THE WEEK, THE WORLD, AND WELLINGTON.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9137, 13 July 1908, Page 7

THE WEEK, THE WORLD, AND WELLINGTON.

(By Frank Morton.)

The Slaughter op the Thkes.— Smi'iiE Facts About Parliament.

If 1 could afford it, I shouJd send a copy of the May number cf "Everybody's Magazine," to every patriotic New Zealander in the country; hut I should need at least a thousand copies, and I haven't the money to spare just now. I should especially desire my patriots to read Mr Emerson Hough's article on —"The laughter of the Irees." This is his introduction: —"In fifty years we shall have States as bare as China. The Appalachians will be stripped 1o bedrock. The Rockies will send down vast floods, which cannot be controlled. The Canadian forests north of he Great Lakes will be swept away. Our Middle West will be bare. The Yazoo Delta will bo ripped apart, because no levee will be able to stand the floods of those days. We shall be living in crowded concrete housea, and at double the rent we now pay. We shall make vehicles of use no wood on our farme. We shall pay ten cents, for a newspaper, fifty cents for a magazine, as much for a lead-pencil. Cotton will be intensely higher. Beef will be the privilege of the few. Clothing will cost twice what it costs to day. Like Chinamen, our children will rata the soil for fuel or forage or food. We shall shiver in a cold, and burn in a heat, never before felt in this temperate zone, meant by God as a comfortable growing place for splendid human beings—unless we wake up." I should paint out to the patriots that such a warning as this is much more greatly needed in New Zealand than in the United States of America, where there are vast tracts of virgin forest still untouched. The way in which New Zealand is being denuded of its timber is simplv ghastly; somebody ought to be hanged for it. Right through the South Island wide districts are shaven bare. In Southland the work of spoliation is being pressed on. I arn tolrl that in a few years it will be difficult to come across n kauri in the North. All about fhis country, whose beauty we are so busy to rant ai-d rave about, there is the grim desolation of bald, unbitrhtly hill?. Utago Harbour has the stark uncomeliness of a woman with her head shaved. Nearly all the hills round Wellington are stripped. Sydney, with its population of considerably over halt'a milLo:\ hr.3 its harbour well-wooded;' but, ; so long r.a he pays the minimum wage, we permit any or huckster tj send out an crmy with axes I am not a New Zealander, and I am : essentially not a patriot; but I have s-en scraps of yo .r surviving New Zealand bush, and it is beautiful enough to save. It is a bush of slow growth, and if you mean to ?uve uny of it, you mutt get to work now. 'frees make the glory of every EngIhh landscape. France is a beautifully timbered country. There is bplendid forest in Germany. Spain and Italy are full of romantic woods. But New "Zealand--the youngest country, the* coun'ry that calls itself Gud's Own, the country that is so definitely determined to be the greatest and best in the world's eje—New Zealand looks on docikly while rav-' aging hordes make of it u treeless | waste. # * * * * ♦

I have no intention of making these letters laboriousy political at any time; there are so many cleaner and brighter subjects to write about. One cannot write with any sort of | putitnce of our pestilent itjli of lawmaking and law mending. Parliament, which might be a smithy, is a tinker's shop. Squatting on every bench are industrious small tradesmen making dire haste to cobble something. The more laws are made or cobbled in a session, the better the session's work, it is a farce. Ministers are for ever talking about our prosperity, when they would be vastly better employed doing something to make it securs. It is bo terribly easy to make weaith on paper. The everlasting talk is itself a curse to any country. Look at this Government. It is composed of men of some principle and intelligence. For six months these men have wasted all their time .scuttling about the country talking about their individual and collective virtues In six months. Wc!ru it not for the .farce of party, tbes3 Ministers might have done something useful. But politics ■ap • peals alwayß to the baser instincts ; men have to fight, not for their country, but for their personal seats and emoluments. Causes count, but men don't matter. The Government, in aty democracy, simply consists of half a dozen ordinary men, with here Hiid there a man cf tpecial audacity <:r force, that have been pushed to the front by carefu'ly arranged political circumstances. These men act carefully, with their eye on the thermometer ox popular opinion and prejudice. When they huve statements to make, they rdy on their secretaries and permanent heads of departments. When any specially bad political bungle arises, you will generally find that it is because some Minister has acted rashly on his own initiative. The Government of the country consists always of the six or seven politicians that happen to be on top.