CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 208, 22 January 1913, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

OUR CALENDAR. The Taranaki Daily News calendar for tile current year is issued with to-day's paper. It is somewhat belated in making its appearance, but we hope it will prove none the less acceptable to our readers. In point of fact, the mechanical staff of the News lias been very unfortunate during the last few weeks, several of them being down with illness, and it has been ilillicnlt at times to keep faith with customers. Hence the lateness of the issue of the calendar, which we trust will be useful and serve, as another advertisement for picturesque Taranaki.

A POPULAR RESORT. A Wellington merchant wrote to the head of a New Plymouth firm some time ago that he was thinking of paying a visit to Taranaki's capital and would visit the mountain hostelry during his stay. He duly arrived and made straight for the mountain, with which he was so charmed that lie stopped there until the very last hour of his stay in the province. The New Plymouth trader never saw him. The southern merchant has now written apologising for not keeping his appointment, and intimating that he is returning in a short time with the whole of his 'family, who will stay at the mountain house while he transacts his business in town.

OUR GREATEST NEED. If New Zealand had even 5.000,000 British inhabitant, instead of 1,000,000. we could look with equanimity upon' the reorganisation of China and' upon the growing ambitions of Japan. To waste the fleeting years of peace is fatal: This vast mass of men in Asia only needs to be welded together by some timely depotism to constitute a living and actual, not a dormant and problematical, peril. What we need in the colonies —in New Zealand as in the Northern Territoryis men and still more men. settlement and still more settlement, until there is no waste land, no stifled industry, no sparse population, but strong British States, wealthy because highly productive, and unconquerable, because filled with loval and contented citizens.—Auckland HeraM. ' ''^l':

THE IRISH CROWN JEWELS. It was cabled from Loudon the other day that Mr. Pallace, a barrister, had applied to a Dublin magistrate for warrants for the arrest of the Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, and other members of the Cabinet in connection with the robbery of the Dublin Crown jewels, and that the magistrate had postponed consideration of the application. In July, 1007, on the eve of the visit of King Edward and Queen Alexandra to Dublin, it was discovered that the Irish Crown jewels, valued at £50,000. had been stolen, or at least has disappeared from Dublin Castle. No clue to the person who removed the jewels has been obtained, nor have they since been heard of. It was asserted last month that they had been returned, and the assertion has also been made from time to time that they had never been stolen at all, but merely put out of the way to prevent the installation of more Knights of the Order of St. Patrick by King Edward when in Dublin.

AX AMBITIOUS SCHEME. The Dunedin Star says that the agricultural colleges proposed to be established in each island are to be planned on ambitious lines, the expenditure contemplated being about £200,000. As Lincoln College to some extent meets South Island needs, the Government propose to go on with the North' Island college first. Before the matter is finally shaped a prominent member of the Government party will visit the Hawkesbury Training Farm, New South Wales, which is on the lines, it is stated, on which the New Zealand institutions will hi shaped. There the college accommodates 200 resident pupils. It has large farm buildings, lecture halls, class rooms, and laboratories for practical work in chemistry, physics, botany, entomology, bacteriology, and nature study; The farm includes 1000 acres under cultivation, and there are separate departments devoted to horticulture, poultry, farming, stock, pigs and dairying. The staff number nearly 30. ' ' .'

"COUNTRY RAGS." That energetic journal, the Eltham Argus, is still rapping Mr. G. V. Pearce over the knuckles for declaring that there were too many small newspapers operating against the interests of country ratepayers, and incidentally bringing a baselcs charge against an Eltham journalist who happens to be a member of the Legislative Council. "Mr. Pearce has as much right to hold to that opinion as other people have to nourish the idea that large landholders and traffickers in Maori leases are somewhat of an encumbrance on the earth, and stand in the way of bona fide settlement," says the Argus. "Fortunately this is a free country, and people are not sent to gaol for merely holding opinions. With regard to the multiplicity of country newspapers we need only poi?,t out tna't this is a matter guided purely by the law of supply and demand. If a newspaper is established and there afterwards proves to be no demand for itwell, the newspaper goes under and the newspaper proprietor loses his money: and that is the end of it. Would our friend Mr. Pearce pass a law prohibiting the enterprise of endeavoring to establish new newspapers in country districts? Would he like to crush out all small country newspapers, and compel everybody to advertise in and subscribe to the Dominion, the Wellington organ of large landholders? The complaint that there are too many country newspapers is really a, tribute to the intelligence of the people, but perhaps Mr." Pearce places no value on intelligence. That so many small towns in the Dominion have newspapers of their own is a proof bf the enterprise and spirit of the people."

