CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 80, 25 September 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

THE AMERICAN POINT OP VIEW. Strangers' ideas about people and places are always interesting, especially if they are more than usually absurd. The mail who eamc to the conclusion, foi: instance, that "New Zealand is a rotten place—you can't get bacon there," is a ease in point. An idea of London from the point of view of an American musichall woman should be more absurd than usual—and it is Mis Eva Tangnay who is the woman. She casts an eye oil the home of history and says: '•[ don't think much of Europe." She was surprised to find everything was "horribly old and dingy" in London. "Why,"* she said, "there's Buckingham Palace, where the King and Queen live. It's black and grimy and dilapidated, instead of being beautiful white marble, the way you would suppose it ought to be. Honest, it s a sight, and New York would never stand it. Over here we don't let build,ii)gs get old; we tear them down before they've been up ten years, and put up nicer ones." Anyone who has seen ihe intense Mdcousness of New York will agree about the "nice" buildings. She had nothing to say concerning the venerable antiquities 'of London, which impressed her only as the 'dingiest, dirtiest, most crowded - together, povertystricken" place she had seen. Her comments on the people were just as free. The London policemen she described ns the most absurd things, looking like country Reubens, the said "Reubens" being the persons that make it possible for music-hall people to draw their salaries. "For the matter of that," she added, "all Englishmen are stupid, and they don't know how to talk. They don't seem to have any joints to their brains." The womenfolk of the great city aroused the visitor's indignation. "They are frights, positive frights," she declared. '•They' wear the shabbiest, frumpiest clothes, particularly in the street. They don't know how to walk, or how to sit gracefully." The young lady thought the soldiers were attractive,'and she "liked the Zoo." The domestic servants in London won her warmest praise, but she was annoyed by the "silly restaurants," which closed at half-past eleven, and on the •whole she was convinced liat London was "deader than Long fsland City." One of course wonders if these cheerful remarks were really made by the lady, or whether the brilliant New York reporters were responsible. One remembers that a modest New Zealander who kept a bootshop went to New York for a holiday. He was interviewed. Amon" the half-dozen headlines were these': 'Maori millionaire sheep king hits New York ; "Says New Zealand syk-scrapers will- outscrape New York." The bootshop man, in a pathetic interview with a New Zealand reporter, alleged that the only remarks he made to the American pressman were to the effect that lie had come from New Zealand and that New York was a big place!

TIIE WORLD'S DREADNOUGHTS. Exactly one hundred warships of the Dreadnought type are now built, building or ordered 1 for the navies of the worhC The average cost is about .€-2,00l),(K)O. and thirteen nations are assisting to pav the £2(W,000,<)(IO bill, which has bceii incurred in a time of peaca. When Britain laid down the original Dreadnought in 1905 she had the field to herself. The United States ordered a ship of the newclass dining the following year, and in IftOT Germany and Brazil followed the lead that, had been given them. The year ]M!» »aw. Spain; Italy and Russia building Dreadnoughts, and last vear France, Austria and Argentina entered the contest. This year Turkey and Chili have taken steps to secure specimens of the huge ships. Of the 100 ships, thirty-two belong to Britain, twenty-one to (lermany, twelve to the' United States, and seven to Japan. The .newest of the British battleships at present in commission, the, Neptune, cost £1,"'28,000, but Russia, which has peculiar methods of business, is paying £3,200,000 for her first Dreadnought. The standard size of big gun so far bas been the 12-inch, but when Britain decided last year to mount 13.5-inch onus in the new ships, Japan and Chili took the hint. . Germany started with the 111-inch gun>, but has now advanced to the 1r2.2-iuch and is arranging for the 14-inch. The United States authorities have also selected the 14-inch gun for the ships of next year's programme. Italy, Austria. Russia and the United States are making the experiment of placing three guns in a turret instead of two, thus economising space and rendering easier the concentration of fire, but the British experts have rejected this device. They insist that efliciency will be decreased by the overcrowding of the turrets, and their present tendency is rather to reduce the number of guns in a siiHe ship. France, it is interesting to notice at the present time, will have no Dreadnoghts ready for service until the cud of next year. Britain has fourteen Dreadnought battleships and cruisers in commission and Germany seven or ei ,r ht

FRANCE IN NORTH AFRICA. Sii Tlany Johnston, in the Nineteenth Century and After, gives an informative sketch of the French colonial expansion m North Africa. The Algerian corsairs had to be put down, and by 1834 the French Government had deliberately assumed the responsibility for coiiquerin.' and administering Algeria from the .Mediterranean to the Sahara. In ]BS-t Morocco received a short, sharp Uvsson. and never again seriously attempted anv interference in Algeria. Thenceforth anil until lf)04 only the opposition of ('.rent Britain and of Spain stood between i'ranee and a conquest of Morocco Sir Ilarry Johnston shows that France now finds herself awkwardly situated in Morocco. "The cruel, misgoverning .Sultan deserves little commiseratioir. nor need we wast© much pity on his unruly and unwilling subjects, who are madly fanatical against'the Christian European, pitilessly cruel tribe against tribe, warped and spoilt by twelve centuries of civil war. To preserve her position in North Africa France is obliged to interfere in Morocco, and German v obliges France to play the role in Morocco of the Sultan's ally and sunporter. Far and awav the heist thin" for Morocco and tile people of Morocco at the present day would be tho distinct and clear establishment of a French protectorate and the reduction of the Sultan to the same position as that now honorably occupied by the Bey of Tunis. Then, indeed, the country ' would go ahead.'' Sir Harry Johnston adverts 1,, the danger of Mohammedan fanaticism in North Africa, and quotes a case In which a German official in the Levant went to "indiscreet lengths" in suggesting that the real friend of Islam was Gei many, and that under German protection Tslam might regain the Empire of its palmy days. lie. question* the wisdom of the pro-Tslarnic attitude of Germany, and says that "any such weapon as she might forge for 'the injury of Britain or France in Africa might be tinned against herself to-day

in Africa, or later in Western Asia." He adds that France in North Africa is in the main carrying out the purpose and subserving the interests of civilised Kurope, just as Germany or Anstro-Ger-many is doing, and may be doing the same in other regions at present undeveloped and barely civilised.