CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 171, 19 January 1914, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

A DOLEFUL STORY. Writing to friends in Dunedin (states the Otago Daily Times), an olliccr on one. of tho cruisers belonging to the Australian Xavj speaks rather dolefully of the service. Ile.says it is most gulling to serve under some of the officers, largely owing to their incompetency, the result being over eighty desertions" from one of the cruisers within a period of eighteen months, whilst the percentage of desertions from the other vessels of the fleet is also high. The cost of maintaining the Australian ileet appears to be causing ■?. good deal of misgiving in certain quarters, with the result that spasmodic attempts to curtail expenditure in certain directions are regarded with disfavor by those who clamor for efficiency .regardless of expense.

MAXUFACTUni X(; 1)1 A .MOXDS.

Scientific men in Europe are. talking hopefully of the manufacture of diamonds of large size in the near future. ; Professor Lummer, of Breslaii. has succeeded in liquefying carbon by heating it with electricity in a vacuum, aiid ho is how busy devising a method of repeat, ing his experiment on a large scale/ The experts declare that if he can secure drops of liquefied carbon, they will crystallise'into "natural diamonds," since Nature's process will have been repeated. It is not generally known that tho world's greatest engineers look with )covetous eyes at the diamond, which would make an ideal bearing for certain purposes if it could be found big enough—and cheap enough. Professor Lummer may pleaso the engineers, even if he fails in find favor in the eyes of the millionaires who' own diamond mines. "NO'EKCUMIIIIANCRS." Complaints are still being -made in Australia of the use of those shameful words, "no encumbrances." I>v employers who want "married couples" for work on farms and stations. The correspondent of the London-Times, who drew attention to this matter in a. series of letters three years ago, stales in an article published recently that families are still "cruel hardships" in some parts of the Commonwealth. "The remedy,'' he says, "is the provision of cottages'for married farm hands. The small farmer says, often truly enough, that ho cannot afford it; and he is certainly so exploited by the middleman (as a Koval Commission m the. State has just been pointing out) that he dues not often get much more than a living out of his produce as it is. But there are quite enough big landowners to set an example, and (o absorb all tho families likely to he available for some years." The correspondent adds that the. problem can be attacked at its root by "the importation en a larjfe scale of boys, no matter from what source, so long as they are considered by experienced physicians capable of being built up with good food and good training into steady and hardy countryfolk." The boys will "see to i't that families, and homes for them, are provided when the time, comes." But in the meantime the married man on the spot needs relief.