NEWS, VIEWS, AND OPINIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLII, Issue 149, 24 June 1911, Page 13

NEWS, VIEWS, AND OPINIONS.

%>t long ago an aviator succeeded in landin= on and leaving a warship Trithjt damage to hi- fragile vehicle. About rte same time aviators dropped explores inch such a.curacy that the object jjjied at was certain to be badly damjif not destroyed. Immediately rte 'world was informed that aviation could pl ay :,n i m P ortant part in "he -jjs of the future; that eventually it jCTiia make war deadly th:U nations be compiled to settle all their dishes through peaceful arbitration. And incomes new; of an invention that will wr aeroplane? to climbing the roof of the in frantic efforts to escape annihiliitios. This invention has heen patented -Wfte Krupps. Germany's famous cannon £jiiufaeturer>, and is thus described in press dispatches: '"It consists of a Iwhly sensitive fuse which insures the of a projeclile upon impact jjsi the delicate resistance afforded by rtfgas bag of a balloon or light canvas taroing of an aeroplane.' . Apparently ttjt ends the dream of aerobes ending the usefulness of Jteadnougbts and sending even the and nio=t expensive of the jjda monsters of the deep to the gnp pile. The dreadnought of togmiow*, equipped with a few of Krupp's fehJv sensitive fuses, would be as safe 15 tie dreadnought of yesterday, when gjj sty Tivas still unconquered by birdBeD. Long before the aeroplane would lie ready to <lrop an explosive on a ihip's deck the Krupp fuses would be fj'mg through the ozone, and those ftiauge birds of the air would be no more dangerous to the iron leviathans of tie sea than the beasts of the field. Yet, jjter all, the Krupp invention will leither retard nor hasten the coming of universal peace. A brotherhood of najjans cannot be builded upon a mechaniol devicg. No matter how deadly warfcre becomes, mankind will occasionally jesort to it until the great day arrives fien an enlightened world wiil realise that Trar is not only inhuman, but unprofitable.

51e Government Departments in LonHon have begun "daylight saving" on iieir own initiative. Attempts to jate the practice general by law have &3ed so far, but they are to be renewed js soon as the constitutional struggle m<i other political excitements of the JnHir have been disposed of and ParliaEent recovers its normal state of mind. It need hardly be said that it is not fiirongh any increase of zest for public wrk that the departmental clocks are long manipulated. Daylight is being STed in 'Whitehall in order that the daks aiav have an extra hour for picket or tennis. They now start at 9 tfdoek instead of 10. At 4 p.m. they pour cat of then- offices and rush for the railsay stations like an invading army. Uirty or forty minutes later, attired jafannels and straw hats, they distribute themselves over scores of playgrounds in fie suburbs. A few of the older men linger over office tasks which hie to be done in a hurry when ParliaBfflt is sitting, and then go to their Jibs—Radical clubs in most cases. The 'jajority of the public servants are con(ervative in their official methods, and _2aikal|s»,their political views. In some oi i&e departments, "aha. notably in tne postal service; Radicalism has become Socialism, frankly avowed and promoted in societies jrhich th e Government no longer attempts to discourage.

The 'White Lady of the Palace of Berlin is the family ghost of the German Emperor. The apparition, according to popolar belief, shows itself only when a Behenzollern is about to die. T!he feaded Write Lady is the shade of the' feil spouse of a fifteenth century margrave, who bricked her up alive in a unit- The last recorded appearance was in 1840, in the reign of Frederick William HL A lady in waiting, on leaving the palace, found a sentry in a dead faint, siid summoned assistance. The sentinel □plained when he recovered, that the Vfiite Lady had passed his post, and fiat he had been rendered senseless by Sea terror. That very night, at a family party, King Frederick William lecame suddenly ill. He died torn afterwards. The Hapsburgs, is well as the Hohenzollerns, Hβ credited with a White lady, whose appearance foretells the death of a member of the family. She E said to have passed a sentinel in the torridpr leading to the chapel of the shortly before the assassination -of the Empress Elizabeth. Other appearwres of this woman in white are told ef on the eve of the Archduke Rudol's tragedy, a week or two before the Emperor Masmilian was shot in Mexico, aid just before the Archduke Albert's" fengater was burnt to death at Schontantn. It is also said that she was seen »lnnt the time when the Archduke John finished, and believers in the lady regard fife as ample evidence that he realiy Jerished at sea.

"I have just completed a most interesting tour," writes the special correspondent of the '"Telegraph." "1 found that Korea has remarkably changed since'its annexation. Japan is treatnig the Koreans well, and the discontent originally felt has almost been eradicated. Two hundred thousand Jap•nese immigrants have entered the ""■ntry, and owing to their ethnic resemblance to the natives they are fusTith the population and creating uaed interests in agriculture and indusky- A thousand miles of railway will awn be completed in Korea, and the sjstein which was formerly a white elePiant is already almost a paying con,jern. "Seoul now has 50.000 Japanese •habitants. The city is transformed. ™mi general banking is being done, and Fog-ess is seen everywhere. This Jart budget for Korea shows a de- ™* of £5,000.000. Half of this will be by Japan; but I predict that ««un a single decade Korea will be and the same is true of

Goanatograph films have for the first the police by serving to •fMify some of the champagne rioters • The possibility of their FOTmg useful in this direction has, °*ever, been recognised for some time i*° years ago, Signor Camusso, an police official, invented an apgratus, called the cleptograph, which. _clami edj would automatically photo*£PH anything occurring in the room ere it wa S placed. The police would -J™* te furnished with indisputable cviJ™F in the event of a .burglary taking •:*<=• Apparently, the cleptograph did '~Prove of much practical use, as hss teen heard of it recently, wougsi s t? invenSioa was heralded Wtt * great flourish, of trumpets.

