TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 11111, 1 November 1901, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

The project of draining the Draining Zuider Zee is 'by no means a A Sea. new one, but the announce-

ment that a Bill for the purpose will probably be introduced in the * Dutch* Parliament this . session by tlxe Minister of the Waterstaat has revived interest in the scheme. The plan suggested, according to a London paper, is to first enoloße, and then gradually reclaim, the great shallow sea which cuts such a slice out Of Holland's territory. The first step will be to build a dam aoross the mouth of the Zuider Zee, with sluices through which the water can be ejected by means of steam pumps. The building Of the dam is expected to take fully nine years. After, the North Sea has been shut out two areas of land will be reclaimed in the southwestern corner of the enclosure. The first area, comprising eighty-three and a-half square miles, Will _c dry and ready for sale in the fourteenth year of the work, and the second area, comprising 121, square miles, in the eighteenth year from the commencement of the dam. The expenditure will be on a scale proportionately great, the estimated cost being £7,916,667. It is proposed to raise this amount by loan*?, and to pay off interest and principal by an annual increase of £-166,667 in the Budget, during a maxunum period of sixty years. A sum of £-75,000 will be allotted as compensation to. the Zuider Zee fishermen, whose industry, a large and thriving one, will be killed by the drainage scheme. 11 appears there are eighteen fishing villages round' the coast of the Zuider Zee, representing about 3000 fishermen. The stoppage of the fisheries'will represent a yearly loss of about two million florins, unless the fishermen take to deep-sea fishing. With a view to helping them to dp so it is recommended that the Government should supplement the compensation grant with new boats and tackle, for the Zuider Zee boats cannot be used on the high seas. French-Canadians are reported French to be irritated at the." Duke of in Cornwall addressing them in Canada. English. The incident which gave rise to this feeling occurred, we suppose, at Quebec, where, on the Duke's arrival,-two addresses, one in - French, and the other . in English, were presented to him from the' two races. Some surprise was. expressed at the time that his Royal Highness should have replied to both addresses in the one speech in English. On the face of it, this -seems to have been an unfortunate thing to do, for though living in amity under British nile, the English and French residents, both ii Quebec and Montreal, keep socially apart. The language helps to mark the difference, and the > French-Canadian is intensely attached to his own tongue. Just at the time when the Duke was visiting Montreal,- there appeared a pamphlet, by a Quebec editor, en "The French Language in Canada." Its special object was to remove many false impressions from the.minds of those who speak and write nothing but English. The use of French as one of the official languages of Canada is due, according to M. Tardive!, neither to France nor to England, but to the French-Canadians themselves—to their * clergy, to the habi- f tants, the seigneurs, >and the middle class, aided by General Murray. Both in the United States and in many parts of France, Canadians are supposed to speak merely a vulgar patois instead of "la belle langue Francaise au grand siecle." People seem to imagine that a. patois must be a jargon, but in France there are no fewer than ninety patois, "veritable popular dialects, often possessing great beauty, the freshness and tbe naivete of antique nature." ■The language spoken by the habitants is that of Louis Quatorze, as M. Tardivel proved by numerous quotations from literary works written between 1673 and the present day. For example, one novelist, Paul Feval, writes: "If you.wish to hear tho true sound of the language of Bossuet and Corneille, the general opinion is that yon must go as far as Canada, where there flourishes a bough of the green tree of France." M. Tardivel admits, however, that educated Canadians use expressions which are bad translations from English— e.g.. "moi pour un" instead of , "quant a moi." In concluding,, he implores all his compatriots to love and respect their own language. Let them learn English if they like, but let French remain their mother tongue. Against the idea thafc England will ultimately supplant France, he opposes what he calls "a great historical reality—i.e., the fact that as Providence has planted the French language in America, it must have been meant to grow and develop there', and to secure for it-elf a glorious future. To a mere outsider this last argument does not seem quite as convincing as ifc evidently is to the Archbishops and Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church m Canada, who highly praise M. Tardivel's pamphlet Carmen Sylva, Queen and A Queen's poetess, contributes the C&F-dhood. prettiest article to be found amongst the September magazines. In the "Sunday Strand," un-

der the heading "A Child of the Forest," tie Queen t*'Jls the story of her own early years, "to all English-speaking children." A curious education for Royalty, however appropriate for the future poetess, was tbe life led by this little Elizabeth in the forest, whose trees were "far higher than our castle, and grew so close up to it, their shadow fell rijcht across the threshold." Screech-owls and hoot-owls were to be heard dose round at night; forest songbirds fed by hundreds at the nursery windows, and on moonlight night* iii winter the hares "would come up to the very door and sit up on their hind legs in the snow and play together." . Elizabeth found her songs and stories in the forest. . "The storm-wind was a special friend of mine. When it made the oaks and beeches sway <md groan, sawing the branches asundertill thfey came crashing down,, then I would tie my little hood over hair— it was not white in those days—and, with ] my two big St. Bernard dogs by my side, : I would race through the forest, avoiding all the beaten tracks, and listen to its -voices." It is thus that the beech tree, in all its phases, grew to take its especially favoured place in the artistic work of the Roumanian Queen. "I was once laughed at," she says, "for saying in one of my stories that in May the leaves of the beech are so shining the blue sky is reflected in them"—this mirror brightness cf young leaves 'being a less familiar tlfing to critics than to the forest child. Her earliest story was written at eleven years of age, and the first play at fourteen. But as her poetic gift got past thte stage when the joy was simply to make rhymes and sing them through the woods, "at the top of my voice, for I could never think my songs to myself unsung," the young writer trembled lest her efforts should be thought vain and boastful. "I did not dare to learn the rules of my art, nor to correct mistakes that 1 had made—l felt as if that were scarcely honest and sincere." She was five and thirty before she would allow anything bo be printed, and then it was only to be under a pen-name, the final choice of which is described. It had to be Latin, as the Roumanian Queen ruled a Latin people, and yet with something in it to recall the land sh_ came from. "How do you say forest in Latin?" she asked. "The forest is called SLlva, or, as some write it, Sylva." Finding next th_fc Carmen was the word for a short poem or song, the Queen clapped her hands. "I have my name. In German I am Waldgesang, the song of the woods, and in Latin that is Carmen Sylvae. But Sylvae does not sound like a real name, so we must take a trifling liberty with it, and I will be called Carmen Sylva." So the name by which the world best knows her, sends back a greeting to those child days in woods still best-, because earliest, beloved. "I -have lovely woods also here in Roumania, but fir-trees are mixed with the other trees, and there are no lofty snacioUs beech avenues like the aisles of a Gothic ' cathedral, as in my woods beside • the Rhine."