CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 160, 6 January 1914, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

GOVERNMENT GRANTS. To a deputation repifscnting a country authority which waited upon him at Auckland a few days ago, tho lion. 1 W. Fraser, Minister for Public Works, gave some hints as to the best way of claiming Government grants. Remarking that the Department eouhl uot make advances against work not. certified to by the engineer, lia readily agreed that belated payment of progress amounts ■might place a local body in serious difficulties. He strong advised local bodies to make monthly returns of their government expenditure so that progress payments might be kept up within a reasonable time. "If a local body waits until it (jfcpends, say a grant of £'2ooo, and then expects to receive the amount within a few days, it has only itself to blame when delay occurs. The work has to be passed and certified to, the matter has to go to the Audit Department and through a lot of red-tape business, which is necessary before the amount can be forwarded. My.advice, in tho interests of all parties, is to send in monthly returns." LAND SETTLEMENT. Under tho land settlement policy of tlie Liberals, the opportunity was given ] to every farm laborer, whether the son of an old colonist or a new arrival in tho country, to become a well-to-do .farmer and employer in his own right (says, the New Zealand Times). There are in this country thirty, thousand prosperous farmers who would possibly never have owned an acre of land of their own if it had not been for tho considerate, beneficent and far-seeing legislation of the Liberals, which has not only enormously increased the number of producers but has also made those producers wealthy settlors. With the change of administration, that policy has ended. The most that the poor farm laborer can expect now, no matter how industrious and ambitious he may be, is to become a peasant owner of a j cottage and five acres which he is ex- | pected to pay for in So 1 /™ years. This, j wc suppose, is what Mr. Masse ,- calls j "settlement, more settlement, and still' more settlement." THOSE AWKWARD RETURN'S. The Lyttelton Times anticipates, not without reason, -that the strike will sooner or later bo blamed for the veryunsatisfactory state of the railway returns. But, as our contemporary- says: "Tho truth is that the returns from the lines that have been going from bad to worse under the Reform Government, and have now reached a condition from which recovery seems impossible before, the end of tiro financial year. At the beginning of November, when tho effect of the strike can have been hardly felt, the revenue for the year, compared with the corresponding period of last year, ! had increased' by only £ 10,962, while tlio expenditure had increased by £138,172. -The traffic had improved in 'e.verv direction, with the exception af the carriage of grain, and yet the percentage of expenditure to revenue had increased . from 70.2(i per cent, to 75.73 per cent. | If, as wo are now being told, the earnings show 'a greater decrease than was - anticipated as a result of the strike' , the position must be bad indeed. But tlio figures prove that it was extremely r bad before the industrial trouble began, 1 and we rather suspect that the misguid- " ed striker is being mado a -eapegoat i for the incompetent Minister." i A DISMAL PICTURE. ! Mr. W. Farquhar Young, writ ing fr»m 1 London ttj a friend iu Dunedin. says: I "You will see tliatd am back safely'from ;S»uth Africa, Had a successful time in every way; but it is an awful place—- - in fact, the further one travels the more [ ono's respect and lovo for dear old , Maorilaiui increases. I 'did' ail the East Coast, from Cape to Durban—East London, Qncenstown, Grahamstown, and i most of Natal, through tlws central part . of Blomefontein, and surrounding towns to Johannesburg, Pretoria, down to Kiinberlev, and all round. Oh! the dreary, ' monotonous wretchedness of the coun- ) try: the coarseness, mistrust and greed ~ of the strangely mixed population, black and white alike; their,dislike of everything British, their open boasting that 1 although the country was won from them the}' still rule it. lam alluding, . of course, to the Dutch. The worst of the boast is that its sting lies in its absolute truth. Things are different iu 1 the Natal, district, but the loyal portion [ of the people—loyal before and after the ( war—feel they have been handed bv the British Government over to their ene- ' mies' rule, much as the loyal M'alioatoan peoplo were handed over to Uteir German sympathisers in Samoa. It. is a sad thought that the conquest of South Africa cost Great Britain £200.0011,000, that the land was irrigated with the best blood of her people anil colonists, and yet one has to look vainly around for or a glimpse of 'that justice that usually follows their rule. And yet Britishers ' can be found. I am wrong. For 1200 miles of railway between Capetown, Pretoria and surrounding 1 ine.-s there are graves on each mi] o of your train—little Celtic crossesthousands of them, some white, black, the white signifying "killed in action," th« black "died from disease." The black seemed to predominate; monuments to the fatherly care and forethought (?) of a paternal Government and prudent intelligence and commissariat department. What a lesson the 1 Japs taught us in these matters! There are some things I've seen iu South Africa and in England that saps a good deal of ono's enthusiasm in singing 'Britons never will be slaves.' GRATIS PUBLICITY. Tho can'tention of the Keilding Star is that if the Wellington and other papers had not so freely advertised the opinion of Webb, Young) Semple, lliekey, Dowgrav and Co., and their wildest po-' litical beliefs, theiv would not have been any Red Feddism in the land. And vet to-day those same city papers are still freely advertising the grievances of j Yomig! Treat such enemies to the | common weal witih a silence that cannot I even be fell, (says the Star; and tliev | -will cease from troubling even their fei- j low disunionists: for they thrive upon ! a gratis publicity, which tb.' business j men in tho community hav« to pay for : at so much per inch. ' 'I ====== I