NEWS AND NOTES.

Evening Post, Volume LXXV, Issue 122, 23 May 1908, Page 12

NEWS AND NOTES.

The Roumanian Government has initiated a" most rigorous persecution of the Jews. Local authorities have received instructions to expel thousands of Jews from districts in which they have resided for many years, even for generations.

In answer to a suffragist petition, asking the authorities to license women as chauffeurs, the Mayor of Chicago recently declared that no woman was physically iit to run a motor car.

People convicted at Lanelly (Wales) of drunkenness are placed under the charge of a Salvation Army supervision officer, and forbidden to enter a publichouse for three months.

On the eve of) his departure for St. Petersburg, the • Authors' Clnb gave a dinner in honour of thef ex-priest and Eolitical reformer, Father Petroff, who aa been exiled from Russia. For this the Perfect of Police fined the president of the club £100 and the organiser of the dinner £50 for hold an unauthorised gathering.

The Chicago City Council has determined to exterminate the cats in. that city, estimated to number about a million, because they are alleged to convey diphtheria germs. The women of the city ars opposing the slaughter, declaring that the resulting plague of mice and rats would be far worse than the cats..

niie British workmen engaged in. constructing , the Lobito Bay railway oomplain (says th& Express correspondent) that three of their number were illegally arrested and brutally whipped by the Portuguese with the sjambok, a whip of .rhinoceros hide, which is customarily used to flog natives^

In moving the second reading of the Children Bill in the House of Commons, Mr. , Shaw, the Lord Advocate, incidentally maintained that George Borrow .had done his country a great disservice by glorifying tramp life, in which' children were generally brought up in squalid and immoral surroundings. We cakinofc agree (says' the Spectator) tramps do not read Borrow, and as for the public, they are not demoralised but improved by the manliness and humanity of his outlook in th© world. A "stuffy" indoor age owes a great deal to Borrows vindications of the free air and the. "wind on the heath." No one ever rose from reading "Lavengro" or "The Bible in Spain" in the mood which promotes cruelty to children.

It is etated that the Countess Montig-noso-Toselli, formerly the Crown Prin-* cess- of Saxony, is not satisfied with her | latest marital enterprise, anu' there are rumours of a divorce.

A committee has been appointed by the Russian Ministry "of Finance, consisting of representatives of the Ministries of Commerce, War, Finance, Public Instruction, and Foreign Affairs, to consider measures for tho introduction of instruction in Japanese in the mentary and middle schools, ahd ' for student voyages to Japan by persons who are learnings Japanese, to enable them, by their own efforts, to perfect their knowledge in that language.

Fifth Avenue and Broadway (writes The Times New York correspondent) were en fete on the night of 7th April on the occasion of the holding of a novel automobile parade to celebrate the first decade of the industry. An immense crowd witnessed a procession of nearly two thousand cars, representing the earliest and latest types, which extended five miles and was marked by all the spectacular features of a carnival. The American automobile industry has rapidly grown since 1898. The output today is estimated at fifty thousand cars, and the. capital invested has increased a hundredfold.

An old lady who haa long vainly !ittempted to obtain an increase of pension decided to address a petition to Princess Yolonda, the five-year-old daughter of the King of Italy. The letter was handed to the King,, who read ifc and, with imperturbable seriousness, ordered his chamberlain to take ifc to the Princess. The chamberlain proceeded to the Princess's cot, where the child was sleeping soundly, and, to the astonishment of her nurse, gravely read the petition to her. Then he returned to the King. "Well," said Victor Emmanuel, "what did the Princess say?" "Nothing, your Majesty. She is asleep. " "Then silence gives consent," said the King, and he ordered the petition to be granted.