One more American has got a great scheme for commemorating the aboStion of war! His proposal is that all the cannons now existing should be made into one great cannon and all the existing shells be melted into one colossal sphere This he thinks will furnish a .nin with a 300 mile range, capable of firing the projectile with a velocity of 30,000 feet per second. The idga is that the monster projectile -when fired would balance in space and revolve round the earth kept in its orbit by gravitation. The new Universal Peace Projectile, so he thinks, would furnish the most brilliant spectacle in the skies. The man in this new moon would be, of course, the broad face of Mr Carnegie. That is necessary to complete the scheme.

"Even among the Five Civilised Tribes there still remain many communities wholly full blood," said Capt. M. N Lewis, of Pensacola, Fia. 'These people drift together, following their own ideas of life, speaking their own language, and retiring before the whites with the same strange reserve and pride that characterised them in their wild state. Although claiming the name of several Christian denominations and following certain beliefs with devoutness, the:r ways of thinking, their dislike of innovation, and their aversion to work have made them withdraw to the mountain districts. There is, too, a certain mystic quality that holds the Indian aloof—a quality that we do not understand, and with which there is little sympathy in our everyday life. He is so much of a philosopher that he looks upon our strenuous life -with some contempt, dismissing our effort for personal comfort and material advancement with the remark that the white man is heap of trouble to himself. White people call him lazy because he does not care to exert himself for those things which seem important to "whites, and yet to some religious ceremonial or some artistic expression his application is persistent, and the patience of an Indian has passed into a proverb."

Englishmen are often heard to ex-' claim "the law is an ass." One wonders what they would say if they lived in Germany? Listen to" this. In Easter week a Berlin ironworker named Willeck was sentenced to one week's imprisonment for laughing. Herr Willeck, who is a man of unblemished reputation, saw a riotous merrymaker being pursued by a policeman. The policeman was excessively stout, and the vision of his twinkling legs so amused the ironworker that he burst into a loud laugh. The court defined his offence as "grober un fug," and we thought we agreed with the court until we learned that, being translated, it means "a serious scandal." It was in Berlin also that a gentleman named Rickart was fined 5/ for breaking his leg. Seven months ago he fell while getting into a moving train, and suffered a compound fracture. For six months he lay in hospital. When he was discharged, the State Railway Department prosecuted him for breaking the regulations, and gained its point. After 'breaking his leg and breaking th« regulations, Rickart must have nearly broken his heart to have a fine added to I such calamities.

There could be no more striking contrast to the denudation of England, Scotland and Ireland by the loss of their agricultural population (than the filling up of the United States by these splendid emigrants, phis the still larger numbers from the other countries of Europe. Down to the Revolutionary war the population of tEe United States was-pre-dominantly English. There was a large number of Scotch-Irish from County Ulster after the English Government made life unprofitable and unpleasant for them in Ireland. These were of the pioneer type, or frontier settlers, and formed a very desirable addition to the population. Large numbers of Germans from the Palatinate and provinces along the Rhine settled in Pennsylvania before and during the war of the Spanish Succession. There was a small number of French Huguenots who emigrated after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and of Scotch Highlanders after the battle of Culloden. From 1790 down to 1840 most of the immigrants were from the British Isles, but never amounted to 100,000 in atiy one year. In 1847, as a result- of the potato famine in Ireland and the revolution in Germany, the immigration jumped to over. 200,000. From this period dates the real immigration movement. From the middle of the century down to about 1885 immigrants were almost entirely from England, Ireland, Germany, Norway, and Sweden. In 1885 the immigration from AustriaHungary, Italy and Russia combined was less than half as great as that from Germany alone. In 1910 the immigration from Austria-Hungary, Italy and Russia was more than twenty times as great as the immigration from Germany, and more than four times as great as the combined immigration from England. Ireland, Germany, Norway and Sweden.

"Whether the recent Canton riots were .due to "Viceroy Chang's vigorous antigambling campaign or not it is not safe to assume; but it is certain that some of the measures adopted, well meant, no doubt, would provoke disorder in places other than China. It is an extension of the old and convenient Chinese principle of holding the person found nearest the .scene of the crime to be the guilty party. "Many an innocent man has suffered the weight of Chinese "justice," because some person maliciously disposed has chosen to die on bis doorstep. Of course, this system of putting the burden of responsibility on the shoulders of the public Ihas the merit of economy, policemen scarcely being needed. But there are cases when, as might very well have happened in the case of these riots, an infuriated community rises in its wrath, and then more expense is incurred in an hour than this parsimony saves in a year.

Our puny ofl wejls shrink into insignificance when we glance at some of the "gushers" that have been unearthed in America. Imagine, for instance, a solid column of oil shooting to a height of more than 450 feet from a hole in the eartii, -and with a mist of minute globules carried liy the wind for more than ten miles, settling down upon the vegetation, and forming pools of oil within that radius; then a great lake of the fluid four miles long by three miles wide, and formed by means of an earthen dam hastily thrown across a natural reservoir, and at the lowest depression di the' bank of this lake a channel several <*et wide, Jeadina; into the Tuxpan River, through which the overflow oil from the wonderful eeyser is constantly going to waste. Add to this tie outbursts of deadly gases that pour from the mouth of the well at frequent intervals, settling over the country for miles around, bringing death and desolation to all vegetable and animal life that comes within their "reach. Imagine all this, and some idea may be had of that wonderful phenomenon, the oil •weTl opened in the Potrero del Llano tßetrict, near Tuxpan, Mexico, on January 3, by an, English company headed by Lord Cowdray.