CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 54, 25 August 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

GERMANY'S "SWELLED HEAD." Professor Macmillan Brown's sojourn in the Islands has not deterred him from following the course of international politics, and he has been giving the people of Sydney his opinions on the recent war cloud. He says that Germany's moves in the game were pure bluff. "Germany," he states, "is the bushranger among the nations, the Power which is always out with the pistol to point at the head of the possible yielder with the demand, 'Deliver!' Bismarck taught the German politicians the value of a policy of bluff, and they have relied on it largely ever since the lesson was learned, perhaps somewhat imperfectly, from that past-master of the ait; for Bismarck made good on most of his bluffs." The professor is convinced, it appears, that Germany has been suffering for years from "swelled head," and "she will never be any. good to herself or anyone else until she gets the licking for which she is looking." The opinion that the trouble which threatened is over is not held by the professor, who declares that i there must be war before many years have passed, and the war will be between Britiain and Germany. It will be a struggle not merely for territory or conquest, but for "what Germany is ambitious to get, the position Britain holds to-day as sovereign of the seas and the greatest of the Powers." Professor Brown says that it would be a bad thing for the world at large if dominance passed into the hands of the Germans. Their rule would be a despotism of the severest type. But the professor does : not anticipate a German victory, although he asserts that in the event of | Germany engaging Britain the United States would stand aloof. "America," lie says, "would regard the conflict as her opportunity for making money out of both sides by the extension and expansion of her trade; she would, in fact, keep out of the quarrel, and make profit with both hands out of the belligerents. Professor Brown pays the American nation a poor compliment, but it is comforting to have his assurance that when the trouble comes Britain will require no help and Germany will be bidding for her Trafalgar, with her Waterloo in the'distance.

WHAT BRITAIN HAS DONE FOR i INDIA. | In the course of his work on "The West in the East.from an American Point ofl View," Price Collier, a critic of outstanding merit, pays this compliment to Britain's work ift India:—"lf you and 1 had taken over the government of a distracted country, which for centuries had dated passing events from the last raid, the last massacre, the last famine, the last deluge, the last plundering ride of a foreign invader; and if we had laid there 30,000 miles of railway; if we had watered 17,000,000 acres with canals of our own construction; if we had arranged that one in every seven acres of tie whole country were irrigated; if we had built schools, nursing homes, dispensaries, hospitals, where 8,000,000 children are vaccinated and 25,000,000 people receive relief stations; if school attendance had increased from 500,000 to 6,000,000; if the letters carried had increased from none to 700,000,000 annually; if we had policed the country from end to did, administered justice without-fear or favor; spent millions of money and thousands of lives in the. eountry's defence; protected the people from brutal customs, protected the widow and orphan; secured to every man, woman and child his rights, his property and his earnings; if out of nearly 29,000 officers of the Government drawing salaries ranging from £6o—no small, income for a native of India—Up to £SOOO, as many as 22,000 were filled fty natives, and only 0500 by Europeans; if out of a gross revenue of £75,272,000 only £20,816,000 was raised by taxes so-called, while in England taxation supplies five-sixths, and in India only about one-fourth, of the public income; if we had reduced crime to proportions smaller than in England itself; if the public debt, outside of debt secured by the ample asset of the railways, canals., and so on, amounted to only £28,000,000, ai sum less than half of what it cost to suppress the Mutiny alone; if the land, which, when we took charge, had hardly any commercial value, was now worth £300,000,000; if the export and import trade in less than 50 years had increased from £40,000,000 to '.£200,000,000, while taxation works out at about 37 cents pier head; if innocent religious and social customs had' not only not been changed, but-protected from interference, in these days, too, alas! when so many people mistake interference for influence, and in a land of jarring and quarrelsome sects—if you and I had a fraction of these accomplished by the English in India to our credit, we should be astonished at censure from without, or criticism tempted to resent them."