Grave blunders aro sometimes discovered in almost the last places where they would be expected. In a scroll on the casket presented to Florence Nightingale by the corporation of the City of London is , a reference to the recipient's "generosity in establishing the Nightingale Homes at St. Thomas's and King's College • Hospitals with the £50,000 granted to her by Parliament." It was at once pointed out that the nation's gift was not a Parliamentary grant. The precise sum was £44,039, and it was a voluntary testimonial to which contributions were made by all classes of the community in" almost every part of the Empire. '

Judging from the Commonwealth Year-book, recently issued, the phrase "secular education" seems to be variously construed in the' different States of Australia. In New South Wales the teaching is strictly secular, but .the words "secular instruction" are held to include general religious teaching as distinguished from dogmatic and polnynical theology, and .this instruction is given by the teacher in the ordinary course. In Western Australia the same definition holds good ; and besides this i-egular teaching ministers and other authorised religious teachers have the right of- entry for half-an-hour daily into all State schools, but attendance at this instruction is not compulsory. ',

Concerning the language clause of the a^ociations law passed wifch. certain compromises on 19th March, the i'-er'in correspondent of The Times says :-- A Polish member of the committee diew attention to the disabilities which Ihe clause would impose upon the Fole&. and especially upon the Polish miners who had migrated to Westphalia and the Rhine province. These Poles, although they could by no means be described as "ingenious inhabitants," nevertheless formed a very considerable section of the local population^ and they would be completely debarred from conducting public meetings in their mother tongue. Those Prussian subjects in the Eastern provinces who speak non-German languages amount to' nearly ten per cent, of. the total population of the kingdom, and in the case of the Poles the proportion tends to increase year by year. In many quarters, therefore, fears are expressed that in the case of the Polish provinces the solo effect of the language restrictions imposed by the Imperial Associations Law will be to aggravate the discontent which the i Prussian policy of expropriation is likely to create. The Berliner Tageblatt, which points out that after 'more .than a century of continuous effort the Prussian Government has failed to induce the Poles to give up their, mother tongue, observes : — "lb has now been proclaimed that the German Empire will ,be a 'National State' after the year 1928. After that date only German is fto be spoken, and those who cannot or 1 will not bpeak German are to liold their

Mr. Moses Coatsworth, the British scientist, who has arrived at Victoria, British Columbia, from Alaska, has been gathering evidence with regaid to tho shifting of the location of the Poles. Mr. Coatsworth states that the habitable area of Canada is gradually extending northward, and that Siberia is becoming colder.

The San Francisco correspondent of a London paper thus explains the defect in the indictment of Schmitz : — The quashing of tho sentenco on ex-Mayor Schmitz means that to compel the proprietors of an illicit place to pay money to one, not a public official, as the alternative of having their liquor license withdrawn, does not constitute the crime of extortion, as defined by the laws of California. That is all that either the appellate or the Supreme Court decided. The indictment was misguided, in that it did not aver that Schmitz was mayor, or that Kuef was a political boss acting with him in this matter. It is evidently the opinion of the Supreme Court that it should have been alleged in the indictment. Nobody doubts that Schmitz and Ruef were acting together, any more than- he doubts .whether Schmitz was mayor and Ruef ' a bogs, but it is necessary.- to allege such things in an indictment. Schmitz is now the guest of honour among his old millionaire associates,' pending trial on further charges. It is evident thq ex-mayor will not face trial for several months, as the courts are congested with cases against Ruef. The graft prosecutors are undismayed, and declare they will wage war on the boodling superiors until they are senfc to the penitentiary.

The failure of the reported engagement of /Princess Beatrice of Saxe-Co-burg Goxha, a niece of Kine Edward, to the Infante Alphonse Bourbon of Orleans, a . great-grandson of King louis Phillippe, has caused a good deal of newspaper gossip. A Berlin correspondent of the Paris Matin attributes ifc to "the desire of the Princess to marry a certain officer of somewhat plebiean birth, who, however, meets with great success in the fashionable world on account of his very fine tenor voice." This story, however, is rejected by the English press, which states that the question of religion is the insurmountable obstacle. As an Infante of Spain, Prince Alphonse can only marry a Roman Catholic, and Princess Beatrice, who is a Protestant, is not to be prevailed upon to change her religion. Her sister, the Crown Princess of Roumania, has always declined to give up her Protestantism.

