TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8291, 20 November 1906, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

The Imperial Parliament will shortly have two submarine railway tuunels tu consider. Tho Dover- Oalias aoheme, which is about to be formerly resusqitated by an influential combination of English and Frenoh capitalists; will be followed Eo Westminster by a revised outline of an old plan for nutting a double railway < tunnel under St. George's Channel, to connect with the north of Ireland. The line would start from the neighbourhood of Stranraer, 87 miles south-west of Glasgow, and rise at Larne, in County Antrim, 23 mi!es from Jielfaßt. The project has been regarded as difficult hitherto, owing to the existence of a deep ohasm in the narrow part of the channel, bat this objection, it appears, has been overcome by an alteration in the route. The construction of the tunnel would cost about £10,000,000, and oooupy thirteen years. The English railway workers have begun to hold meetings all over the country, in pursuance of their national movement to secure shorter hours and higher wages. The average pay for all grades of employees on the railways at present is calculated at only 25s per week. An in crease of this to 27s 6d would add

£4,000,000 to the total expenditureof the companies 0:1 wages, and ft simultaneous reduction in working,, would necessitate the permanent employment of 50,000 more men, and bring up the yearly addition to < the pay bill of £7,000,000. The. oompanies, it need hardly be said,, are much concerned at the prospect of having to meet this extra oatlay, when, with their utmost exertions, they are only able to pay from 3Ja to S}4 per oent. on the bulk of their stook. The men, who may count on a good deal of public support, point out that the majority of the companies are overcapitalised, but are not on that account entitled to resist fair demands improvement in theconditions of work on their lines.

With all h's bigJ[reputation foe hustle it is doubtful if Uncle Sam is in the same street as Canada in that particular line, says the Christohurch Truth. Everything Canada takes up seems to have her whole-hearted enthusiasm devoted to it, and she displays as much energy, as a oat ohasing its tail. The manner in which she has treated the exhibition is a veritable objeot lesson in completeness and enterprise which would make many other of the colonies hide their faces in shauie. Despite its enormous size,, and the faot that it is an exhibition in itself, her display was in perfect readiness on the openingday of the Big Fair, and no trouble or expense had been spare* that it should be so. Canada isproud of the fact that she oan produoe nearly everything on earth,, from a toothpick to a motor-oar, and she doesn't believe in hiding her light under a bushel, and accordingly she seized upon the opportunity of impressing Australasia, through the medium 0? the Exhibition, with great promptitude, and ber efforts must naturally result in great benefit to herself, who has forcibly demonstrated by the completeness of ber exhibit that Canada isn't at all a land of white weary wastes t»nd blizzards. 1

The agitation of "Africa for the Africans" has broken out in a newdirection, this time in the form of demands by the Natal natives for theacknowledgment of so-oalled "rights." That some of these "rights" may be admissible nnder oongenial circumstances may readily be admitted* but the importancegiven to the "right to boy guns" throws all other claims into theshade. For the "right to bus is one which no oivilised people oonld possibly aooord to> savages, for reasons that must be self-evident. The safety of Europeans in a savage country depends upon their possession of superior weapons, and unless Natal is to be evacuated by its British settlers, that superior arming must be rigidly maintained. Problems which involve the poblio safety cannot be discussed as aoademio propositions, and in< making this claim the Ethiopian, agitators go to the very core of the! matter. The recent rebellion was orushed by the superior weapons of the British colonists, and (he lesaon has evidently not been lost. Only the lesson has been different to what" was anticipated. The native' tribes, convinced of their weakness. with spear and assegai, want tobuy guns. There can be but onei motive. The Empire has not yet seen the lust of the Black Peril irk Sooth Africa; Natal has only experienced the beginning of it.