CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 27 January 1916, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

•"' CONSCRIPTION OF WEALTH." We believe that the persistent current use of the bothersome .phrase, "con-s-.-ription of wealth," is really symptomatic ot a general impression of fairness with which the average British community may be credited. They want the necessary sacrifice shared. They wish to see it applied to money as well as to men. They feel—and we are in complete agreement with them—that it is .manifestly improper that while the strongest and bravest ot the community are awav lighting, those who stay at home should live as New Zealanders are living to-day, in the full enjoyment of luxuries and pleasures, with more money than they ever had before, and niorcUian they know what to do with between race meetings, if a rensonahle share of war profits alone were diverted, on an equitable basis, into the public Treasury, a substantial step would be made towards removing those glaring inequalities which prompt men who are perfectly sane and serious to talk, perhaps vaguely, about ''conscription ol wealth."-—Lyttelton Times.

A 7RECCII POINT OF VIKW. Interviewed the other day, von Kluck let fall olio memorable sentence: "We shall win," ho said, "thanks to our unbounded capacity for work." A haunting saving this when one is confronted by" the' organisation of a warfare which promises to drag on indefinitely. Having failed to strike their decisive blow during the first months of war, the enemy now wooes victory by the taking of infinite pains. His work of underground fortification grows more ingenious and complicated daily. Not a stone, not an invention, to be nearer the murk, is left unturned which might serve the purpose of destruction. His asphyxiating gases are legion, and an army of industrious engineers devote all their energies to a research, the aim of which is a new and original destruction of life. These, candidly, are the methods of commerce translated on to another plane. It was the thoroughness of his work which made the Herman such a success in business, and the ways of the prosperous tradesman are with him still. He launches a new campaign with all the boom with which, of old, he would have opened a new department in a shop. No one. can beat him at advertisement: neutrals are flooded with Herman pull's of Herman superiority. Their diplomatic missions, to speak crudely to the point, arc glorified commercial travellers' adventures, and the accredited representatives of the glorious Empire behave abroad as if they were the agents of a shady firm under orders to stop at nothing.