The Lack

Press, Volume LVI, Issue 10263, 4 February 1899, Page 7

The Lack

of The "Spectator" evidently Great Men. thinks it is. It refrains

from actually giving its ap- j provalto so sweeping an assertion, but it I argues pretty convincingly that the "absence j of dominant personalities in any department of life" is the distinguishing characteristic of Europe, and there is not much.time for any commanding genius to break the monotonous level of mediocrity between now and the end of the century. Lord Salisbury arid the German Emperor are quoted as excep- > tioßß, among the man in politics, and even these two are hardly pre-eaninently great,

for Lord Stilisburv is not quite strong enough, and the Kaiser spends his force in too many channels to achieve historical fama. Being what* they are, the verdict is given that the English Prime Minister is "a most considerable rather than a 'great' statesman," and the Emperor William "a striking, but doubtful figure, mada abnormally visible by his seat on a lofty throne." And after these, who is there? In England, Mr Balfour and Mr Chamberlain, the two most prominent men in politics, have yet to do the thing which shall place them with tho great statesmen of England's past. Outside politics, the prospect is equally barren. There are any amount of good men, but of whom can more be said "There is in the country no first-class orator, there is no administrator so great as to be universally recognised, no soldier who has won a pitched battle against a white foe." Ait, music, literature, the law, the church —of all it is said there is "no man in any profession as to whose prim!cy in that profession there is .no dispute." As to France, the state of the country shows that for her the hour has not brought the man. Any Frenchman may attain the highest position in his country —"the President was a tanner, and the Premier an usher in a school"—but France, who is declared to have had no great statesman since Gambet ta died, still waits for the man who shall extricate her from her perilous condition. The liberal professions are as destitute of a leader as they are in England, or in any country on the Continent. "Spain is being ruined by sheer want of brain power," to no Italian has been given the "abiuties which command the adhesion of a people," and the last of the great Germans died with Bismarck, just as the last of the indubitably great Englishmen is buried in the grave of Gladstone. The Czar is supported by some strong counsellors, but neither he nor they have yet given indications of those supreme powers which raise a man sheer above his fellows, and the "Spectator" 'writer despairs of finding such a man in America, where the democracy "has failed, even in the stress of wartime, to throw up an administrator." He sums up with the remark that "the world can get along without great men, but it does not get along very well"—a dictum which, after all, admits of discussion. In any case, we have the next century to look forward to.

A Samoan resident, Mr Arthur Affairs Newnes, who will be rememSamoan. bered by many of the passengers by the Waikare's island trip as having received them at Vailima, recently arrived in Melbourne on business bent, but was not too busy to give an interviewer some information about Samoa. He knows Dr. Raffel, the apparent head and •front of the recent trouble, and is not prepossessed in his favour. He is a man about thirty years of age, who receives a thousand a year as President of the municipality, but knows very little of the country or the Samoan language, being a comparatively new arrival. Air Newnes had official dealings with him over .a concession granted by the Samoan Government. Dr. Raffel asked to see a letter-written by the king to Mr Newness solicitor relative te this concession, and when he got it refused to give it up, even at the request of the British and American consuls. An action was brought against him in the Supreme Court, and the £hief Justice, Mr Chambers, ordered him to return the letter, which is the reason, Mr Newnes thinks, for Dr. Raffel's hostile attitude towards the Chief Justice.- Mr Newnes, by the way, seems to have rather a "good thing" in his concession, which gives him the exclusive right for the next forty years to export the coral lying on the shores of the Samoan group. There are. millions of tons of the purest white coral lying above the level of the sea, where it was carried by the great waves which accompanied the hurricanes of ten years ago. It' has been cleaned and bleached by rain and" sun and wind, until it is pure white throughout. Mr Newnes hopes to be able to make use of it in various ways—for the purification of gas, after which it would be a rich and cheap fertiliser; as insulating material for cooling and refrigerating chambers ; for cement, plaster, bricks, and so on. If it attains anything like general use for these purposes, Mr Newnes Will have additional reason to be enthusiastic about the prspects of Samoa.