TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8357, 12 February 1907, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

When a deputation of Taranaki settlers told the Minister of Railways, on Saturday, that there was a great shortage of trucks for carrying metal in Taranaki, Mr Hall-Jones replied that if the people would only be prepared to use trucks expeditiously when they got them, there would not be nearly so much outcry about shortage of rolling stock The point was that the trucks were all required during the summer. All the timber, produce, and stock had to be carried in the summer, and the local bodies wanted to carry metal at the same time. If they had enough trucks to meet requirements at that time of the year, they would have hundreds lying idle for ten months of the year, and they would have to be paid for by the ratepayers. The de putation mentioned that thirty trucks .were required for a fortnight to carry 1,300 yards of metal. This Mr Hall-Jones regarded as an illustration of unnecessary delay in using trucks.

If the present British Government has achieved fame in no other direction, it has at least been conspicuous for the success attending its efforts to whittle away to almost impalpable nothingness the military potentialities of the community which avows in stirring song and dance that it never, never, never, shall be slaves. Whole regiments have been made to vanish into the stilly night of historic oblivion, and land defences have been uprooted and sold for rubble and scrap-iron. We now learn that pom-pom guns (the most useful guns employed by either side in the South African campaign) are to be withdrawn from the Army; and probably next week we shall be told that the long-suffering defensive ,organisation is to be deprived of its rifles and bayonets.

' One never knows exactly where Mr John Burns, President of the Local Government Board, will turn up next (says the London Tribune). A few days ago he was engaged in rescuing some children from a watery grave. The other night he was at a fire in the Clapham road. "Last night," writes a Tribune representative, "I saw the right hon. gentleman in the House of Commons at half-past ten, and again at one o'clock this morning, I came across him on the Embankment adjacent to Charing Cross bridge. The Cabinet Minister was scarcely recognisable, though he had but turned up his coat collar. He had been making a round of visits to Salvation and Church' Army she!-' ters, and he was at this moment about to mingle in the wretched crowd that nightly gathers at the Salvation Army rendezvous under Charing Cross bridge. Mr Burns believes in what he sees with his own eyes, and he fully realises that he must see much in this way if he is to deal effectively with our social system."

Of late years a custom has grown up in Victoria which, the Christchurch Press thinks, might well be copied injNew Zealand. On what is known as Foundation Day—January 26th, the anniversary of the foundation of the Mother State of Australia—the Melbourne Chamber of Manufactures, assisted by the Australian Natives' Association, has encouraged shopkeepers to make a special display of Australian-made goods, with the idea of showing the public the scope of Australian manufactures and of extinguishing the prejudice against them that still exists. This year a special effort was made, in view of the admirable Exhibition of Australian Manufactures now being held in Melbourne, and the committee of the exhibition offered prizes for the best-dressed shop window in which Australian goods were attractively displayed. Forty-five firms, having sixty-three shops, entered for the competition, which was divided into four classes—clothing of all sorts, boots and leather ware, provisions, liquors, etc., and furniture and ironmongery. The judges were prominent men and women, including the president and ex-president of the Chamber of Manufactures, and the Acting-Minister of Defence, who, with his wife, judged boots and leather.