CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 170, 17 January 1912, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

THE INKSPILLERS.

There is special delight in noticing the remarks of those bilious tourists who rush through *New Zealand in a week or two and revile us utterly when they return to "civilisation." We have already noticed the gentleman who cursed us wildly as a nation because he couldn't get good bacon here, and we had to speak about the great African lion hunter (Selous, wasn't it?) who violently objected because, while he was having a drink in an up-country bar, some "men in working clothes" were permitted to drink at the same bar, not knowing that he 'was of superior clay! It was this traveller who wailed that he couldn't get a comfortable bed in New Zealand, although, as was at the time remarked, he had slept on a boulder at the foot of an African kopje hundreds of times* A funny old German count the- other day attacked us dreadfully, and said, as far as we can remember, that the only decent men he had met in Australasia was a waiter who shook hands with him in sheer admiration of his appetite after he had consumed four helpings of ham and turkey and drunk four quarts of beer. He called us dirty and ignorant and inhospitable and ugly and flat-chest-ed, and so on, and rushed back to Europe while we were laughing. The latest dreadful stranger is from "Shick-awgo" (as he would probably say), and, as he is some kind of a millionaire, it is presumed- he is in a meat line. He damns Australia in a new book, and calls it a benighted, bankrupt country. He even gets angry at the gum trees, and pathetically remarks that they stink. "Degraded," "extortionate," "cankerous," "dirty," "gloomy" are a few of his pearls about Australia, and the poor fellow couldn't get the vegetables he wanted and the meat was fly-blown and the people something awful. He only stayed long enough to write a book, and the mosquitoes drove hjm home to Chicago, where there is no fly-blown meat, no stinks, no extortion, no socialism. As for New Zealand, it is merely bankrupt and ruined by socialism, and every business enterprise Is knocked on the head, by tHe Government, and so on and on. Both Australia and New Zealand are too kind to these globe-trotting freaks. We are learning to pull our forelocks and to bow and scrape before them. We cut tracks for them in the bush/in order that they may not tear their pants and so that they won't get "bushed." We load them with books, which they will tell their friends are all lies. They get fearfully angry when the average colonial does not spread his coat for a meat king's son to walk on and does not walk out of a pub backwards because the son of peer happens to be making a blotting pad of himself at the bar. It's all very sad and amusing, and gives author and journalist something to spill ink about. INDIA'S LOYALTY. The Rev. John Ings, a Baptist missionary who was' sent from Queensland to India some years ago, has made some emphatic statements regarding the loyalty of the Indian natives. Mr. Ings is spending a holiday in Sydney and he was questioned last week concerning Indian affairs by representatives of the daily newspapers. His work lies in East Bengal, he and his wife and a zenana lady being in charge of a district which has a population of 1,175,000. The majority of these people are Mohammedans, the smaller section being Hindus. "They say," Mr. Ings remarked, "the Mohammedans are loyal to the Government, but I do not believe it. They are simply awaiting an opportunity. They are getting as much as they can, and when they have obtained all they believe they can get their attitude may change. Lord Curzon says the natives are loyal, but I do not believe they are, that is, not in the sense we understand loyalty." What the natives seem to want more than anything else, according to the missionary, is education. Almost every man, he says, is crying out for the treatment of the Englishman, craving for higher education, since he has been living practically in the dark. The educational facilities offered to boys have been developed rapidly, and Mr. Ings states that the steps which are being taken to secure the proper education of girls is becoming popular. There are many signs of the awakening of India. The cost of labor is increasing fast, men who were paid 4d a day only three years ago now receiving Is a day. The results of the missionary work, Mr. Ings »ay«, are indirect, since the natives sel-

dom hasten to change tlieir religion, but the missionaries have no cause to feel discouraged, as they are laying the foundations of good work. Mr. Ings takes a hopeful view of the outlook for China. "There may t>e a few more bombs thrown," he said, "but the Government has the people well in hand." Probably the future of India will be happy enough if it is secured against interference from outside.