LITTLE MEN. WHO MAKE BIG TROUBLE.

Bush Advocate, Volume XXIII, Issue 20, 25 January 1911, Page 6

LITTLE MEN. WHO MAKE BIG TROUBLE.

(From "Pearson's Weekly.")

As soon as the British Parliament meets the papers will be once morefull of the Osborne case.

Yet Osborne, whose name is in evei'yone's mouth, is merely a railway porter, doing his duty quietly in a station not far from London, and a year ago no one would have been more surprised than he to hear of the notoriety that was to be his.

At present his name represents a principle. A minority of the union to which he belongs objected to the use of their contributions towards the union, funds for paying the expenses of Labour M.P.'s. Osborne was put forward by these to make a test case, and this case he Avon.

The result is that at present none of the great unions can legally employ union funds for Parliamentary purposes and not unnaturally there is a strong agitation afoot to reverse the decision. Another unknown railway man who recently sprang into sudden prominence was the shunter Goodchild employed by the North-East-ern Railway Company at Gateshead Station. Holiday Traffic upset.

Because he refused to be transferred from one part of the town to another, he was suspended. Next day the men demanded his immediate restoration, but the company refused. In spite of the strong words of their own officials, one of them the secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, the other Mr. Hudson, M.P., between five and six thousand men at once struck work, f and the whole great was thrown into confusion. The strike caused an enormous sensation, happening as it did in the midst of the holiday season. But the men's own leaders were against them, and within fortyeight hours the strike had collapsed.

One can hardly call Von Velcltheim a u little man," for physically he is a giant. Yet his name would have remained as little known by the world at large as tens of millions of others but for the affray which ended in his shooting Woolf Joel in March, 1898. That shooting and the trial which followed it betrayed the plans of the Outlanders to the Boer Government, and was the direct cause of the Boer War cind the loss of many thousands of lives and many millions of money.

French and German at same time. In connection with the Boer War might be mentioned the name of Charles Macrum, who acted as American Consul at Pretoria at the time of the outbreak of hostilities. Macrum was nobody in particular, but, as it happened, had 'strong anti-British propensities. He complained to his Government that the British authorities had tampered with his correspondence, and his letters to American papers very nearly got us into trouble with the United States.

Just a year ago every neAvspaper in France and Germany was full of a humble private soldier named Mans. Mans is the son of German parents, but was born in Paris. Considering himself a German subject, he was called to the colours, and served two years in the German army at Metz. Returning to Paris, he was informed that he was a French subject, and must serve his two years' conscription in the French army. In order to avoid trouble, heagreed to do so. For some time afterwards Mans attended his annual training in both armies, but last year, as it happened, the French and German manoeuvres coincided, and as he was unable to attend both, the 1 truth came out, pest in the international teacup. A Bulgarian Clerk's Love Affair. It was found that there were many others of doubtful nationality, like Mans, and the diplomatic correspondence which followed has not yet resulted in any definite decision. In March last the Bulgarian Government was nearly overthrown simply because a young Bulgarian bank clerk, Jordan Stefanoff, happened to fall in love with a pretty Turkish girl named Saadet Hanum. Saadet's father, being a Mahometan, refused his consent, so Stefanoff ran away with the girl. Her father appealed to the Turkish Minister at Sofia, and the Bulgarian authorities arrested the girl and lodged her in gaol at B,ustchuk. At once the whole Mahometan population of the town rose and tried to storm the gaol. Stefanoif's friends oposedp them, more than a score of people were killed, and many injured. Troops had to be called out to quell the riot.

Twenty-five thousand mourners followed the coffins of the dead, and an anti-Turkish demonstration on a huge scale was held all through Bulgaria. Bulgaria and Turkey very nearly came to blows, and the trouble is not yet at an end.