THE WEEK, THE WORLD, AND WELLINGTON.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9080, 2 May 1908, Page 6

THE WEEK, THE WORLD, AND WELLINGTON.

(By Frank Morton.)

JOHN AND JONATHAN. The cabled information that Sir William White—possibly the most eminent authority now living on the general question of naval architecture—has declared the American navy to be sceond only to the British, and "ship for ship, equal to anything in the world," will be received with satisfaction by most English folk. To the studiou3, it will also furnish food for thought. It is a very pretty theory that a close alliance between England and the United States would enable the English-speaking races to control, and if ncessary to, whip the world pretty, though unproven; and it is a very pleasant hope tlutt some day soon that alliance will be accomplished. But in the close circles of diplomacy no such hope is seriously cherished. Diplomats know that, despite present ties of language, and some distant ties of kinship, national good feeling between England and America rests always on a very precarious edge. The English, as a nation, are not at all popular in the United S*,ates; not nearly so popular, for instance, as*the French are. Also, it is probable that in 1908 there is a more genuine friendliness between England and Francs, and certainly a more genuine friendliness? between England and Italy, than there ever has beeu between England and America. When the English National Anthem is perfunctorily played at a public gathering in New York, it is generally played amid a silent company; but the German Natitonal Anthem seldom or never fails to arouse a certain enthusiasm. Any close and inviolable alliance between England and the United States is at best a distant possibility.

Meantime, the American navy is the second best in the world; and behind the American navy there are the great disorderly wealth, the restless activity, the boundless ambition, the splendid energy and the inveterate childish vanity *of America. Amerioa is the problem, and she is still, in some sense the hope, of the world. The United States is a strange and disconcerting country. Its resources are so vast as to appear almost limitless.. Its people, whatever their faults and whimsies, are passionately patriotic and progress, ive. Its history isjat least|inspiring. It is self-supporting and self-suffi-cing—or it easily could be so at need. Its men are the most greedy and eager, and its women the most independent, of any men and women in the world. And yet, Pluto is Tsar of that wide country: a Tsar more merciless and arbitrary than ever ground down the Russians. Behind all that splendid wealth and progress lie misery, squalour, and infinite unrest. Conditions in America are ripening for revolution. Wherefore, it ia possible that stress of her home affairs may keep her from dangerous intriguing with other great powers. Were it otherwise, any serious breaking-away from the Monroe Doctrine might easily make America a cause of grave disturbance in the world.

THIi SLUMP OF SOCIALISM

There seems to be good reason to hope (or to fear: have it your own way) that in New Zealand there has already commenced what one may call the recoil of Socialism. A section of the public has lost all faith in these fine new remedies; and that section grows daily. Apart from what is best described as the pro-fessional-labour class, there has been very slight sympathy with the Blackball miners. The feeling is becoming general that experiment has gone far enough. Tha democratic wave of which we have heard so much is breaking into a war of classes. Cool men everywhere are beginning to apply the test of facts to these applauded theories, and to apply it remorselessly. A couple of days ago, I was talking to a man from London. He has come out prepared to admire our institutions and basic in the sun of our notorious prosperity. He had been considering the case of our workingman, whom he had heard of as extraoridnarily joyous and free. He had spent some time in our four biggest centres. And I found him making grudging admissions, and not admiring anything in particular. "I cannot see how your workers are better-off tban English workers," he said. "Over" in London, a good plumber easily earns his tenpence an hour, and some earn more. Do you suggest that plumber is better-off with fifteenpence an hour in Wellington? I only take the plumbers as an instance. I think that a good worker in England is every bit as well off as your average good worker here. The cost of living with you is much more than it is in England: probably double; but no one can pretend that the opportunities of life are wilder and more numerous. Your factory-workers may be a little better off than ours. But you must remember, on the other hand, that some of our factory-workers are better off than yours. Skilled operatives in the china-factories in Staffordshire, skilled operatives in the lace-factories at Nottingham, and skilled hands in some other factories, are better paid than any of your factory hands. Of course, I am reckoning that the man is best paid whose earnings bring him most. In the thriving centres at home, the workers live as a rule, extremely well. The have comfortable homes, many of them have money banked, and most of them are able to take their yearly holiday. Oet right out of .your head any idea that the English worker of to-day is in any sense a depressed or downtrodden person. A good deal of misconception has arisen from the fact that there is much distress in squalid streets and slums in the big cities. That is inevitable, ns things go. Tne starvation you hear of is not among sturdy English workers, though. Into the cities coir.es the off-scouring of the rural districts and the smaller towns. These people rarely have a trade, and they become the victims of the sweaters' shops, when they fall victims to nothing worse. The English peasant has been dipossessed of the land, and that is the thing that drives him to the cities. Slum misery seems to be an evil inseparable from great populations, in any case. New York and Chicago match the

misery of London. You are doing well in New Zealand; but you're only beginning yet, and if you let yourselves think that you have attained unto perfection, you will be disillusioned."

However that my be, there can be no doubt that what we in New Zealand know as state-socialism has an increasing host of critics in the centres of population. "State-capital-ism is not really socialism at all: Socialism has never yet been really tried in New Zealand: what we want is Revolutionary Socialism." I know all those quibbles of the neck-or-no-thinpc socialists perfectly well. I am only discussing now the thing the average man in New Zealand understands by socialism. In that there is a slump. The Government is explaining that it is not socialistic. The Government urgan, the J" New Zealand Times," very wide awake and insistent under its new editor, jibes savagely at socialism in its every issue. On the whole, it seems that we are approaching a time of change.