TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8376, 9 March 1907, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

"Forty years ago," says the West- J minster Gazette, under the heading, "The Angler's Paradise," "there was not a single trout in all the length and breadth of New Zealand. To-day New Zealand trout are famous all over the world for their size and numbers, and thousands of fishermen come every year simply and solely to fish —to fish all the time and do nothing but fish. There is no doubt at all, says a country gentleman, about New Zealand being the angler's paradise. Everything prossible is done to help him and encourage him and make him comfortabe. Hotels in some parts exist solely for him, hotel managers are always ready to give advice, and in every town and village fishing tackle abound, where poiite proprietors are ready with rods, flies, baits, and information of all kinds about the state of the rivers, the fish in them, the sort of fly to be used, and everything else that the would-be fisherman may want to know. What a pity it is that New Zealand is so far away!"

"It would make a pretty inquiry for some ingenious statistician," says the London Globe, "how far the sudden growth of immigration into New Zealand was stimulated by the football tour of last season. It is clear, from details just published, that the increase for the year, which, reached the unprecedented total of 29,500, occurred in a large proportion during the months following the great successes of the fifteen in England; and, in all seriousness, the colony never had so persuasive an advertisement among the classes most likely to emigrate as that triumphant football procession. The privileges of Empire our people do not understand, but their intellect, interest, and imagination are easily captivated by 'anything with a ball in it.' "

"The present mainstays of New Zealand are nothing more substantial than an active Tourists' Department and borrowed money." So spoke the Lord Mayor of Melbourne to an interviewer a few hours after his return from New Zealand. Mr Weedon was very emphatic in his opinions and conclusions. "Granted that an active tourist department is a valuable asset," he went on, "it is not in itself sufficient to ensure lasting prosperity. And borrowed money! — well, borrowed money has always behind it a very uncomfortable day of reckoning. New Zealand is certainly a very beautiful country, and it is undoubtedly well governed on a small scale. It is that very smallness that is the country's drawback. Furthermore," Mr Weedon proceeded, "1 am afraid that the average New Zealander is small-minded and altogether too self-contained. So used are the New Zealanders to hearing themselves praised, that they are in danger of becoming very much too selfcontented. Throughout my tour I never lost an opportunity of reminding the New Zealand people of Australia's peculiar advantages. I am afraid that the information very often fell on deaf ears. There seems to be a great -lack of reciprocity to Australia on the part of New Zealand, almost amounting to antipathy."

"I believe," writes Sir Mortimer Durand, "that never since the revolution has there been so much good feeling between England and the United States as there is now." He states that there is nothing but goodwill in England towards the United States, and that this feeling has been consistently shown by the King. Any feeling that may exist in America of English unfriendliness, Sir M. Durand is founded upon misconception, and he refers especially to the attitude of England during the war of the revolution. That war, he says, was thoroughly unpopular, and he cites the fact that although Pitt's eldest son had just entered the army Pitt withdrew him from the service, as he would not permit his son to fig'ht against his countrymen in the colonies. That England carried on the war with mercenaries has always created an intense prejudice in the minds of Americans. Sir M. Durand points out that it was necessary to hire mercenaries because George 111. could not get Englishmen to fight against those whom they regarded as their own people. Yet as showing that this disinclination to fight was not due to any lack of patriotism, a few years later when England was engaged in her great struggle with Napoleon there was no difficulty about enlistments. ;