CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 206, 28 February 1914, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

lIUMAX NATUKK. The one everwhelming fact in connection with all human relations is that the human being is in varying degrees predatory or accumulative. The great landlord has usually become 90 because of his natural instinct. The opponent of landlordism is just as predatory in his instincts. He desires to handle the other fellow's accumulations merely on ethical and sentimental grounds. When you have killed human instincts, ambition, the love of power, the passion for possession, the deeply-implanted desire to "have and hold," you have destroyed a nation and made it a collection of nonentities that simply atrophies in discontented sameness and disappears Auckland Observer. THE MONEY MARKKT.

The sudden easing of the London money market and the great success of colonial loans have had their reflex in New Zealand. Enquiries made among prominent merchants, hankers and others concerned in the money and property market show that there has been a definite easing of financial conditions. Will the improvement last? Enquiries were directed the other day towards getting an answer if possible, and the replies were hopeful. There seems (says the Auckland Star's correspondent) a general agreement in banking circles that at the end of tho financial year, March 31, the rates 011 overdrafts will have to be reviewed. They vary from s'/» to (i per cent., according to security, with occasional higher charges, according to the borrower's stability, and have stood at this height for two years.

INDOLKNT MAORIS. A lamentable aspect of Maori lift- in New Zealand at tlx; present time is the lust f oi' amusement and tin* encouragement given to indolence. A few years* ago tin; natives of the Wairarapa cropped their lands and grew sullieient quantities of potatoes, maize, melons and pumpkins to maintain tliem during the greater portion of the year. To-day these natives, ov a large portion of them, are content to ride about in motor ears, attend picture-shows and race meetings, and squander the remnant of tlicir estate in riotous living. Tlie.y lmve 110 ambition, no desire to cultivate their land, no thought for the future of their race. Under such conditions, it is easy to prophesy what the future will lie. In a very few years the native population will become a charge upon the 'State. It is tlie duty of tho Government, while it offers every facility for the profitable occupation of native, lamia, to see that the natives are not permitted to fritter away their estate, and that they recognise their responsibilities us citizens of the Dominion,-Wairarana' Age.