TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 11130, 23 November 1901, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

, The stoppage by. the hon.;. > ( , A Gun-Runner don Customs authorities ".. for the Boer*, of the steamer' Ban Righ ':'J; 1 , thrt>ws some light on tb« ,'X question of how the, Boers obtain tlie sup- ."1; plies of arms and 'ammunition necessary to C' ; enable them'to kesp in fbe field. Her '\ cargo of cannon, materials'for making gun-, .• ,r----powder,;and a searchlight anparatu*, agrees i- : poorly with her. character as a fruit;v«asel r ''"';;". and there is little doubt that, after teftvinij ;.|> * Hamburg) her captain would have jfounditßiM '$' hie. sealed orders told him to tike .the to South Africa. The nuthode by "S. the-Boers in getting possession of such aw^F^ , were recently explained to •& London . by a man who had been engaged in ruaniijfV contraband of war for the benefit of tjbe;> , enemy. Englehardt, the man in question, is a, British subject of Irish bjrth,, who - '.. , fought with the Boick throughout a gmbr.'.' part of the war." He declared to " V viewer that the Bosrs had , enough anus ani :' ammunition in the caves and the festoesttl of the hills beyond the Limpopo Valley to •': last for years, and. a great "deal more wai ~ ,? constantly being imported. It comee from ' ''• thß Continent, mainly from Franca, Austria.' : }■ and Holland.. "Some months back,". J»/: ,1. said, "many tons of stuff were landed on - : the coast of Xamaqualatfd and tnkked'ovet ■ ..' fc the country and right through the British - > I lines to Xha commandos. Another time we got dozens of casea of Mauser" carfridgM ■■*;"." through Natal; they were landed from/.;" boats on the Mazeppa rocks and carted up 5 n i., . ordinary- waggons without question from anybody. More cases of ball cartridges and , i rifles were, put ashore" in. St Lucia B>y.". : But most of the gun-running has been done -' '\ by way of Delagoa Bay and Beira. The work of getting the stuff overland is some- ' ' what tedious; but up to the present I doa'fc think the Boers have lost a, single case o£ cartridges." He professed not to know hqw , the goods were brought to South Africa, but said he believed they were taken from European trading ports on trading vessel?—as in the case of the Ban Bigli—and tracsferiecl from these on the high seas to small' craf& that meet them by arrangement. Naturally the smugglers do not land them in the harbours that are watched by the British, but they are put ashore in creeks and on lonely beaches. The risk, he declared, was very slight, which is a pfjor compliment to the watchfubess of the British warships. Speaking of the war, he admitted that at ; Vlakfontein some of the British wounded were shot- where they lay. The murders, however, were not committed by Boers, bat by an Italian. "Most of these Atrocities," said Eftglehardt, "were committed by those ; mercenaries, who wei& very hard to keep in '■ hand." He apparently forgot for the moment that he had been a mercenary himself. As for the duration of the war, he was certain it would go on for another nine months, possibly for another, nine on top of that, and the Boers were gaining recruits so > . continually ,that their strength was apfcsally increasing instead of diminishing. The cautious man, however, will receive such statements with a proper appreciation of the j source from which they emanate.

Last week, as the cable Extraordinary reported, Melbourne nnd Hailstones. some of the country dis-

tricts of Victoria, exlerienced an extraordinary storm of hailjtoDes. The Melbourne papers to hand by the last mail devote columns to the tpisode. which Is declared to be unprecedented in the history of the present generation in Melbourne. The majority of tie hailstones, according to the "Argus," were over an inch in diameter, and hard and strong as pebbles. Some weighed nearly half a pound, and one block of ice nicked up ut a railway station was nearly « pound in weight. The sound of the hail falling on the roofs is described as "appalling," and all around the musical chink of falling gla«s could be heard as the huge hailstones struck glass verandahs and iskvlights, and shattered then to fragments." Here and there a roof was blown Off and sheets of iron were sent spinning in all directions. Out in the country dwellings were blown down and others unroofed, chimneys demolished, and the roads blocked with fallen trees and broken fences. Mr Baracchi, the Victorian Government Meteorologist, attributed tlte actual cause of the storm to an Antarctic cyclonic disturbance, and he estimated thut fully an inch of water fell during the hour and a quarter that the storm was at its height, while the wind at one period travelled at the rate of 50 or 60 miles an hour. During the middle of the. storm the barometer «t the Observatory suddenly rose, as if it bad l»en ehot up by an external force. Similar storms, some of them even more eevere in character, have been experienced in other parts of the world at rare intervals. In 1860 a British warship off the Cape was severely damaged by a fall of "hailstones" the size of half-bricks, while in Moravia in 1889 a number of people and animal* were killed by a hailstorm, some of the stones weighing three pounds each. Large hailstones are common in Queensland, though they seldom approach the size ef those which fell in Melbourne last week.

Montenegro has just celeThe Jubilee brated the fiftieth year of Montenegro, of its establishment as a

principality, as well as the sixtieth birthday of its ruler, Prince Nicholas, and the forty-first year of his reign. Although it still remains the most conservative of European States, great changes have taken place since 1852. At the beginning of this period it was a wild, almost unknown' highland, generally regarded by other nations as a nest of brigands and savages. Its romantic history woke the admiration of enthusiastic lovers of liberty. Tennyion saluted it as

•'Smallest among peoples! Bough-rock throne Of Freedom! warriors beating back the swarm Of Turkish lelam for five hundred years," and lie fitly characterised its people as "chaste, frugal, savage, armed by* day and night." Warriors from one generation to another, they remained primitive homeloving mountaineers, scorning the finicking industries pursued in the factories of their Servian brothers, and dislikmg even agriculture, or, in fact, any occupation except war. Within the last fifty years, Montenegro has entered into the family of European kingdoms. Its Prince has been the especial friend of the Hussion -Czars, the respected visitor of Queen and the father* in-l&w of numerous European Princes, connections of the Russian Imperial family,'the reigning house of Savoy, the Battenbergs, and indirectly of our own Royal dynasty. The marriage of his daughter to the-present King.of Italy has exposed the Black Mountain, to Italian influences; and tfie result ol contact with this and other nations is that it is being slowly Europeanised. Its once trackless wilds are now traversed by excellent highways, connecting all cipol towns. The first railway has • been opened, and the Prince has planned o> great Pan-Slavic line to unite the Russian/Roujmanian, and Servian lines with the Adriatic. The old military eystem under which the army was simply the whole nation tinder arms, has been reorganised on Russian methods, and there is α-tendency to the creation o/ a< standing army of the European type. Modern ideas and modern -fashions are almost imperceptibly creeping in and supplanting the Homerio custom* of the mountaineers. A modern palace, has bean erected and furnished for the Crown Prince and Iris foreign ;bride. ' The picturesque national costume, which was once universal, still lingers at the capital, Cettinje, but hit's vanished in some other places, and eyen the Prince's own daughters are said to prefer European drpss. '.'Probably," says a visiter to the country, "the hideous clothes of the Western male will become the fashion in the mountains." Montenegrins tm beginning to go abroad to study, and it is not likely they will return absolutely unchanged. The diffusion of civilisation within the- country may do more harm than good by changing their primitive character. At present'they are nature's noblemen, magnificent men in stature and physique. The reigning Prince, though conic years ago he , nominally gave up his absolute power, has ! . etfll -remained practically an autocrat, and is his own Premier, Chancellor, and Com-: mander-iri-Chief. Until quite lately he sat knder a tree outside his , palace to judge the causes brought before him, tut the tree has been blown down-ran ill omen, some may think, for the continuance of his patriarchal authority.