TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 13100, 27 April 1908, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

It is no wonder that Cairo Lifo is crowded with tourists in in the season, for nowhere else* Cairo, perhaps, cau such a fascinating jumble of past and present be seen. As an Anglo-Indian puts it, y<iu can motor back to the time of the Israelites, go hy electric tram to tho burial place 'of Cheops, watch tho peasant ploughing in primitive Biblical fashion as you lounge at afternoon tea on tho terrace of. an hotel, see howling Dervishes, an<l bazaars which have not changed materially since Mohammed's time, and enjoy the Egyptian "Aida" played at a comfortable opera house by som© of the most celebrated singers of the day. Mr Sidney Low, in his impressions of" Egypt, contributed to the"Standard/ notes the of Oriental lifo in Cairo, the filth and darkness of the lanes of the old city, and the magnificence of Moslem architecture. "Those who think that Mahomotanism moans necessarily stagnation and barbarism, will alter their opinion when they have studies the mosques of Cairo and considered what Is|am , produced in its periods of great culture. "The mosque of tho Sultan is not unworthy to rank beside the noblest of contemporaneous Christian churches. Tbe < Egyptians, who regard this mosque as the finest in the world, have a legend that tho Sultan ordered tlie right hand of the designer to be cut off, that he might not build another to vie with it. A curious feature of now Cairo is that it aims at being French, and not English. The English are the rulers in Egypt, both politically and economically; they are obeyed, and, on the whole, respected. But they have not captured the Egyptian heart; they are not loved; their habits, customs, and ideals do not appeal to th© young native. Young Egypt Hkes French books, French plays, and French society, and prefers to speak the French language. "When it tabes a. European holiday it does not seek the coasts of Britain; it finds our manners, as well as our climate, too chilly, and it does not care for our recrear. tions. It prefers Rome, or Vienna, or the Riviera, and, above all, Paris, and returns with ultra-Parisian tastes, which it endeavours, so far as possible, to gratify at home." But if Englisttmen ever find this humiliating, they havo only to reflect that it is better to have lifted a country from bankruptcy and corruption to solvency and honesty than to have given it a veneer of exotic culture.

Mountains on the fronMountain tier are by no means a Soldiers. perfect protection to a country. European counthies bordering on the Alps keep a constant watch on tho passes, and go; to great trouble to train special corps of soldiers for the difficult work of fighting in the mountains. Italy, which has to watch France, Switzerland, and Austria, keeps on a war footing no less ■than 50,000 mountain soldiers. France has'3o,ooo of these men, 20,000 of whom would bo'employed against Italy in time of war. These French Alpine troops; form the subject of an article in "Cassell's." According to the belief that'mountain dwellers ore hardy, one would expect these soldiers to bedrawn from the peasants on the slopes of the" Alps, but, as a matter of fact, owing to the poverty of the soil, these people' are not very robust, so the troops are recruited from all over the country, small muscular men beinjr preferred. The summer is spent in manoeuvres' and training of all kindt on the mountainß. The men are taught ice and snow' croft, and in the pieces., have to undergo great hardships and continually face danger. They must leanii to climb the steepest peaks .witl heavy loads on their backs. The alter-

native botween the heat of; m-urching in the bright sunshine and halting in an icy cold wind is very trying, and sometimes the mountain foga make it so cold that a commahder." is obliged to risk has men's lives by keeping them on tbys move rather than allow them to remain still. An interesting instance of the car©'necessary in this kind of soldiering is the fact that while oa the march shouting and singing are forbidden, lest the vibration in the rarefied air should caus© avalanches. But the worst feature of the work is the wintering of small detachment* in certain passes communicating with Italy, over th© frontier of. which a ceaseless watch must b© kept. Some of those stations are at over 8500, feet altitude, and here th© men under an officer ; specially selected for his ability to keep his men in good heart, live for four m.ntiis in th© snow, quite cut off from th© rest of the world. Sometimes the buildings are completely covered with snow, and the men have to di<r themselves out. Happy is the post tnat has a barrel-organ, while the man who lias an instrument and can play it is master of the situation. When the winter is over th© men go for three months to sunny south of Franoe, and there forget their hardship. Those hardy mountain soldiers ar© the ©lite of the army, and apparently a force of which France has ©very reason, to be proud.

An English writer Poets . has been inspired and tho by tho reniark of a New Learning, young literary man, that nobody can be a poet now, to suggest that would-be poets should 6ing of tho new learning. W© are constantly being told that th© days of great poetry are over, that all th© great themes are exhausted, that everything has been said on every subject that is worth saying. Politics, business, money-making, and above all, science, havo killed tho glorious art. "Who can gather Asphfodel on tho slopes of Parnassus in this atmospher©, heavy with tho fumes of the laboratory and the odours of the dissecting room?" Thero is a good deal of poetry termed minor written still, _ some of which in a former ago would not have had this qualifying adjective applied to it. But cultured and melodious as it is, there is a curious unreality about most of it. The singers are still harping on the old, old strains and doings of Pan, Artmus, Ariadne, Paris, Francesca da Rimini, and Guinevere. The stories of thes© people are deathless, and tho modem narrator tells them well, but one is tempted to ask if there, is nothing of living interest which is worth all the labour bestowed on th© polishing and resetting of these worn, old gems. There is. in truth, a great deal. In the last twenty years science has opened new worlds of wonder to our gaze, hut poetry declines to interest itself in th-se achievements, "tinder the daring touch of scientists the old worlds have been torn to pieces and reconstructed: space, matter, force, energy, all that we know, oil that w© feel, all that we touch, all that mankind has regarded as tho most stable realities, >havo been resolved into their elements, melted away, changed- into 'the airy fabric ot a vision,' deprived in some cases ot existence altogether. Th© whole theory of tho univera© has had to be recast, and scientific conceptions which for generations have been accepted as irrefragable have had to be abandoned.'' There is, for instance, the tremendous speculation of Professor Thomson and other physicists, which destroys matter altogether and bids us .believe that nothing exists but energy and ether. Surely in this romance of the elements, _____ cosmio drama of force and motion, there is material for literature.. But with the exception of Mr John Davidson, hardly any poet of not© has touched thes© subjects. "But if our imaginative literature is to climb to loftier heights than that gentle slop© on which it at present contentedly reclines, 1 think it will be by this route. If w© ar© to have another Wordsworth or another Shelly, they will assuredly be deeply conscious of th© Now Learning in every fibre of their poetical being."