TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8347, 1 February 1907, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

A cablegram a few days ago stated J that taximeters and sixpenny cab I fares have'been officially introduced iin London. Taximeters are used in I some of the Continental cities, and . are said to work admirably. By means of them the fare sees exactly how far he has been driven and what he has to pay, with the result that an efficient check is put on the cabman's propensity to overcharge. The innovation has been opposed by the London cabmen. We are of opinion, says a Christchurch paper, that the time has come for making a collection of representative New Zealand verse. The country has been issuing] poetry in one form or another, and in doses of varying magnitude, since it became settled by a civilised race. In fact New Zealand has shown herself in a peculiar degree a verse-making land. She has never had any poets in the professional sense, men or women vwho have made poetry the business of their lives, and who have found in it the expression of their highest spiritual activities. But she has always had a considerable number of persons of poetic sensibilities and a certain amount of freedom and skill in versification. Her actual output in verse during the past half-cen-tury would frill many volumes. Much of it is in the form of books, 1 which, we fear, have passed into oblivion. Much appeared in the still more ephemeral form of newspaper pieces. In either case a good deal had been lost which deserved to be revived. In connection with the recent appointments to the Upper House the following resolution was carried at the last meeting of the Trade's and Labour Council at Christchurch : having in mind its years of strenuous advocacy of the abolition of the Upper House, also remembering the avowed intention of the late Right Hon. R. J. Seddon that he also had arrived at the conclusion that it must be ended, the sincerity of his conviction in this respect being borne out by the fact that no appointments had been made by the late Government for some considerable time and that several time-expired Councillors had not been re-appointed; be it therefore resolved that we express our bitter disappointment at, and most emphatically protest against the recent appointment of fourteen gentlemen, most ' of whom are wealthy citizens and whose interests are in many respects necessarily opposed to those of the wage-earners of the colony; further, we assert that the appointment of two wage-earners, however able they may be, if by way of reconciling us to the loss of as cherished reform, has signally failed, and is a reflection upon our intelligence as thinking men and women, arid one that will not readily be forgotte'h by the workers of this city." . Perhaps the most striking proof of the innate strength of the Russian Autocracy is that it has been able for the last twelve months to preserve the semblance of Imperial authority throughout the Czar's dominions. Russia has been for a long time past virtually in a state of rebellion. The right of Parliamentary Government has been extorted from the Czar; and the first Duma was so intent upon defying the autocracy that it missed its opportunity of doing more valuable work for Russia. But though the Czar was able to dissolve the Duma and to prosecute its members for daring to lift their voices in defence of the popular liberties, its dismissal was only the signal for an.outburst of disorder and revolutionary • violence unparalleled even in Russian history. Cities and rural districts alike have been scenes of bloodshed and rapine. Between the starving peasants, turning in desperation on their feudal lords, the anarchist assassins using bomb and revolver freely in the crowded thoroughfares, and the "black gangs" of ruffians employed by the authorities to cope with the rebels, neither property nor life have been safe for many a month in Russia. The Czar has had to face mutinies in his fleet, treason among his courtiers, sedition and revolt in the crack regiments of his army, an armed revolution in the second city of his Empire. Many of his most trusted advisers arid officials have been ruthlessly murdered, the revolutionaries have doomed him and his family to destruction, and in the words of a foreign observer who speaks from close- experience of this terrible crisis, "Russia is being ruled by a dozen secret governments, each of whTcn enjoys more authority than, the government of the Czar." Rheumo has cured thousands of sufferers from rheumatism, gout, sciatica, lumbago. It will cure you. Try it. All stores and chemists, ?/G and ijG. A positive cure.