CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 64, 6 September 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

A GREAT OFFER. The English .Automobile Association has offered to the Government the use of 35,000 members ami 50,000 cars in ease of future strikes that are likely to hold up food traffic. The figures appear to be large, but, as a mattor of fact, the carrying capacity of these cars would be so small as to represent the merest fraction of the traction needed to keep a section of the people, of London fed. It is to be remembered that the 'whole food supply of London is brought to (fro great city by various forms of tra«tif/flj &»<!' it is most unlikely that all the' cflfß mentioned could draw London's daily requirements, let alone its other necessities. The dislocation of the raJlw«y mm W»»o$ be I even temporarily BiM(l«d by any otfief kind of traction, for every great railway company in Britain is simply pouring food into'the London m'arkcts night: and day without cessation, The quantities necessary for the subsistence of i seven or eight millions of people are lij- ] yond the conception of any single person, a..* j l '* nectary to watch the never ending si roam" bl vailff ay. Trucks, food Wen, to faintly appreciate the fact that I '•stomach rules' the world." These few j thousand motor-cars would each draw less weight in food tl'uiii a single goods waggon, iind It is to be remembered that motorcar arc easily held up by such simple devices as torn up roads, wire ' foccs, and other impedimenta. However, the wealthy are frequently hard put iro find new forms of excitement, and unquestionably they might find it, in carting vegetables and meat and other commodities in time of industrial nilrest.' The great railway strikes in both France and England, however, have had the useful, effect of showing the tremendous dislocation that such strikes entail and of devising methods for dealing in some form with future conditions of the. kind. Unquestionably the great increase of mad power traffic will minimise future inconveniences, and so the offer of the Automobile Association is I at least an indication of a willingness to render aid in a national emergency.

IS KITCHENER THE MAN -FOR EGITT? The English press, as we gather from our newspaper files, is by no nunniH unanimous on the subject of General Kitchener's Appointment as British Agent and Consul-General in Egypt. The London Times warmly supports it, but the Spectator is dubious. "We cannot help feeling,'' it says, "that' the post is not one which should be held by a | soldier. The military experience and j high qualities of command possessed by' Lord Kitchener eminently fit him for military work, but it cannot be said that they are the qualities required by our Agent-General in Cairo." The Manchester Guardian is altogether hostile to the appointment on the ground that Lord Kitchener's experience of Egypt isi just that experience which is calculated to make him an unsuitable successor to Sir Eldon Gorst. "Sir Eldon Gorst's object was to found a Conservative Nationalist Party in Kgypt, and he sought to attain it by working with the Khedive. His success has been considerable if still incomplete. He has shocked intolerant foreigners in Egypt by his deference to the Court —but, on the other hand, the Nationalist party has been weakened and divided, and one wing of it is a constitutional and possibilist party ready to work for political emancipation through frank acceptance of British occupation. This delicate situation will almost certainly be disturbed, ami to our detriment, by the appointment of Lord Kitchener." The Daily News is not without some misgivings, but it is also not without hope that Lord Kitchener may, after all, disappoint the .expectations of those who think that in the military hero they have found the. iron tool with which thev want to carry out a firm policy in Egypt:—"Lord Kitchener is never an easy subject for prophecy. Though his successes have been won in war, they have 'been almo-t more administrative than military. He had undoubted gifts for dealing with men, and a sort of tact, which however peculiar some of its manifestations may be. has shown itself an effective thing, and sometimes a surprisingly elastic thing, as in the negotiations with the Boer generals, by which he ended the South African war. Members of the ("lovcrmncnt no doubt had this in mind whey thev approved the appointment. Lord Kitchener will show himself a strong man indeed, if he can go his own way. unheeding the unwisdom of his own would-be backers, and bringing as fresh a mind n= he can to bear upon the new problems that await him."