TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9158, 4 August 1908, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

FROM A GERMAN POINT OF VIEW.

England does not strike colonials as being particularly democratic, but it is all a matter of comparison. The German workers who visited England recently were deeply impressed by the friendliness of Mr Haldane (Minister of War), and the contemplation of Mr John Burns as a Cabinet Minister. Their astonishment was, indeed, almost amjsing. None of them had ever dared to dream, says their leader, of being spoken to in the precincts of the British Parliament by so famous a man as the Minister for War, and when they looked at the splendid new building of the Local Government Board, and were told that in it reigned a man who a few years before was a working man, earning £2 a week, they stared, suspecting it was a fairy tale. These foreign critics found much to admire and a good deal to find fault with. The London policemen and the parks impressed them greatly. To people accustomed to parks dotted with "Keep off the Grass" notices, the spectacle of thousands of Londoners walking about the parks without hindrance was a delightful surprise.