The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. MONDAY, MARCH 1, 1909. THIS AND THAT.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXIX, Issue 7733, 1 March 1909, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. MONDAY, MARCH 1, 1909. THIS AND THAT.

There seems to be Why is tt ko ? room for considerable improvement in the machinery of the Labour Department of New Zealand. One day we hear of meetings and processions of unemployed, and of deputations to the Premier ' or some other Minister; and, on the next, here, there and everywhere throughout the country, farmers are talking and newspapers are writing about the scarcity ol men who are willing and able to work in the harvest field, or in other ways connected with the land. . Some of the men who figure in the larger towns as unemployed may not be fitted lor this kind of labour, but perhaps a fair number of them are; and surely, in all" such cases, the duty of bringing the workers and work speedily and effectively together should be provided, for in the machinery of the Labour Department. Of course, farmers themselves might act unitedly to better purpose than they now do in this important matter. As the Oamaru 31 ail lately observed, " this question of labour is a matter in connection with which the farmers might well combine for their own good. A mutual arrangement could readily be made by the farmers in a particular locality to so order matters that the same "harvest hands would work in rotation for all, in much the same manner as shearing arrangements are carried out. This would get over the disinclination _ of the men to accept a week's harvesting at the risk of losing a month or two with the threshing nu'Hs." Of course, the subject has other aspects, and it .stands in urgent need of comprehensive discussion in all its bearings, with a view to providing means which would at all times be available lor bringing demand and supply readily and effectively into mutual relation. The Labour' Department should possess this machinery, or at least the central or headquarters portion of it; but employers themselves should also be active kgents in the process of bringing together work and the men who are willing to do it. Surely agricultural and pastoral societies might discuss this subject with advantage to all concerned ;' and why not the society which represents so "large an agricultural and pastoral area p.s Af.iib'urtori ?

At and about the date Christian of the last meeting of Sciknce, the Canterbury Diocesan Synod a good deal was said and written about mental healing and Christian Science, of which —as it happens—Mr Frank Podmore discusses the pedigree, in the Contemporary Review for January. The central tenet of tho "new thought"—an absurd American phrase—is that disease does not exist, and that the process of cure lies in.the realisation that there is nothing to be cured. The •'science" denies that alcohol intoxicates or inierqljos jnj'ect.." Yet jialf a , million "copies of Schiiic^ and Health 'have been sold, and there is no doubt tho sect has come to stay. Mr Podmore thinks Mrs Eddy was as original as anyone is ever likely to be in these mutters. He puts aside charges of wholesale- plagiarism, and regards her ay a pupil of the Time-Spirit. The "philosophy" of the movement dates back to Mesmor, and Yon Helmont, and Fludd. and all who in one form or another anticipated what men now call "; suggestion," For tlm purely uiystii:a] cktiijunti Mr I'otlmore looks lack to Swudoniiorg, for lit 1 more than any other taught the dependence of the natural on the .spiritual world,

In the English reviews Tin-: Trouble for January several ix well-informed writers Tin; Balkans, deal with the causes and rontin^MHiies of the- trouble in ihc llalkuns. In the Contemporary Review, Mr \V. T. Stead, in an article on "The Arrival of the Slavs," says that the fate- of empires is of comparatively smalt importance— the great thing is the destiny of races. !n the East the great fact is the coming of the Slav into his kingdom ; his eot'nblislunent there as the- dominant race. Of a]l the races of Europe the Slav has received fewest favours from fate. He has been cradled in adversity and reared in misfortune, But his hour is coming. For a thousand years he has bee.i the' bulwark of Europe against the hordes of Asia, and he has saved the West from the horrors of Oriental war; and the Mongols were savages beside whom even the Turks were tame. ! t is said that one Mongol Khan in the sixty-six years of his reign destroyed eighteen millions of human beings. A decisive word from M. Isvolsky, says Mr Stead, would have saved Austria's annexation of the two provinces. Now the future depends on the Archduke Ferdinand, clerical of clericals. His indiscretion may precipitate conflict ; but if that is avoided their birth-rate will give the future to the Slays. The Slav can afford to wait. While Western Europe tends to a standstill lie grows in numbers clay by day. So far ilr Stead. In the same review, Dr. Dillon gives us the key to the Emperor Francis Joseph's foreign policy, which is to recover in the Balkans what he lost in Italy. FTc admits that Baron Aerenthal made the mistake of imagining that Panslavism was dead instead oAleeping. Then, in the Fortnightly Review, M. Ivanovitch declares that the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina is a flagrant violation of the rights of Europe. As it was Great Britain that originally proposed the Austrian occupation (at the Berlin Congress), she has now the plain right to intervene. At that time the Serbs acquiesced, but for thirty years Austria has used every effort to denationalise them. Can Europe (he ask*-) afford to allow the drag-net of Gcvwinii expansion to be thrown over the blavsr Fortunately, as he thinks, Great Britain realises that the German,, and not the Slav, is the real clangor in the Balkans,