CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 37, 3 July 1914, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

RUSSIA AND CLKMANY. Russia, it is said, expects to be fully prepared for war in MIT, and tlie end of that year is the earliest date at which tlie liusso-Gernian commercial treaty tan be renounced by either Power. Geimany has officially expressed her intention of letting it run on; but Russia is apprehensive of the influx of German rye, stimulated 'by the German system of premiums on the export of grain, and has just attempted to check it by imposing an import duty; Russian industry, in spite of its rapid growth, under the influence of French and Belgian capital, is also still apprehensive o[ German competition; and there are rumors that the Russian Government contemplates a check on the supply of cheap labor to the eastern provinces of Prussia by raising the cost of passports to the Polish harvesters on whom the agrarians of those districts have come, to depend. The money:; earned bv these laborers, like, those brought back from South America by returning Italian immigrants, is an appreciable element in the national income, but doubtless the Russian Protectionists would gladly hamper tlie German grain-growers and keep their cheap labor at home. A tariff war, though not incompatible with pacific relations otherwise has already —in tlie nineties of the last century—intensified friction of another kind between Germany and Russia, and may easily do so again tour years hence.

OUR RAILWAY CONSTRUCTION. It is obviously impossible for us to rival the activities of the. American countries of vnst area, but we can certainly do much more than we have done. The Canadian railway mileage for some time increased at the rate of thirty per cent, yearly. From April, 1012, to March, 1913, only 52 miles of line were opened for traffic ill New Zealand, increasing the total length of the system by barely 2 per cent. —Auckland Herald.