Notes and Comments.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume III, Issue 119, 24 October 1901, Page 3

Notes and Comments.

The recent naval manoeuvres in . the Mediterranean Sea ■/ tobpkdo seem to point to the boats, fact that the battleship

is out of date. A writer in the Fortnightly Magazine ihinks that the Mediterranean manoeuvres prove conclusively that the torpedo is the ship of the future. Two thousand yards is the maximum distance at which one of these vessels-can be sighted at might, and as they move at one fchoosand yards per minute, the chance of a battleship disabling them before they get home their deadly shot is remarkably small. The writer thinks the armoured battleships are much like the knights of old. They were excellent for a long time, but when the torpedo boat was perfected it dealt tk blow at the battleship similar to that dealt to the armour-clad soldiers of the old time by the invention of gunpowder. The writer has a good opinion of the British naval officers, and declares that with these men in command of 1000 torpedo boats “ the seven seas would be made a British lake in a week. In the making 900 might be lost, but the enemy’s flag •would have disappeared for ever. Tbis is not the faith of one man, nor of two ; it is the sole gospel of tke entire new generation of naval ■officers.” And yet at the present time the Admiralty have almost oeased to build torpedoes.

In the Westminster Review for August there is an bussia in article on the Cbinesk manohueia, question written by a Chinaman, and it contains the following sidelight on Russian occupation of Manchuria, which should prove of interest: —The decline of prosperity and well-being consequent -on the Russian occupation can be gathered frb.a the report of a representative of the Board of Oensors, who, at the end of 1897, •or in the early part of the following year, was invested with the Imperial authority and despatched to enquire into the conduct of the Government -officials in Manchuria. He disbanded his retinue and assumed the -disguise of a merchant, the better Tto accomplish his purposes, and, mixing with all clashes of the community, prepared a fnll account of what was transpiring. One village he found entirely deserted, and, on

enquiring the cause, learned that , the inhabitants had taken to the hills on the approach of the foreign soldiers, who had plundered their homes, and issued an order to the •effect that if the villagers did not return, the houses would be burned to- the ground. The people employed on the railways proved to be mostly criminals, reprieved from tbe torture and other punish--mentfc their misdeeds merited according to the law, on condition . that they worked out their peaalties in gratuitous labour. All wages were paid to a local official, who gave just what he pleased to the unfortunate people on whom he ioroed employment, thus reducing them to the condition of slaves. On the least pretext they were flogged and shot by the Cossacks, who” when not guarding the ■Chinese labourers on the railway, •committed outrages and murders daily in their homes. In the meantime the local officials were •engaged in revelry and feasting with the foreigners, lulled to nil sense ofduty by dreams of illimit- . able wealth that would result from the exploitation of the resources of the country __ and the labour of the people in co-operation with Russia. .* The Governurs of the districts in • the north haying refused Russian bribes, were threatened with diplomatic representations at Pekin which would involve their degradation, and pos»bly cost them their lives. 1 The Grand Inquisitor or Supervisor found the very heart of Manchuria, the “ Heaven-ordained” province (i.e., Feng Tien) formerly ■ s 4 model of good government, with prosperous, flourishing. guilds and Rowing industries, which supplied

all the wants of the people, converted into a nest of iniquity* with treason on the> part of officials, and atrocities on the pact of foreign soldiers which surpassed any committed by the Ta-Tse bands who at this time roamed the neighbouring hills and. borders of the Gobi desert.