VALUE OF COUNTRY PAPERS. Our Eltham contemporary proceeds: "In the course of his famous speech Mr. Pearce included the Manaia newspaper in his all-round condemnation of country journals. This was an unfortunate allusion—unfortunate for Mr. Pearce. The ratepayers of the Wainiate Plains have every reason to he grateful for the existence of their local newspaper, the Wainiate Witness. It was that journal that made the important discovci-v that the Hawera County Council and Hie Wainiate Road Board, because of their attachment, were losing hundreds of pounds annually, and had been doing so for something like fifteen years. When it was proved hevond all doubt that the Witness was right the desire for a severance was quickened, the road board was severed from the Hawera county, and the Wainiate county created. The ratepayers have been great .miners by the change, and they owe it entirely to having their own local newspaper to guard their interests. The part that the Eltham Argus played in the matter of the creation of the Eltham enmity is known to most of cur readers, and that it was doing a good service for (he district very few will now deny. The small country newspapers of New Zealand are constantly doing good work for the Dominion. They can° ventilate matters which, though of first-class im-

portance to certain districts, are too small for the big dailies eo deal with. They can, and do. expose and prevent the action of would-be tyrants. They tfii, and do, light for the freedom and liberties of the people. The country newspapers deserve well at the hands of the people, and the petty piping of all the political Pearces in the Dominion will not prevail against them." NOT VERY CHEERING.

The bank returns, as a whole, are not very cheering. The exports are expanding, prices for our staple products are excellent, and yet the credit balances of the customers of the banks are nearly half a million less than they were a year ago, and the demands on the banks for accommodation have increased. It is a strange set of conditions, sufficiently so to make one view the matter with some concern. Another conclusion to be arrived at is that the banks need fresh capital, and bankers themselves realise this, for the Hank of Xew Zealand is to obtain authority to secure fresh capital, and no doubt the National Bank will now put into effect the announcement made last year that additional share capital will be obtained. The Bank of Australasia is issuing fresh capital .and some other Australian banks are doing the same.— Dominion.

TURK I Sir LOSSES. Renter's represcntaivo. writing on November 28. said:—To make an "accurate estimate of the numbers which the Turks have lost is very difficult, but it seems safe to say that over 200.000 have become ineffective as Ottoman soldiers since the beginning of the war. Whole divisions in Macedonia have surrendered or laid down their arms, and many thousands have been captured in battle, while those who have died fighting or from cholera probably number from forty to fifty thousand. Those who have become ineffective from lack of nourishment or care—due to the fault of the Government officials or of their own officers—are estimated, according to the statement of a Turkish staff officer, at 57,000 men, certainly not less, probably more. Despite these losses, which would give rise to such a state of exasperation in European countries as to make rebellion possible, the Turkish newspapers continuously echo the boast that Asia Minor can supply hundreds of thousands more recruits.

NEW FRENCH PRESIDENT. M. Raymond Poincare, who has been elected President of France, has long hecn marked anions the '•'coming men" of his country. A man of wide reading and considerable scholarly distinction, he hesalso the great advantage of long experience in bo tit branches of the Legislature and in the Cabinet-room. In a series of -[;eei;il article on "Europe's Leading Statesmen" appearing in the Daily Mail Year Rook for 1913, the author expresses the opinion that M. Poincare will write his name high among modern statesmen. He wants France to have her '''place in the sun," but is too experienced in foreign affairs to mistake truculent for enterprise. Born fifty-two years ago, he entered the law and worked up an extensive court practice. He was elected to the Chamber or Deputies when twenty-seven years old, and was Minister of Public Instruction at thinty-two. Subsequently he became Finance Minister, then Vice-Pre-sident of the Deputies (equivalent to what we term the Chairman of Committees), and became a Senator ten years ago. In January of last year M. Poincare was persuaded by his President to form a Ministry, and got together a team generally acknowledged to contain some of the strongest brains in France. Like the late Lord Salisbury M. Poincare allotted to himself the double burden of the Premiership and the Ministry of Foreign AO'airs-eertainly a n experience likely to prove of much value to himself and the nation in the high position to which he has now been called. European a flairs are just at the moment so very unsettled that the character and calibre <>t a new President of France have practically a world-wide concern.