TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9543, 15 July 1909, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

LAND AND LABOUR. | The improved Farms Settlement Act gives the Lands for Settlement Department authority to advance to the settler Up to £l5O for building a dwelling and clearing his section, and with this assistance, supplemented, perhaps," by the wages he could earn on public works that would be necessary to eive access to his selection, many a man who is now walking the streets in idleness could establish himself on the land. The life would be hard, of course, to begin with, and in spite of every possible precaution there would be a proportion of failures, but we are satisfied, says the "Lyttelton Times," that there are hundreds of men in the ranks of the unemployed who : would do well on the land if they ! were igven a reasonable chance.

FICTITIOUS SETTLEMENT.

The Acting Minister of Lands, Mr Buddo, is apparently ignorant of the realities of his own department, for, says the Auckland "Herald," we would not charge him with attempting to misleaQ the trusting public as to the actual opportunities for land settlement about to be offered them. He has asserted, with the customary flourish of oratorical trumpets, that over 195,000 acres will be opened for selection during the present mcnth. The public has immediate visions of from 500 to 1,000 selectors being thus admitted tJ *mall agricultural but what are the facts'? It appears that of this area over 130,000 arras consist of a few lirge sheep runs in out of the way placed of Otago and Auckland provinces. The smallest of these Auckland runs is of 20,000 acres and the largest Otago run is of., nearly 50,000 acres.

MR BALFOUR AND THE EMPIRE.

I "Without something higher ami greater than material considerations, you cannot manage an Empire like the British Empire," said Mr A. J. Balfour, leader of the Unionist Party in the House of Commons, in an address delivered last month, just prior to the meeting of the Press Conference. "If you will not admit sympathy and imagination side by side with hard material calculations into the forces which mould your opinion and direct your policy," he proceeded, "then I say you are not fit jto he the head of an Etipire like this; and ycu are wall advised not I to allow yourselves to be driven inta the merely material considerations raised by the fiscal controversy, important though, as I admit, these considerations are. The necessity of drawing closer the bonds which unite together the different parts of the Empire is plainly a growing necessity. Jdo not think anybody can contemplate thd World toirces winch are slowly shaping themselves in one or another quarter of the world without seeing that it is of vital necessity for the Empire to organise itself, to draw its different members closer together, to make it conscious of common common destinies, aye, and of common perils. I am no pessimist, yet I say quite distinctly I do think that in the lifetime of many, of most, perhaps, of, all of those lam addressing now, we may be face to face with great difficulties in which it will be of absolutely vital importance that every fraction, every portion of this Empire should work together with a united soul towards preserving everything that we hold dear in common."