TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9686, 10 January 1910, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

UNIVERSAL TRAINING.

The national Service League of Great Britain has issued a useful and timely pamphlet showing that the cost of adopting the principle of universal training—such training to be four months for the infantry | and not more than two additional J months for the artillery, engineers, and cavalry—wouldJbe about £4,000,000. It is calculated that under uni« versal training not more than 150,000 lads would be given the four months' recruit training every yea'*. After training they would be passed into the Territorial army under existing conditions. There would be Territorial service as now for three years after the recruit training, [ and then a period of eight years in a Territorial reserve. AbouL 416,000: young men reach the age of 18 each year, but, following the Swiss precedent, about 48 per cent, would, it is calculated, be rejected on medical grounds, or excused from service under certain legal exemptions. It is estimated that universal training would give Britain, in case of peril, about 1,200,000 men for home defence.

THE PENSION SCANDAL IN THE UNITED STATES.

An awful warning against the too facile granting of pensions is supplied by r k the United States pension list which has just been published. The list for the last fiscal year shows that 946,194 persons in the United States are in receipt of pensions, and that for the twelve months they drew altogether an amount of £32,400,000. Ten years ago, that is to say, for the fiscal year 1898-9, the United States pension list was £29,490,473, so that during the decade a sum of about £3,000,000 has been added to the amount that is extracted from the American tax--1 payers to finance a pension scheme which was initiated as a convenient means of making away with the enormous unnecessary revenue that was raised by the protectionist tariff, and has been continued until it has swollen to the dimensions of a vast public scandal. Names of persons said to have been engaged in wars that are lost in the mist of antiquity are atill submitted regularly to the United States Treasury, and good money is paid to their account. Insu|ance ex pert 3 hitherto have not regarded the American people as specially long lived, and yet the offica! records of the pensions commissioner show that the widows of 395 men who fought in the war against England 97 years ago are still drawing the grants which a grateful country has assigned to them in recognition of the military services of their deceased husbands. Such phenomenal longevity is proof positive that a large number of pensions are absolute robberies, and that, owing to the number of votes which the pensioners control, neither Republicans nor Democrats have had the courage to stand up and denounce a system which is robbing the great mass of the taxpayers in order to subsidise a minority that is not only undeserving but fraudulent.

RACE SUICIDE IN FRANCE There is great lamentation in France over the official statement of births and deaths during the first six months of the present year. It shows a decrease of 12,692 births, and an increase of 25,019 deaths, as compared with the corresponding period of last year. The diminution of the population had been for sorr.e time a cause of consideraole anriety, but these latest figures are regarded as simply appalling. Dr. Bertillion, "'ho has given so much attention to this important subject, has been asked for his opinion, and he says that several explanations can be found for this, the chief among them being a sort of law that the richer a country bei comes the more its birth-rate dacreases. Thus there are fewer children iri wealthy families than in poor ones. Take Paris as an example. In the suburbs, inhabited by the wortcing classes, the birth-rate is still fairly up to the mark; whereas, in the rich quarter it is terribly small. Add to this the fact that Malthusian theories are spreading more and more, and the full reason for this alarming state of things will be found. Since the beginning of the last century the birth-rate in France has not ceased to decrease, and to approach the death rate, which it has now exceeded. Pecuniary considerations are responsible for it all, and Dr.. Bertillion says that the evil could be best combated by allowing more freedom in the matter of drawing up will?. France is the only country in Europe in which the birth-rate is diminishing, and the only great country in which the law insists on lan equal distribution of property j among children. All sorts of reme- | dies have been suggested by politicians and economimsts, but there is no doubt that Dr. Bertillion has struck at the root of the evil. People who have attained to wealth and comfort

do not care to leave their children poor and struggling, and this, as may be noticed, is a marked trait of the French character.