CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 273, 8 April 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

THE PATRIOTS. The cheering news that the Army said to be necessary by F.M. Lord Roberts, V.C., would cost forty million pounds, will not set British peers searching in their clothes for contributions towards its maintenance. The House of Lords is almost whole-souled and unanimous in a desire to maintain the Navy ana Army at the highest possible pitch of efficiency. Wherein their lordships appear to be arguing on a sound basis. In earliv times their lordships' titled ancestors won their titles and added to their estates by supplying for the King's service the necessary human material for defence. In fact, the territorial magnates both supplied and commanded the levies that made up Britain's fighting force. The old order disappeared, the Imperial Army arose on the graves of the peers' retainers, so to speak, and there is but the memory of the ancient system in the word "yeomanry" as applied to a pre-sent-day auxiliary military branch. One even gets the common order, "Present arms!" from the feudal times, when the humble retainer—who could put up an excellent iight —"presented his arms," whether they were bows of yew, crossbows or matchlocks, to their lords In token of subjection to their commands. Animated by the spirit of their ancestors, the peers still retain definite views on fighting matters, and perhaps, if it were necessary, they might, out of their prodigious wealth, relieve the nation of its military expenditure. There is no record, since the Imperial Army superseded levies of peers' retainers, of these great territorial magnates asking to be allowed to bear the heavier share of the burden. The peers as a general thing are inordinately wealthy, but they do not subscribe huge funds for the upkeep of a soldiery they assert to be necessary. Viscount Haldane has said that if such a scheme as Lord Roberts advises were put in operation, national bankruptcy would be threatened. Perhaps the peers might save a few of their millions from the wreck. Curiously enough, although great landholders are nowadays forced to hand over a larger sum in taxation, and the death of one of the mighty is a benefit to the Treasury, they resist with energy all attempts at their incomes. In short, they seem to argue, "Let the people pay." The territorial magnates of Britain could probably support an army adequate for all purposes of home defence without seriously crippling their resources or going without motor cars. They know very well what the duties of the "common people" are, but forget that the privilege of paying for an army might be their own lor the asking. They do not ask.

THE PROBLEM OF EMPTINESS. A correspondent of the Standard of Empire suggests that the way to attract population to Northern Australia is to establish ready-made farms for cottonproduction on a large scale. Cotton is grown successfully, he states, at Emerald, about IGO miles west of Rockhampton, and at Clermont, a town some forty miles further north. He has been assured by a farmer possessed of American experience that Queensland has a better climate and a better soil for the production of cotton than have the southern districts of the United States, and that the area of land available is enormously large. The recent invention of a cotton-picking machine, as a result of years of patient research, has supplied a method of meeting the labor difficulty. Steps should be taken (says the correspondent) to prepare a thousand farms, each of one hundred acres, and to place upon them "poor, well-deserving families" from the Motner Country. The farms would be fenced and partially cultivated, and provided with simple dwellinghouses, stores and tanks. "Meat is marvellously cheap," adds the Queensland man; "in fact, sheep are boiled down for their fat alone. Timber i 3 more than plentiful. Water is also secured by sinking wells or by boring slight depths. But for all domestic purposes the tank water suffices." Probably the correspondent has never lived in the north of Queensland, where a tank or so represented the sole means of moisture for a man, his wife and the children. He has not seen the personal aspect of the 400gallon iron tank with a foot of filth at the bottom. Tank water does not suffice. Nothing short of an unlimited and free supplv of water suffices anyone anywhere. The settlement of Australia depends absolutely on water—free, unlimited, pure water. Nobody can exist, propagate and succeed on tank water, all assertions to the contrary notwithstanding. Queensland cannot obtain an adequate drink on 26 inches of rain per annum, and Queensland is doing the best she knows to reduce the rainfall by cleaving her timber. She may take a hundred years to stop the rain and make the northern portion of a vast country like Egypt before, the days of Nile barrages, but she may ultimately succeed in closing the "windows of the heavens." Tn those days cotton will not come to the rescue—for even cotton wants a drink.