CURRENT TOPICS.
LEPPEIiTOX JI'XCTIOX. Writes a Lepperton correspondent: r notice your remarks in a recent issue re Loppcrton Junction, which 1 think are very much to the point. There is another matter I would like to draw attention to. That ,is the way mail trains (especiallj' front the south) are drawn hi,' geiifrally Until the guard's van is nearly at the centre of the platform, presumably to brim.* it near to the porters' room, for their convenience in handling the luggage, while, passengers in the three or four carriages which are taken past the platform have to scramble down as best they can. sometimes into a pool of water. If the trains were stopped opposite the platform, as they should be, the platform is quite long enough for all ordinary traffic.
THE JAPANESE "PERIL." At a meeting at the University on •June 4, the Japanese and German perils were again emphasised as necessitating
New Zealand's naval defence and a, cooperation with Canada and the United, States. The Japanese peril seems very far-fetched (writes Dr. Thorp in the Wellington Times). New Zealand and Australia are unknown to nine out of every ten of the/ Japanese, population. Japan received no war indemnity from Russia and cannot afford to make war for fifty years. The inhabitants of New Zealand, in spite of all the alarmists, are unperturbed and throng' ,the picture shows and places of amusement with unabated zest. Japan can find expansion, and has sought it near at hand. The statistics from the last available Statesmen's Year Book are as follows: Japan—Total residents abroad, 326,161; Japanese and U.S.A. and colonies, 219,- i 000; Korea, 98,000; Great Britain and colonies, 4114; Russia and colonies, 4940. Note that there are more in Russian possessions than in English. Japan's rate of increase, 1.16 per cent.; England's rate of increase, 1.21 per cent. Density of population—England and Wales, 558 per square.mile; Belgium, 589 per square mile; China Proper, 266 per square mile, with dependencies 101 per square mile; Japan, 336 per square mile. The English in Japan alone number 2400. This is surely no very alarming situation, and the pity of it is that all this talk and scheme of defence is so liable to be interpreted in Japan as distrust, discourtesy and offence. I revert to my student days at Edinburgh, when in the class-room I had a Jap- on one side, a Chinaman not far off, a colored student from Jamaica in front, and a dapper little Indian (who carried off several medals) behind.. Here was a situation of international brotherhood in the pursuit of science, and we look to our universities to knit the nations together ,ip the intellectual and social uplift.of the people, along the same' line as the international science congresses.
HELPING THE SPECULATOR. ' The Crown has spent over six millions of borrowed money in purchasing and cutting up estates. The land rendered available for settlement at this heavy cost may be monopolised by speculators, who hold it only for profit, and make enormous gains by selling their interest from time to time; and the whole prbcess is rendered the more unjust and indefensible because the "unearned increment," out of which the speculator makes his profit, is created almost entirely by the expenditure of Government money and by the general progress of the country, to which the trafficker' in Crown leases has contributed practically nothing. We endorse most emphatic-, ally the scathing condemnation pron nounced by Mr. Justice Cooper on the system, and we urge that steps should be taken at once to enforce the law most stringently, and, if necessary, to amend it adequately, so as to protect the public interests against the machinations of the speculative trafficker in Crown leases, who is robbing with one hand the bona fide settlers and with the other hand the State—Auckland Star.
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Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 8, 10 June 1913, Page 4
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639CURRENT TOPICS. Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 8, 10 June 1913, Page 4
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