In his youth and early manhood (says St. James Budget) the Duke of Devonshire resembled Wellington and Wesley. All three were in their early days abnormally slow to grasp facts. Wesley's mother used to declare thafc she had twenty times to repeat a thing to her famous son. After the twentieth time lie never forgot. Wellington — "My dull boy Arthur," as his mother called him — was as bad, and did not soon> shake off his awkward mental heaviness. While the future saviour of Europe was still a young man Luttrell saw him at a levee. "Well, Jet who will 'get on, you certainly will 'not," he remarked to himself. The same thing would have been said of the Duke. But his hesitancy to admit thafc he had mastered a proposition never left him. One who was intimately associated with him and with Mr. Balfour in official life thus contrasted the two : "Mr. Balfour not merely grasps details as you explain them ; he anticipates what you are going to tell him. The Duke will require the same statement repeated half, a dozen times, as if he had to drive the facts into his mind. But once he has mastered his facts, he never forgets them."

The Government of Japan (writes tho Tokio correspondent of The Times) finding that the self-imposed burden of nationalised railroads is likely to prove too heavy, is now engaged in considera'-. tion of teritative projects for relieving itself, axtd at the same time serving the double purpose of building up the industries of the couritry, providing additional exports for its subsidised steamship lines*, and increasing its own income by the revenues derivable from increased production. Meanwhile, but little can b& done to extend the lines throughout these sections of Japan, where ifc is much needed for development* and to improve and equip the present lines in such a manner as to enable them to fetch and carry in an adequate degreo. It is in this connection that financiers; engineers, and railway men from foreign •countries have been in conference for the last month and more with certain leading men in Japan. It is understood that the proposal now finding favour is that the railways of Japan should be leased for a period of years to a privateqompany or syndicate which will take from the shoulders of tho Japanese Gov^ ernment the financial burden and responsibility it has undertaken, which will pay to the Government a certain percentage of profits and undertake improvements and extensions under a given schedule. Tho present plans in this connection are entirely tentative, but it may be stated that they have assumed a somewhat concrete fornij and that under certain conditions European financiers have expressed their willingness to undertake the work.

The 'Montreal Gazette says .that the Canadian Immigration Bill in operation is likely to prove a mischievous measure. Its apparent purpose is to keep out Asiatics. It tries to secure this by enacting that any person of the immigrant class coming to Canada except on a through ticket from his place of birth or citizenship shall be deported. Such a law would keep out a Scandinavian or German or Frenchman coming here after having lived a little while in. some other country, or an Englishman who nad first tried the United States. It would not keep out a knife-user from Sicily who came direct, nor a Japanese from Japan, a Chinaman from China, nor an Indian from Hindustan. It might not even keep out a Japanese from the Sandwich Islands if he knew enough to obtain a ntfit of habeas corpus. Tho Gazette says that it would be better not to pass such a law and to depend on reasonable and defensible statutes to keep out the mentally, morally and physically unfit.

The Saturday Review thinks tha£, after all, there was merit in Lord John Manner's prayer on behalf of the "old nobility," though the poetry was bad. A Cavendish tradition (it says), a Cavendish estate, is v national possession and asset. It means great responsibility and sense of public duty ; inherited responsibility and duty. It makes 'for the safety and endurance of solid interests and priceless institutions — Church, Upper House, the Monarchy itself. There are wasters, wanton wasters, among the "old nobility," and when the Conservative Party is once more well set in power it will have to deal with these bad cases so far as the House />f Lords is concerned. But their effect for evil is overstated by the Radicals and levellers. They are an exception, on the whole, to their class. The policy of distributing tho Dukpries, by public pilfering the indii-faF,aßx etaoielfeee pilfering or public company — which in a few cases are thought to be one and th& same — is not a patriotic one. A Duke who "owns" a county or a mil. lion pounds does not keep it all to himself. He could not if he would. His money, the interest — and sometimes the capital — is distributed among thousands ; alas! the ciops which glow on his lands are. likeMi&e distributed. If the- leveller will go to Rowsley or Edensor, he may come away & sti^ei'