TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 12508, 22 May 1906, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Tho collapse of Prinoe Bulow'e Prince Bulow in the Illneeß. Reichstag on April

! sth had its dramatic element, for he was seized with illness whila listening to a violent attack by his mcst formidable opponent, Herr Rebel, the Socialist loader. Herr Bebel was in the middle of a heated onslaught on the Chancellor's foreign policy, which ho described as misguided, worthless, and despicable, when the Prince fell from his chair, doathly pale. So serious was his condition that the doctors would not admit the Emperor to se© him, and did not move him from the building for three hours. Prince Bulow was a victim to Morocco, twelve months' overwork and excessive anxiety arising out of the difficulty having overtaxed hifl strength. Only a few weeks before Baron Riohtofen, the Foreign Secretary, succumbed to an illness brought on by the tamo cause. Tho. ex-Chancellor has, says a writer in a London, paper,

been called faoky by his admirers, for tintil the Morocco crisis he was lucky m everything he undertook. Nine years ago ho was practically unknown, when he was appointed Foreign Minister at the early age of forty-eight. Four years later he vu the test known German statesman, and his name was familiar all over the world. He is now ody in hia fifty-seventh year, which, as statesmen go, is young. When he first came into prominence he was called the "mouthpiece of the Emperor," and the phrase remained with him, for he was an intimate friend of the Kaiser, and was his right-hand man in the many enterprises winch have alarmed Europe. "He is on terms of the closest intimacy with the Emperor, to whom he can talk in the freest manner without incurring

the risk of rebuke. He often spend*) hours alone with his Imperial master, ; but as to what takes place at these | intimate interviews be observes the , strictest silence. So much is this the ! cas3 that in society he lias earned lor j himself the soubriquet of 'The Sphinx.' < On matters unconnected with politics he talks freely and brilliantly, but on a diplomatic or political subject he has never been known to express a definite opinion in private." It is said that fiulow's luck even extended to his title. The story goes that twice he declined the title of Prince, not being rich enough to maintain it, but ju6t as the Emperor was beginning to bo annoyed at his favourite's obstinacy, a distant relative died in Hamburg and left him £275,000, which enabled him to support the honour j with becoming dignity.

England witnessed reA Campaign cently ono of th© most of remarkable election Sentiment, campaigns on record.

when Lady Mary Hamilton opposed Mns H. Pearson to j deciJe who should represesut the Eye j Division of Suffolk in the House of; Commons. The Marquis of Graham, the Unionist candidate, is engaged to Lady Mary Hamilton, and as the young people belong to great | historic houses, and Lady Mary is the I richest heiress in England, they aro naturally people of importance to the great British public. Lady Mary, working for her fiance, ond Mrs Pearson, working for her husband, the | Liberal candidate, probably worked' harder than over women worked before in an election, and before long tlie interest was centred on them and not en the candidates. They dashed about the country im motors, spoke to the electors, canvassed indefatigably, shook hands with the energy of President Roosevelt, and made frank appeals to sentiment. As tho "Daily Express" \ puts it neatly, the point before tho electors was, "which is the more dessrv-■ ing Of support; an engaged lady who is so devoted that she wishes to make her j fiance a wedding present in the shape I of a constituency, or a wife who is anxious to give her husband a seat in Parliament?" That this is no mere j sacrifice of truth to smartness is shown \ by tho appeal which Lady Mary sent i to every elector in the constituency: — ( "My friends and neighbours,—You will have heard that I am engaged to bo married to Lord Graham, who, as jou know, is contesting th© Eye Division. I am sure you will be able to understand how very anxious my mother and myself aro that he should win the election, and how happy I should be should he do so. Will you do mc a great favour and help mc by giving him your vote? Most of you, I feel sure, will remember my father, the late Duke of Hamilton, and will also remember with what affection he was held in the county. When Lord Graham and I are married we shall hope to fill the 6am© place in your affections as ho did, and I can assure you it will be our constant, endeavour to make your interests our j interests." It is pleasant to reoord ' that the contest was singularly free from ill-feeling. Th© only occasion in which there threatened to be any bitterness was when Lady Mary's agent referred to Mr Pearson as "a pleasant young gentleman of twenty-two summers." Mrs Pearson promptly quoted with some heat— j

"A lie which is all a li© may be met | and fought with outright, But a lie which is part a truth, is a; harder matter to fight," for the truth was that Mr Pearson was twenty-three. However, the agent acknowledged his mistake, and there was peace again. But Lady Mary's appeal, which seamed to open up a terrible vista of unengaged candidates, was of no avail. Liberalism and Mrs Pear-

son were too strong, and tho Marquis suffered defeat by nearly 600 votes.

The experiences of tho fourBack teen mine re who came back from from the dead after spending the three weeks underground at Dead. Courrieres have surely not

been equalled in horror by anything in the history of mining disaster. Tho thirteen men who were found first remained huddled up in a cutting for a week. When the food they had with them, and that on the bodies of the dead men lying round them, was exhausted, they stripped the hark of the prop of tho roof, and munched it. Thirst was their enemy, for all they had to drink was the littlo water which trickled from the side of the cutting. Hour after hour the men watched for' every drop and carefully preserved it. At the end of the week they were so cramped that they decided to risk the fire and seek a roomier shelter, which they found after two or three days' crawling about, in a stable. Here they found a dead horse and somo carrots. The dead horse tasted like a delicacy after the diet of bark, but two days of life in this place was enough. They found themselves getting weaker, and determined to move on. The last days were days of torture, for the horseflesh went bad, and mad with hunger as the men were, they could scarcely eat it. Happily the statement in the cable message that tho men fed on human flesh proves to be incorrect; at least, the survivors say nothing of such a horror, and it is probable that in transmission tho statement that they took food from the dead bodies of their comrades received a terrible significance. The special correspondent of one of the London papers, who spent somo time at Courrieres and went down the mine, gives a graphic account of the fieice anger the men and women of the place had for the authorities when the survivors came back. Tlie belief that more might have been done to rescue men was everywhere expressed in frenzied language, men and -women battered at the gates of the mine and furiously demanded that greater efforts should be made to look for more survivors, and officials wero openly assaulted. Tho correspondent

says that if an official had gone out after dark?lftlone he would never have come back alive. The correspondent gives it as the opinion of every practical minor he interviewed—and, indeed, of all Courrieres—that after the disaster the. company's whole desire was to save property, and not lives.