TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume IV, Issue 10064, 16 June 1898, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

The catapult, or shanghai, as The it is more frequently called out Catapult, here, ia not often honoured with so much notice as was lately given to it by the London "Standard, : ' which discussed its various uses in great detail. Of late, it seems, -the catapult has come into some prominence owing to the killing powers it possesses in skilful hands. As the boy's plaything, used for shooting on the sly at stray sparrows and blackbirds, and nastily pocketed on the approach of strangers, its capabilties are not fully seen. Mr J. G. Millais, the African traveller, who devotes a whole page to the catapult in the "Encyclopaedia of Sport," characterises the ordinary boy's catapult as a coarse weapon used in hurling small stones, "combining economy and inaccuracy," but he thinks highly of it as a means of acquiring the art of aiming and skill in judging distances on a small scale. Furthermore, he acknowledges that on more than one occasion it has proved most useful to him, as, for instance, when on his sporting expeditions he wanted to procure small game for food without disturbing the big game in the neighbourhood by gun shots. In 1866, when hunting in the Rocky Mountains, he managed to kill sufficient blue grouse with a catapult to keep the pot going day by day. Mr Millais must be a crack catapultist. We rather think that if our young barbarians had to exist on the birds they killed by the same primitive weapon they would often go hungry, though, no doubt, as was the case with the young Balearic Islanders, who were taught to become proficient with the sling by being made to sling for their dinners, necessity would prove a good instructor. Two cases which have lately been heard in i-nglish courts went to'show that this catapult i* not merely a plaything. In ohe instance two young men in London killed eight pigeons, and in the other a New Forest poacher was charged with killing a rabbit. To the poacher, indeed, the catapult presents several advantages over the gun, handiness and quietness in use being two of these, while against pheasants, roosting at night on the branches of small trees, it is very effective. So greatly has the use of th« catapult increased lately in England that the question has been raised whether one of these weapons., capable of killing rabbits and game birds; is not a "gun" within the meaning of the Gun License Actl, and, therefore, liable to a license fee ot 10s a year. Expert lawyers have declared that the catapult is covered by the clause in the Act by which the term "gun" is defined to include a firearm of any description, "and an air-gun or any othei kind of gun from which any shot, bullet,, or other missile can be discharged." It would be a. nice point for learned counsel to wrestle with. In the meantime, we may remind the generation to whom catapult shooting is a "fearful joy" that the use of the weapon is illegal. Not that we think they do not this. Their intensely innocent appearance when detected betrays an uneasy conscience, or we are no judge of boy nature.

Unless the unexpected, in A Paper some shape or other, hapFamine. pened, a famine in paper for newspepers was anticipated throughout .America at the beginning of May. Tho senseless sensationalism of the "yellow" journals, with their successive editions of "extras" every hour of the twentyfour, seven days a week, was beginning to tell its tale and bring its own cure. On May sth almost all the reserves held by tfie paper mills had disappeared, and as the mills could only make 1800 tons of paper each day, wuereas the daily consumption for the last month had been 2100 tons, it was evident that unless the newspapers chose to forego the use of white paper, they would have to moderate their energy and lessen the number of their "extras." The Chicago "Tribune" bad already announced that unless it procured an unexpected supply of paper from some unknown source,.it would not be able to publish its Sunday edition... We do not know whether this announcement was received by the public of Chicago rage or joy. We know what :ts reception would have been in some communities, but the Americans are a queer people, and in nothing queerer than in their newspapers. During the past few monthf-: it been our painful duty tc read closely a large number of American papers, and it has convinced us that chaotic is the only word which properly describes the majority of them. Latterly most of them seem to have gone quite mad, and to have entered into an unholy competition with each other to see which could print the biggest type, with the result that the average paper looks like half a dozen street posters. Weeks ago, under the strain of getting out the "war extras," which were perpetually being printed, one New York editor went irad, and another succumbed to brain fever. So little real news did these "extras" contain that witty newsboys, in default of any better cry, - would yell, "Terrible Execution—with the Searchlight's!' It has been r% peifect carnival of sensationalism, and it will be a good thing for the sanity of the various staffs and of the public if scarcity of paper does something to check at.

It is not very easy to reach

The any definite conclusion aa West African to tlu. precise value of the Settlement, various concessions upon

which the agreement has keen arrived at between England and France ir regard to the Niger dispute. The main point that appeals to one is that by the Convention which has just been signed by the two Powers, the possibility of war with France ove? the question —a possibility wEch more than once during the last twelve months has been very nearly a probability— has been removed. How near we hare been to war none but our statesmen know, but we are well aware that more than once lelations have been strained almost to break-ing-point. It is also evident, from what "The Times" says, that if England has lost anything by the agreement it is her own fault. Iv our contemporary*- phrase "Great Britain has slept on her rights," meaning by this that she has been content to stand by the treaties s_ie had signed with native rulers, and has not troubled about what the French, in a phrase which has latterly come into common use, term " effective occupation," occupation, that is, by military posts. The French themselves .have always gone on the system of following up a treaty with a native State by the establishment of military posts in that State, this being, they argued, effective occupation, a description they denied to the British method of assuming protectorates. The whole trouble arose over the indefiniteness of a boundary, line. By the provisions of the Anglo-French agreement of 1890 England Recognised French

supremacy over all the country down to an imaginary line drawn from Say on the Niger to Barua on Lake Chad. South of that line England claimed all the territory, and the French admitted the claim at the time. But the exact western boundary of this great stretch of country was not fixed. Part of this country was occupied by the kingdom of Boussa, over which the Royal Niger Company had complete jurisdiction by a treaty with its ruler. The Powers were notified in 1895 that it was a British protectorate, but France, eager to open connection between the hinterland of Dahomey and the Niger, repeatedly trespassed, and French troops made frequent aggressions in what was practically British territory. On more than one occasion the rival forces nearly came in conflict. By the new convention neithe. Power appears to be allotted all it claimed, but France, by obtaining Nikki, haa come in undei the Say-Barua line, while she has to give up Boussa, at present a French post, which was certahdy England's by right of prior occupation. The extension of the hinterland of the Gold Coast to the eleventh parallel gives England a good piece of territory in which there are now several French posts, whereas Bona, which is in the hinterland of the Ivory Coast, and has been allotted to France, is now held by a British force. The new agreement will not make a vast difference in the map of West Africa, but France, on the face of it, seems to have got slightly the better

bargain