CURRENT TOPICS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 247, 24 February 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS

"CHEER UP-SOON V.K DEAD!" The business of prophecy is as old as man and if the prevailing Zadkiel of the antediluvian period had survived the Flood he would probably have written to the Ararat News to say, 'T told you so!'' In prophecying catastrophe the'prophet is "on an easy wiekel." and he is always sure of some of his prophecies mat urine.' into happenings, The internal 'mial horizon is imperceptible because of the stvaian blackness that obscures it. .'Hid the people who arc buoying themselves up with Ihou'.'lits of the next peach sra--on -honhl lake a look at Ilia! horizon and trive way in '..doom- not gladness. For instance, Arnold Wli?'t'c""hai i

a vision. Here is a bit of it: "Another aspect of the near future will be the treatment of individuals, each of whom is little more than a parasite—a sac with reproductive organs. Atrophy is more rapid among parasitic than any other form of life. The coming clash of white and yellow men must be on the industrial'plane. When the factory system sweats Asiatics by the hundred million, white democracy "will look back on the Utopia of the earlier Socialists with sombre regret. There will be no place for a sac with reproductive organs. In Asia there are approximately 850,000,000 people. The birth-rate of Asia per family probably exceeds the birth-rate of the average British parent. So long as the Asiatic remains in Asia, white races with sea power hold Asiatics at their mercy. Numbers do not count to him who commands the sea. When the leaders of the social movement learn that Asiatics are not to he excluded from vast food-producing territories by writing words in ink on parchment, and calling it law, they will be in a position to explain to their followers that national energy must be concentrated on securing the uncontrolled food sources of the world. The soils of Australia and Africa are scarcely scratched. Notwithstanding the cities on the coast the white man in Australia has not really tapped the resources of the island continent. In Africa foodstuffs and raw material and clothing can be produced in any quantity so long as England's coal beds and iron ore last. All these things are insistent, but there will be both tragedy and fun before they come to pass." The prophet who allows sad-eyed mortality to gaze on such a picture and yet promises "fun" is a welcome prophet. Mr. White is not so black as the picture he paints.

BANZAI! The other day some Japanese explorers came to New Zealand, and nobody could talk to»them in the language of Nippon, not even the Wellington Japanese Consul. The leader of the expedition to the South Pole (or the Auckland Islands) gravely intimated that he and his men did not understand English—and bought half a ton of English books to read on the way to the Chathams, or wherever Mr Shiraze is going to. We are not seriously concerned with the fact that the Japanese gentleman did not tell the truth, merely using the story as an illustration of the general British notion that "English is good enough for me." The averago Britisher gets on fairly well by using his incomplete knowledge of his own language, and the "educated" Britisher generally has a faint smattering of the kind of French a Frenchman would not recognise. He also may have struggled through an examination in German, gathered in a few Latin roots, and have become acquainted with the commoner Greek symbols. The British school idea of teaching a language is rather quaint. It is exactly on the principle of trying to make a boy write glowing literary English by insisting that he shall know how to "parse." You do not teach a baby to talk the language of his parents by instructing him in Engli-ih gramnnr He learns by imitation, and that is the only way any language can be truly learned. All this preliminary to saying that the German clerk is not so frequent in London as formerly. The last available statistics (1907) showed that there were 50,000 of him (and her) in the Hub. Sir Albert Rollet, chairman of the Commercial Education Department of Ihe ljondon Chamber of i onrnicrec (a rather important institution), lately mentioned that Germany owed much of her commercial position to her early education. founded a hundred years ago by ihe' «uat Stein." Knowledge is the basis of | business, and the German clerks' knowledge and familiar English, allied to his commerciftl training (plus his cheapness) made him welcome in London. T'ie London Chamber of Comm»ree I'eei'led quite ] a long time ago that If Germany gave' her sons a chance to become familiar enough with English and French to obtain billets in Gaul or Albion Britons might also be given linguistic advantages, and so because there are now more Englishmen who are competent linguists and foreign correspondents in London, the German clerk is not so necessary. The London Chamber of Commerce uses tlie ''baby" system of teaching languages. The folly of asking a man to build a house before he has been taught to drive a nail is patent to all. Reverting to the Jap expedition to the Auckland Islands, there is no Japanese officer with live years' navy service who cannot both converse and write in English (after a fashion).

THE WEATHER. It is the invariable British custom (Britishers generally being too practical to be finished conversationalists) to greet a friend ]>y a remark about the weather. It seems a very unnecessary thing to say, "Fine day!" or "Horn'! Wet isn't it?" or "Hot weather!" because your friend knows all about it as well as you. Folk of other nations ask after your grandfather, want to know whether you have eaten your rice or (literally) "How's your liver?" and so on. There are times in British territory, however, when week after week of cloudless weather pile despair so thick on the soul of the settler that he forgets to talk about it. It is fair to say that during recent times the Rev. I). C. Bates' contributions to the newspapers have been the most eagerly scanned by thousands of people. Australian people may smile at our New Zealand "droughts," and certainly, in comparison with the hideous visitations the Commonwealth so frequently suffers from our dry spells arc«-but as a taper to a Xgaurnhoe. Somebody mentioned tin; other day that some faranaki settlers, after experiencing dry weather for several weeks, stood bare-headed in the rain in joyous thanksgiving. Rain is wealth and happiness and prosperity. Drought is destitution, death and decay. There is a sort of mockery about a sapphire sky and a golden sun that flaunt their beauties month after month, while man fights for life and beasts die and rot. Those yho have had the nnhappv experience of putting in a drought time in Australia will appreciate the expression of the smitten settler who rushed naked into the first shower for ten months with his naked children, calling nut. "Thank Clod! It's raining sove" reigns!" And, to carry the metaphor a little further, every sovereign in ever--bank vault in New Zealand, in every pocket, in every till, has been washed there by the rain. We are trying rather hard to make it rain less in the most favored parts of New Zealand, and equally hard to make it rain more in habitually dry dUriets, and we don't quite appreciate the incomparable benefit of moisture until the grass withers, (lie creeks dwindle, tin! stock become "hat-racks," and hiisli./ircs are uncontrollable. A cheerful scientist predicts that in a few years (say ten or twelve millions) the sea, which is the source of all cosmic moisture, will dry up. There is some little satisfaction in looking forward to several good "soakings" before then.