CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 256, 8 March 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

IN THE AIR. Nowadays we expect a daily glance at the doings of aviators, and read them with us much unconcern as we read the shipping news or the phase of the moon. Tha series of disasters and deaths throughout 1010 so far fiom damping the enthusiasm of the fliers has merely spurred them to further conquests. Flying is a new scienca, .1 discovery of yesterday, but in a tew short years, despite terrible catastrophes and disappointment, the airmen have succeeded beyond every expectation, until to-day the records of those who were the successful initiators are superseded. It is, in fact, but two years ago since Latham broke all records for high flying by ascending a mere 500 feet. Since then an altitude of 11,000 feet has been attained, but whether in- ' creased height is necessary or merely spectacular the airmen themselves onlyknow. Those who questioned the practicability of aerial navigation have been convinced that it has "come to stay" by observing the great successes achieved, i The pioneers were brave men who undertook flights without any idea or concern about possible consequences. It was perhaps by the deaths of Delagrange, Le Hon, Rolls and others that weaknesses were discovered and knowledge extended. The incredible swiftness of some recent flights gives some indication of the hopes of°airmen, for although it was formerly held that forty or fifty miles an hour was a triumph of accomplishment, this speed has since been greatly exceeded, and it is hoped by aviators that it will be doubled. Mr. Grahame White, the English expert, is now recognised as an authority, and it is comforting to remember that although Britain was less ready to take to the air than other countries, more useful progress has been made in Britain than elsewhere. Mr. White holds that past defects and failures have been due to the machines, and not to the men; that these defects are being rapidly overcome; and that the future air traveller will take no more risk in making his journey through the atmosphere than he would in going from station to station in a railway train. He further said that of 3000 airmen in the world only thirty had been killed, and that the majority had come to their end by foolhardiness, inexperience, the structural weakness of machinery, or other preventive causes. If, as the expert promises, aeroplaning becomes as common as road motoring, and air speeds increase, it will be interesting to observe what physical effect flying produces. It was prophesied when the motor car was young that it would produce a special physical type, but apparently it has merely produced the "motor mind," which is oblivious to the safety of the public. It is exhilarating to remember that the air is wider than the roads, and will give aerial "scorchers" more room to exhibit their prowess. REDSKINS. We have lately been reminded that the American "Indian" is not dead yet, that some of him uses the bows and arrows that he used to kill folk with in Fcnimore Cooper's books, and that he forms interesting sport for latter-day "Buffalo Bills" and "Alkali Ikes." Nowadays, however, the "redskin" is chiefly useful for his past picturesqueness, and his occasional outbursts of primal fury merely demonstrate what a romantic subject he has been. The war of exterminationwhite against red—that took place in the early days of American settlement was less exterminating than the moral and physical rot that has come with partial civilisation, and although the Indians, both 'in British America and the United States have "reservations," the apathy that seems to come by the association of aborigines with the "palefaces" yearly robs an erstwhile vigorous and warlike people of its vitality. The great tribes which used to roam unchecked over the broad face of the prairies, now do so merely by leave of the conquering palefaeej and the tragedy of an übiquitous people, robbed largely of their physical exercise which gave them their dash and daring, is poignant enough. We learn from Ottawa that the British Columbia redskins "have no rights to the lands" ■ which are as yet unsurrendered to the Crown. In fact, recognition of the rights of aboriginals is generally a tardy business. It is only within the past few weeks that the Australian aborigines have been thought worthy of holding territory. But to return to the "Amerinds," as the scientists call the red men. To the ethnologist, the red men are of absorbing interest, because they represent an entirely separate division of mankind, which shows that no outside influence had over been brought to bear on the minds or bodies of the aborigines prior to the entry of the white man. Hundreds oi tribes are still represented in America the relation of which is proved by the polysynthetical nature of the very diversified speech, so beautifully illustrated ir "Hiawatha." In a report issued by an American official in 1007, it was shown that the diminution of redskins was not so rapid as it had *een, and that then no abnormal diminution among abo rigiaes who lived on the reservations and lived the life of their forefathers. But as in other countries, the greed of the white man has urged him to alliance , with landed "squaws," and so the diminu tion is more marked in communities where "the squaw men" rule the roost 1 although, as is usual elsewhere, the half i breeds are mentally more alert than tht i j full-bloods. The fate of the Red Indiar , is not only interesting to the ethnolo gist, but to the person of any country 1 ] which possesses a native race doomed tc ', ultimate extinction.

THE ACCIDENTS OF HISTORY. If the American people had not believed that the Maine was blown up in Havana harbor by Spanish instrumentality there would have been no Hispano-American war. Probably nobody outside America believed it. though American credulity was quite sincere; and now thirteen years later the American Government announce that the Spaniards had nothing whatever to do with the loss of the Maine. They have been engaged in raising the hull, and they are persuaded that an internal explosion, probably an explosion in the magazine, caused the disaster. The last vestige of the historical fable vanished from the world—vcars alter it has exhausted its power for mischief. It is buried when it is hardly any lonjrcr worth the expense of the trouble of burying. It is melancholy to reflect that if the explosion had taken place a few days earlier or anywhere except in Spanish waters, there would have been no war in 1898. Upon such slight accidents do thousands of lives and the destinies of nations turn. And yet if we stopped at that point we shouid not <rot far into the lesson of the Maine. Not every accident sets the world ablaze- it is (as the London Daily News recently pointed out) only the selected accident, only the accident which can be made to feed a passion and which it is somebody's business to turn into fuel for national passion. Tim blowing up of the Maine would not have made a ripple in international affairs if powerful interests and a powerful and reckless Press had not wanted war. and if the American people

were not open to an appeal to untutored ' emotions. So long as powerful individuals want war the accident will always happen, by the intervention of one providence or another, which is calculated to stir the indignation of a people ill-drilled in testing probabilities and in subjecting its feelings to the sway of reason. Lack of education in the broad sense is the mother of war, as of most of the social evils which afflict humanity.