CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 19 June 1915, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

A PATHETIC APPEAL. No appeal made by Earl Kitchcnc, or Mr. Lloyd George, could be more impressive than that which conies from a soldier who is lighting in the trench 's in Flanders, lie says that all through the misery of the last bitter winter the troops hung on cheerfully, firmly believing that every workshop was going night and day, and that every man was either joining the new armies or toiling to equip them. Their remorse when they discovered that men were haggling about halfpence and half-hours of work was pi(able in the extreme. The soldier concludes by saying: "If we fail now. and the whole costly business has to be begun again, if there's another long winter in tiie trenches ahead of us, if we have to see thousands more of our pals rent with shell ana bomb, and pumping their life blood out t hl'i: n;_; 11 a. bayonet thrust and crawling back with shattered limbs from the firing line, if we have to endure aiiotle l )' ghastly retreat, and wait back to backto be blotted out trying to cheer oiu hist minutes with the' thought that even if we are mopped up. another army will come soon or late and |iay oil'the score, the hardest and blackest and bitlere-t thoughts in our minds will be that we weren't beaten by the Germans,'"but that our own people had failed us, that .ve wore counted for less tlciu ilu- price ot some pots of beer, that we weren't chancy (o u i :i . ( hat our backer.-, laid

IU'SSfAN JXDUSTKY. Russia s salvation during (his conilici is thai; her Empire, potentially at least, is sclf-sullicicnt, writes Mr. .Meredith Atkinson in an Australian paper. Her peculiar economic organisation permits the continuance of her industries without serious modifications. Her raw materials are abundant, and she constitutes almost the only market, for the products of her own factories. With great energy, the leaders of her commerce have overconic most of the difficulties arising out of the present disturbance. The shortage of coal has been met by using substitutes, and by speeding up the output from Southern Russia. The stoppage of Gorman imports has been met by the establishment of newft&ssian tnanu-

centage of mills remain unemployed. For obvious reasons, Poland is excluded from Uh'so considerations. It lias been estimated lliibt only 4 per cent. of industrial workers remained unemployed after tliree months of war, and about 18 per cent, were suffering .from sliortfime, but in many factories Hie capacity of the workmen lias risen.