RAILWAYS IN RUSSIA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9115, 15 June 1908, Page 4

RAILWAYS IN RUSSIA.

The Russian railway lines now cover collectively a distance of 40,670 miles, having increased 1,172 miles since the year 1906. This increase is chiefly thanks to tie construction by the State of the northern line from St. Petersburg to Vologda. The whole network consists of three groups—27,266 miles belonging to the State, 11,440 miles worked by private cumpanie?, and the rssfc of narrow-gauge line In the course of the last year the construction of an additional 1,430 miles was begun, including 555 miles of second gau-j;e upon the Siberian line, 119 miles uniting Trans-Caucasia with Persia, and 220 miles in the confines of Finland. During the present year it is intended to construct 1,336 new miles of railway. The State purposes to build a line from Perm over the Ural, and from St. Petersburg to Petrozavodsk, while privato companies are asking for a concession to construct the Kachetinslcaya line, and to connect by line the stations Liubertzy and Arzamas. The most extensive project is, of course, the construction of the immense line from Nerchinsk to Kharbarovsk, in order to unite the Far East with European Russia by a railway constructed within the confines of the Empire. j

THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY. A cablegram published on Friday last stated that Mrs Longworth, President Roosevelt's daughter, was actively engaged in assisting Mr Taft in his Presidential campaign. It is wellknown that Mr Roosevelt is anxious that Mr Taft should succeed him and carry on his policy. "The facts and the philosophy of the situation alike point to a Republican convention dominated by the spirit of Mr Roosevelt," wrote the Washington correspondent of "The Times" (London) last year, "and ready, within a certain range of candidates, to nominate a candidate personally agreeable to the President, and pledged to continue his economic policies for curbing powers of corporation, regulating' swollen furtunes, and increasing Government control over the railways. . . . The facts brought together here indicate without a doubt that under Mr Roosevelt the President of the United States has become not only the executive of the Government, but the political leader—perhaps I should be more accurate if I said the people's leader. With him it is undouotedly the man, not the party, and for this reason the spirit of Rooseveltism will permeate the next convention and entirely without any effort on the President's part, exert a strong influence in the nomination. In ordinary circumstances the interference of the Administration, as it is called here, in a convention is resented, and its undue activity would injure rather than help the prospects of.a candidate."