CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 156, 30 December 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

A POLITICAL DICTATORSHIP. The most humorous political circumstance of the moment is Mr. Payne, M.P. for Grey Lynn. At a single bound he has assumed the political dictatorship of New Zealand. Before December 7no one had ever heard of Mr. Payne. Now people talk about him in hushed whispers as if he were a Czar, or General Caneva, or Yuan Shih Kai. Mr. Payne, to be explicit, lias issued an ultimatum to the effect that Sir Joseph Ward, to whom Mr. Payne, as a protege of the Reform Party, is in deadly opposition, may continue to carry on his wicked work of ruining the country if four Labor members are called by the Premier to assist in the ruination. A quaint position arose when this dictator from Grey Lynn was sharply called to order by the voice of Labor for arranging everything so nicely for a continuance of the present Government with the four Labor members installed as top dogs in the Cabinet, with the emoluments and privileges thereunto appertaining. Mr. Payne has modestly said that "we," that is, the Labor four, to whom Mr. Payne does not really belong, may present an ultimatum to Sir Joseph Ward requiring him to "abdicate" in favor of a Labor Premier—to wit, we will suppose Mr. Payne, of the Labor, or Reform Party, whichever he cares to make it. Mr. Payne specilied that he really didn't mind which of (he four Labor members became Premier so long as they all got portfolios. Mr. Payne lias been politely told by the men he desires to have at the head of his Ministry to speak for himself only. Mr. Payne doesn't care what happens as long as the four men get good jobs, for he said that if the Premier did not comply with the "ultimatum" the Labor members would force enquiry into the financial position of the Dominion or vote the Wind Administration out. One imagines Mr. Payne as saying, "Gimme a job, and you can finance away as much as you like. Don't gimme a job and I'll show yer political dishonesty that I'm so anxious to help you with." Mr. Payne is really the latest New Zealand surprise. He 'is the finest political combination of hare and hounds the country has seen for some time.

GERMANY'S MARVELLOUS EXPANSION. In the course of a striking article in the Daily Mail, Mr. Norman Angell, the author of "The Great Illusion," says Germany's expansion has been the wonder of the world. Practically without the aid of colonies she has added 20,000,000 to her population—one-half the present population of Prance during a period in which the French population has actually diminished. Of all the nations in Europe she has cut the biggest swarth in the development of ' world-commerce, industry and influence. Despite the fact that she has hardly expanded at all in the sense of mere political dominion, a proportion of her population equivalent to the white population of the whole colonial British Empire make their living, or the best part of it, from the development and exploitation of territories outside her borders. Millions of Germans in Prussia and Westphalia derive profit from, or make their living out of, countries to which their political dominion in no wav extends. The modern German exploits "South Africa by remaining at home. Where, forsaking this principle, .he attempts to work through political power he ap- i proaches futility. German colonies are colonies "pour lire." The Government lias to bribe Germans to go to them; her trade with them is microscopic; and if the 20,000,000 who have been added to Germany's population since the war had to depend on their country's political conquests they would hava had to starve. What feeds them are countries which Germany lias never "owned," and never hopes to "own"—Brazil, Argentina, the United States, India, Australia, Canada, Russia, France and England. These are Germany's real colonies. Yet the immense interests which they represent, of really primordial concern to Germany, without which so many of her people would be actually without food, are for the diplomats and the soldiers quite secondary ones. They owe nothing to "Agadir incidents"; they are the work

of the merchant and the manufacturer in reality, quito unaided by Dreadnoughts. All the diplomatic and military conflict and rivalry, this waste of wealtH, the unspeakable foulness which Tripoli is revealing, are reserved for tilings which both sides to the quarrel could sacrifice not merely without loss, but with profit.