TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9541, 13 July 1909, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

I ' | THE CRISIS AND ITS CAUSE. - We imploiMd the Govern trei.t '.e r - - I trench when times \vere goud, and when retrenchment w ; >uld have causal" little or no suffering, says the Christchurch "Press." They piled on Brother half-million of expenditure last year, and then, finding money getting tisht, they became alarmed, and turned on the retrenchment brake with a jerk and a bang. In other word*, retrenchment has come at the worst possible time, when it must increase the diatrjss and the wint of confidence, instead of improving the position. No doubt it is necessary, and must be gone on .with/- unless ,\ve are to dritfc from bad to worse. Most fortunately, we have had a splendid season, the price of wool and of wheat have gone up, and the commercial outlook is improving. If only the confidence of investors could be restored, there is no reason why employment should not again be plentiful, and the people prosperous. But we shall have to shake ourselves free I from faddists, and from those who I treat the possession of land or other forms of capital as a crime. COLONIAL PHYSIQUE. We all know that the colonial youth is averagely superior In physique to the Home-staying youth, for the reason which makes any stock bred in abundant pasturage superior to the same stock bred under harsher conditions, The struggle for food is less seen in New Zealand than in England, and the air generally breathed by the average colonial is better than the air breathed by a people of whom 20 per cent, live in large cities aid 10 per cent, in one huge hive. In the United Kingdom itself the difference in physical development between the inhabitants I of the smaller country towns and of the huge cities is o&vious to every observer, and is constantly remarked by philosophers. Equally obvious is the superior physical development of the colonial, whether New Zealand, | 1 Canadian, Australian, or African. THE FUTURE OF TURKEY. Discussing the Ottoman Empire's future, in the "Empire Review," Mr Edward Dicey is not sanguine as to the success of constitutional 1 government in Turkey. "I cannot hn]d," he writes, "that the superior- t ity of parliamsntary government i over every other form of administra- < tion is one of those manifest and ob- ' vious truths which holds good. Constitutionalism may be good for one j country ar.d r.ot for another. Hav- c

ing some knowledge of the East, I should say on general grounds that Oriental races are singularly unfitted for parliamentary governmsnt. The mle of majorities elected by popular suffrage is not only out of harmony with Oriental traditions and ideas, but is unintelligible to Eastern minds. In Turkey, in Persia, in Egypt, and elsewhere, not one man in a thousand can explain the theories on which government by the people for the people is based. The great majority of the popula- | tion can understand what you mean when you tell them that under constitutional government they may rid themselves from the rule of aliens who do not share their creed and do riot speak their language; but when you ask them how they would wish to be ruled after the expulsion of the alien element, they would prefer to be placed under the personal rule of a strong dictator, who would carry out the laws of the Koran, who would study their welfare, who would administer justice after his own ideas of right or wrong, and, above all, know his own will and enforce implicit obedience upon his people."