CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 302, 15 May 1913, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

PATEA HARBOR. There is at least one Patea citizen who does not believe in the scheme recently formulated to improve the river port. He is, Mr. John Gibson, a prominent citizen, who, in a recent issue of the local Press, says, inter alia:—"ln the past the plans of Sir John Coode were departed from and many thousands of pounds wasted on what the public believed were works being carried out on that marine engineer's plans. After spending about £40,000 on so-called harbor improvements, it is found that the port is silting up owing to the obstructions on the western side of the river preventing the river from having its natural scour. The first work undertaken to damage the river was the wooden pier on the western bank with a short groin at the head at right angles to the river composed of large boulder stones. This, in the opinion of selfelected Patea marine engineers, was supposed to scour the river between the eastern groin and the wooden pier to a width of 200 feet. In effect, it counterbalanced the good of the groin on the eastern side, preventing the scour of the western bank, and accumulated sand until where there was a depth of four or five feet at low water there is now four or five feet of sand, and the channel considerably narrowed. The next work was a concrete pier on the western side, not on Sir John Coode's plans, but right across where the harbor should be. This work, also, instead of being an improvement, is another obstruction and sandgatherer. A few weeks ago we had the assurance that any further work to improve the river would be carried out only on Sir John Coode's plans. Now another harbor improvement scheme is sprung upon us like a jack-in-the-box, and the scheme is to be rushed before there is time to examine it, and the sum of £25,000 to £35,000 is required, and the ;j settlers are to be asked to agree to a loan to provide the interest. This scheme cannot and does not provide for, any deeper water outside the brealcwater—that can only be done by eon-, tinning the eastern groin further seaward. To remove three feet of sand we are asked to accept this plan and; find £35,000 to carry it out. Now the river, if not interfered with and confined by the works on the western side,'

will scour a width of 200 feet. Then why not remove the obstruction that prevents the scour and accumulates the sand in the channel ,and let the river do the work instead of putting another obstruction in the river at a cost of £35,000 and a tax on the harbor district for ever?" AGGRESSIVE MILITARISM. It may be that Canada and the United States will one of these days be at war. • However regrettable such a contingency ' may be, it is nevertheless possible. If such an emergency arises, is New Zealand to declare war against the United States with her expeditionary force of 8000 men? The idea is absurd. It seems to us that the Hon. James Allen, in his love for notoriety, has carried this farce quite far enough. If his Government has no control over his indiscreet and babbling tongue it is about time that the people of New Zealand began to express disapproval of the ridiculous twaddle he is talking, even to the extent of repudiating this aggressive military policy altogether. When the necessity to protect our own shores from invasion arises the manhood of this country can be depended upon to fall into line in defence of their hearths and homes, but it is quite a different matter altogether to have a Defence Minister eager for the limelight touring the world and "skiting" about what he and his standing army ol 8000 men will do when war breaks out in some place wholly remote from us. It is quite enough for us in the meantime to prepare ourselves for our own defence. There is no necessity to assertively parade an eagerness we do- not feel to go forth and do battle for other countries thousands of miles distant.—Wellington Times. LIFE AFTER DEATH. It was recently cabled that papers: by medical authorities read at the Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons announced that life was sustained in the tissues of animal organisms four years after the animals from which the tissues had been taken had died. Ono physician declared that there was a probability of an ultimate demonstration that life was sustainable in tissues as long as the animal would have lived normally. Medical research has in recent years made wonderful progress in regard to the investigation of animal tissues. By the researches of Dr. Alexis Carrel, who was recently awarded a Nobel Prize of £BOOO, "the boundary of experiment in the prolongation of life," remarked one commentator," "has been pushed forward another degree." "The results obtained by Tuffler, Magitot and myself," said Dr. Carrel, "demonstrates that human tissues preserved in cold storage could be used in human surgery. If it were possible," he said, "to transplant, immediately after death the tisiues and organs which compose the body into other identical organisms, no elemental death would occur, and all the constituent parts of the body would continue to live. The organs of the animal which continued to live for ten hours in Dr. Carrel's laboratory were taken by him and placed in the solution which a very infinity of experiments had taught him was the one required. The blood had to be aerated continuously by the artificial respiration supplied from oxygen pumps, and the desired temperature was maintained through the laboratory equip- j ment, much as it is preserved." Dr., Carrel has succeeded in separating from the body and brain and nervous system of a warm-body animal that animal's heart, stomach, liver, intestines, kidneys and bladder, and of having these organs live and functionate under his eyes for ten hours. As the culmination of many weary months of progressive experimentation, he had in his laboratory a dog's heart beating 120 beats a minute, just as though nothing had happened, a dog's stomach digesting food as tflough- the brain were in its seat directing the whole operation, a dog's intestines and kidneys functionating as though the surgeon's knife had never been n*ar —an entire system of organs alive outside the body, an animal killed and its viscera living. ENGLISH PATRIOTISM. "The. patriotism of Englishmen has something of the ardor and sacredness of deep religious feeling," says Professor Franz, the well-known Shakespearean authority. The professor maintains that British methods of education and training are superior to German methods when judged from th» standpoint of the production of citizens and men. His geni eralisation is that Germans may stand above Britons in knowledge, but do not i stand above them in culture, "which coni tains the secret of how to unite men and how to rule them." He describes the German nation as a merely mechanical mixture of the heterogeneous elements that make it up, and says that it there- : fore fails to react as a unit in national . affairs. Perhaps the explanation of this : phenomenon is that the German nation is still very young.