VARIOUS CABLES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8392, 9 April 1907, Page 5

VARIOUS CABLES.

CIVIL SERVANTS AND UNIONS. Received April 8, 10.16 p.m. PARIS, April 8. , A small minority of civil servants are claiming the right to form trade unions and to strike. M. CLEMENCEAU'S BILL.. Received April 8, 10.20 p.m. PARIS, April 8. M. Clemenceau, in a letter to the Teachers' Association, states that his Bill, permitting civil servants to form associations, entitles them to take legal action against arbitrary administrative proceedings. Beyond this it was impossible for any Government to go, because a civil servant is a member of an hierarchy wherein he possesses privileges not possessed by the ordinary worker. His salary is fixed by law, and his employment is steady and promotion is not affected by an economic crisis. He was not entitled to take concerted action or break his contract with the nation. This was a positive legal offence. Official, associations cannot be admitted to the Labour Exchange since they do not fall,| like the ordinary workmen, under the law of supply and demand. MILITARY TRAINING. Received April 8, 10.23 p.m. LONDON, April 8. A National Service League manifesto, signed by Lord Roberts, Lord Milner, and others, recommends Mr R. B. Haldane not to await a crisis before giving territorials a half year's training, but to endeavour to make such training forthwith compulsory on all able-bodied males of military age. > A GENEROUS OFFER. Received April 8, 11.50 p.m. ' NEW YORK, April 8. Mr Peter Widener, a tramway magnate, offers two million sterling to found an art museum at Philadelphia,! provided the City provides and furnishes a site at Fairmount. MR CARNEGIE'S BEQUESTS. Received April 8, 8.14 a.m. NEW YORK, April 7. Mr Andrew Carnegie has given a further £1,200,000 to the Carnegie Institute, for the purpose of technical schools for sons and daughters of mill-owners. Mr Carnegie directs the Art Department of the Institute not to purchase old masters, but modern paintings that are likely to become old masters. HUGE JAPANESE BATTLESHIP. Received April 8, 8.37 a.m. LONDON, April 7. Japan is ordering in England a 21,000 ton battleship,at a cost of two and a-quarter millions sterling. (The displacement of the Dreadnought is 18,000 tons).

THE SWETTENHAM INCIDENT. Received April 8, 8.37 a.m. LONDON, April 7. The Standard states that Lord Elgin, Secretary of State for the Colonies, has decided not to publish the documents relating to Sir J. A. Swettenham's resignation of the Governorship of Jamaica, despite the promise of Mr Churchill, Under-Sec-retary for the \Colonies.

LUGGAGE THEFTS. MANY ARRESTS MADE. Received April 8, 8.37 a.m. ROME, April 7. The Turin police discovered a railway men's organisation to rob luggage. Many arrests have been made. POET AND SCIENTIST. Received April 8, 8.37 a.m. LONDON, April 7. Several congratulatory addresses and many telegrams were handed to Lord Lister and the poet Sir Algernon Swinburne, on the occasion of their birthdays. Lord Lister received congratulations from a thousand Danish doctors. •* (Lord Lister is famous for his discoveries with regard to the antiseptic system of treatment in surgery. He was Surgeon-Extraordinary to the late Queen, and has held many high posts in the medical and educational World.)