CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 267, 21 March 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

OUT OF THE UNKNOWN. The exploring party who have been wan- : dering over a small portion of the vast and almost unknown land of Papua lately, are happily safe, and there is no tale of horror or even cannibalism to give the necessary "wide world" flavor ' to tlie narrative. Perhaps the outstand- , ing thought that will come to folk who have read the narrative is one of thankfulness that the brave but foolish men are saf». Enthusiastic people who understand dangerous enterprises, are humanity's greatest benefactors. The undying spirit of adventure that crops up so frequently in men of all kinds and classes is the mainspring of progress. The world owes more than it can ever repay to the onthusiastic pioneers who, in. all the dark places of the earth, have burrowed their way, chiefly, in the irst instance, for personal satisfaction and a burning desire for accomplishment. •Viewed by ordinary stay-at j home standards, the explorer is a fanatic. When the average person takes an atlas and carefully peruses the map of a country, it is unlikely that his mind will wander away to the beginning of maps, or to the intrepid adventurers—call them fanatics, if you will—who made maps possible. Every decade the world grows "smaller," because of man's incurable , mania for exploration and discovery. | The stories of such explorations and discoveries are vocal with the deeds of men of our own blood, whose bones arc bleaching in every known territory on earth. What man has done, man will essay to do again. Somehow, new discoveries and adventures rob romance. The monstrous stories of the old-time adventurers who poked about the world in wooden tubs, have been exploded. The cold eye of science carefully discriminates between the real and the false, and; scientists dissipate glamor with facts. Papua has been chosen by numberless folks who have never seen it as a background for romantic impossibilities. The novelist who make 3 his bushranger leave Melbourne on horseback in the early morning in order that he may dine in Brisbane in the evening, is also permitted to erect ten-storey palaces in the unknown heart of Papua, and to people them with unheard-of folk. The public nowadays is very chary about accepting the traveller's stories as correct. The fate of pour Louis de Rougeinont—who certainly should have a monument—is typical of the anger of a public which likes its facts labelled, but prefers fiction if also duly labelled. In the matter of Papua, it is possible for a party to lose itself in the scrub a few miles from the coast, and to return to civilisation with tales as weird as any invented by Mr. de Rougemont. It ia the unknown that is romantic and enthralling, and the unknown is disappearing. The. storytellers will soon have to invent another land. )

BACK INTO HARNESS.

Sew Zcalanders take a personal interest in the Umpire's greatest military organiser, for the reason that Lord Kitchener lias visited this country and has laid down a system which is the groundwork of the present land defence scheme. Lord Kitchener's round of visits to the doniinions represented his last active work, and, although he is comparatively young and certainly vigorous and enthusiastic, he is being allowed to "rust." The great general is certainly to have command of the troops in London during the Coronation ceremonies, but this honor is of little real moment. A London paper han said that the time of Lord Kitchener is being frittered away, and has suggested that he should spend five years in organising and developing the overseas forces It is generally supposed that Lord Kitchener would not quarrel with such an offer. There is little doubt, however, that Kitchener is being punished by the authorities for his refusal to undertake the Mediterranean command, which he regarded as an attempt to get him comfortably placed in a position where his constructive genius could not be exercised. His contempt for interfering officialdom and red-tape has aidod the "authorities in their otherwise unaccountable determination to keep him idle. It is now generally recognised that military unification throughout the Empire mus't come. As Lord Kitchener is the most adept military organiser the Empire has perhaps the British Government may yet get over its fit of pique and employ tiirn in the best way. Mr. William Maxwell writing in the Daily Mail of the FieldMarshal's ability as an organiser of armies, said that his power to combine find organise material into new and dofinite shape was remarkable. "This has been manifested in a thousand ways since he took charge of tho Egyptian War Office and establishea his reputation (is a great, administrator ruthless in carrying out reforms and rosolute to secure efficiency," says the writer. "This is his supreme faculty. He !ias others less rare, but not less useful. He is a hard and accurate thinker, always foreseeing and planning, as records in the War Office will reveal some day. Hi 9 industry, patience and perseverance are

phenomenal, and earned for him on the banks of the Nile of 'Master of the Fatigue Parties.' Nothing escaped his sleepless eye—not even the ice-machine which the Guards tried to smuggle on the way to Omdurman. His impatience of red-tape and official reports was shown in Egyptian days by the fact that his office stationery consisted of a few telegraph forms which he carried in his helmet. On taking up the commands in India, Lord Kitchener found the forces disposed as in Mutiny days when railways were few. He left the army concentrated at vital points and organised an intelligible plan with some regard to its instant and effect use as an instrument of war. He found no attempt to secure uniformity of training of the troops and no provision for the special staff training of officers. Both these defects he has remedied. It was inevitable that reforms so drastic and far-reaching should provoke hostility. Lord Kitchener has had to endure the penalty of all reformers, but he has the satisfaction of knowing that he leaves India armed and ready to meet with every chance of victory either invasion or mutiny."

AIDING AND ABETTING. The other day the American cable man told New Zealand that a person named Gates was making dispositions to control the bread supply of the United States. Mr. Gates and a few thousand other misdeamants of similar tendencies in the land of the sereaming eagle have a great deal more money than thoy can possibly use during their lifetimes. No man can control anything without assistance, and even Gates would be unablo to get his claws on the bread business if the people controlled Gates. We have a suspicion that in America, as elsewhere, the trust criminal is generally admired, not because he is a criminal but because ho has money. Under ordinary circumstances the person who is physically attacked retaliates. There is a universal disobedience of the injunction to "turn the other check also." The man who takes a weapon and floors a fellow man, sending him to hospital, goes to gaol. In America, where crimes of violence occur, the general public often show that it still possesses the instinct for primal revenge—and there is, we will say, what our cousins call "a necktie party." In the matter of a person like Gates, who has no compunction about exploiting thousands of folks in his own way, the law will not hang him, or even electrocute him. The people are informed that Gates is out to kill by starvation if necessary in order that'he may get a lot more unneeded dollars, but the" only thing that will happen to the bread monopolist is that he will be more ardently beloved than ever. Millionaires, and minor persons with the same instincts, wage perpetual war against the public—cold, calculating, brutal war, more dangerous than the ordinary kind and having more disastrous and wider effects. America is at present talking of fighting ,)apan. There won't be any millionaires in the ranks of the army. The trustmonger is a worse enemy to the United States, than is Japan, but apart from a few stray shots fired at him by the State, occasional imprisonment in luxurious gaols of a few of the millionaire criminals, the people generally do not take a hand. In some of the charming States of America, the mere horsestealer is hounded down and lynched but no one ever organises a posse to hound down persons of the Gates brand. Which deserves the "necktie'' the more-Gates or the horse-stealer'