in New South Wales while at work dropped across blackfellows' tracks. They followed them, and were successful in coming up with a mob of aosolutely wild blacks—men, women ,uid children—and all in a state of nature. The instinct of these stockmen was to bring these harmless folk to civilisation—meaning Wentworth, on the Darling river—and with the more or less paltry loss of half-a-dozen infants, lost from over-driving, they yarded the lot in stockyards. The people who believe that clothes are holiness at once got to work on the hinterland savages, and carefully gowned the ladies and trousered the men. Out of a total of 113 men, women and children yarded and duly civilised, only 4!) remained eighteen months later. The interfering white men who believed these savages should be coerced into clothes and civilisation, killed them as surely as if the slaughter had been effected with firearms. Everywhere the white man is anxious to thrust his clothes and his civilisation on wild men and women. We shall go on saving the heathen from himself, clothing the savage who hates clothes and giving him advantages he doesn't want and can't understand. And to come back to the starting point, it is much better to have a wild man clothed in skins and living on squirrels than to be a subject for medical study in a mental hospital.

KAFFIR SERVANTS. Since the cabled report that Lord H. Gladstone, Governor-General of South Africa, had shown leniency to a Kaffir, guilty of a serious crime, there have been almost daily reports of assaults on women. There seems to be no doubt that the reports, however true, have been influenced 'by the feeling ot white people in .Johannesburg anil elsewhere against Lord Gladstone in interfering with the white mail's control of the black. There is probably no doubt in 'the minds of any white man who lives in South Africa that the proper place for a black man who commits or tries to commit an offence of the kind is the cemetery. Very likely the gravity of the situation is exaggerated in a desire to define the relationships between white and black. The evil lies at the door of the white Afrikander, who has become so indolent that lie calls on the native for menial and manual work of all kinds. The Kaffir develops evil passions in contact with white folk, and because lie usually has many extraordinary qualifications—docility. strength and kindness —lie is used freely, ft is quite common in Johannesburg and elsewhere in Africa for the domestfes of a house to be Kaffir men, and "housemaids," "nursemaids," and other household treasures frequently recruited from the ranks of the Zulus, or any other available natives. Because they are generally obedient and gentle, they are preferred to imported white maids, and the inevitable consequence is that occasional crimes of the sort men-1 tinned in the cablegrams will happen. Every Afrikander earnestly believes that a black man should have no privileges, that he should be'absolutely subject, and that his domination is the only method J of keeping him in ignorance of his power. Previous to the Boer war, the position between white and black was more sharply defined, and, in consequence, the black man deeply respected the white one, even though the latter might be inferior in physique. Imported sentiment has done a great deal to spoil the black servant, and official leniency will be received by the dark races as signs of weakness. It may well be believed that if the evil of assault had become as grave as suggested in the cables that the white Afrikanders would have already taken the matter into their own hands, and would have allowed no trial oi any kind before dealing with delinquents. The fact that they are depending on the authorities to find means for the suppression of assaults is the best evidence that the evil is not yet greater than it has been any time these ten years.

THE IMPERIAL ORBIT. Mr. Austen Chamberlain is afraid that by entering Into reciprocity with the United States Canada will get off the' Imperial orbit. Planets are kept in their orbits by a due balance between the centripetal and centrifugal forces, so astronomers tell us. In Canada's case the centripetal force is supposed to be Imperial preference plus the sentiment that attaches to the flag. The centrifugal force is just that mightv force that induces producers everywhere to sock the be.st market, for their goods. At present it seems that the States can offer Canada a rather better price for lier grain and her cheese than Britain can; hence the desire to enter on this enlarged orbit that the Western farmers are showing. Tn addition to that these broad-minded farmers find that many of the implements they need can lie best and cheapest got from or through their American neighbors. If this, then, is going to so increase the centrifugal force :is to bring them into a larger orbit—lie it the Republican orbit or any other—who is to complain? It should lead to what we all profess, "the greatest good to the greatest number." Let us, however, change the scene a bit, and askhow we in New Zealand would act in a similar case. Suppose some foreign country, say China or Germany, could offer us a better market for our dairy and pastoral produce than Great Britain now offers, how long should we bo in determining what to do? It may be said that this is a low argument—it is so said by the high Imperialist who revels in plenty, with some aspiration for still more—yet what we plain folk are all after is food and clothing in sufficient quantity and of good quality, and if any other orbit than the Imperial will introduce us to that, then we think that the forces will be strong enough to drag us away in search of the greatest good. For our part, we have always thought that the expansion of trade was good for any country, and Canada in seeking to exploit the United States is only doing what we in the Dominion would be only too glad to do—if we had the chance.