ANGLO-COLONIAL NOTES

Evening Star, Issue 12399, 12 January 1905, Page 5

ANGLO-COLONIAL NOTES

P'rom Our Special Correspondent.]

LONDON, December 2. POSTAL ANOMALIES. Vi hat is to happen when the existing Australian mail contracts with the P. and 0. and the Orient Companies expire at the end of next January ? Apparently no one knows, for no arrangements have been made for carrying on the mail service. Unless something is done, and done promptly, the mercantile community may have to put up with a fortnightly instead of a weekly service of mails—a backward step which would bo distinctly harmful to Australian interests. The Orient Company, it appears, find that it does not pay them to carry Australian mails on the present mail subsidy, and so far the Australian Government have not succeeded in obtaining a suitable tender from any other company. The Imperial Government meanwhile have fixed a contract with the P. and 0. Company to carry mails to and from Australia for three years for a subsidy to be paid by the Imperial Government alone; but this is onlv for a fortnightly service. The Australian Government propose to fill the gap caused by the expiry of the Orient contract by shipping the mails on the alternate weeks at "poundage rates,” as payment by weight is called. Such an arrangement does not seem likely to produce satisfactory results. Under the existing contract the shipping companies are obliged to adhere strictly to time-table dates, and heavy penalties are exacted if the contract is violated in any Way. On a poundage system the Government would have no such hold over the companies, and there is no guarantee that the service will not be irregular and uncertain. PROFESSOR HAST AM IN' “A GREEKLESS LAND.” Great interest is being taken in the discussion now proceeding at Cambridge on the proposal to make Greek optional in the •‘little go,” or preliminary examination. .The proposal arose out of ’ a report of a syndicate specially appointed to consider the report, and the question was discussed yesterday bv the Senate of the University. Professor Sir Richard Jebb, M.P., who Spoke strongly against the proposal, quoted )it length from an interesting letter on the Question of Greek at Oxford, which had peen sent to ‘ The Times ’ by Professor F. W. Haslam, of St. John’s, Cam., now professor of classics at Canterbury College. Baid Sir Richard Jebb, referring to the probable effect on classical and literary (rtudy. in the Empire;

I) Greek is not required for the New Zealand degree; but Latin is. And Latin is now on its defence there, just as Greek is here, and, we may add, just as Latin also will be here before long, if Greek once goes. Professor Haslamsaid : " If Oxford gives up Greek, the hands of those who defend Latin here will be oeriously weakened.” He added, with great truth: “I think the world will never -know what it has been saved from by this small amount until we have had a' Greekless generation or two.” He himself dwells* in a Greekless laud, and he gives one or two illustrations of what he means. “It has been my lot,” he wrote. “to mourn over an old friend disguised under the name of Andromash, and sadlv to infer the identity of one of the parties in a story about ‘Cupid and Sich.’ I have also been asked to give mv candid opinion of the merits of a poem of which sne verse ran as follows: I am come from beds of loins, ' Where the oft-rednndant Nile’ Still, as sang old Herodotus, A Ripples with unnumbered smile.

-ind once an English friend of mine went to the top of the Observatory here to look at the stars through the telescope with a n of smart Australians. I sat down e lowest step to wait for him, and lighted the pipe of patience; but I had hardly time for half a dozen whiffs when • I heard, as Bunyan says, ‘the sound of one running at a great padding pace ’ down the winding staircase, and an agitated voice exclaimed in my ear: ‘o°h, take me out of this ; they are all calling Inna, “Bools” up there!’ How many Greekless generations will it take before lacy ‘Cali.hini,Boots’ at the Royal Ob-

servatpry, Greenwich? Now, it may be urged that it is immaterial whether our future astronomers call hiip Boots or Bootes if only they know what constellation they mean. And y?t there is a difference.

Voting on the proposal may not take place till next spring.

PRIESTLY PRAISE. There is a double satisfaction in pleasing an Irishman, for he has the faculty of giving expression to his pleasure in hone red words, none the less sincere for being sugary. And so, for New Zealand’s w 1 r S“ oe that the Very Rev. Dr Walters,'SAL, president of the Catholic university school m Dublin, can look back with unalloyed pleasure to the years he spent u your colony. Hera is the tribute, phrased as only a son of Erin could phrase it, which Dr Watters paid to New Zealand the other day m the course of a lecture upon its Progress, i ts people, and its scenic charms:— Sixty years ago New Zealand uas a mare possession, a colonial toy. Sixty years of steadfast industry, of strenuous toil, of keen foresight, and-generous, broad-minded statesmanship, finding its expression more especially of later years, in a.singularly able and sympathetic government of the people, by the people, for the peop'o, have created in this little country °‘. the far bcnth » fair world all its own, wuaie every man worth his salt has a chance, where no effete ascendance broods as an incubus, where a, broad field is open to a man of energy, grit, and industry, where any man and every man may carre his way to affluence and influence, and that, too, amid conditions that commend themselves to every lover of freedom.” -Nor did Dr Watters omit to pay a tribute to tho New Zealanders—“ the kindly, generous, open-nearted people of New Zeajar a, amongst whom my sfcrcnnoas years of hfe were happily passed.” To the Irish colonials he refers with especial warmth of feeling, ,and < despite the inevitable knock at the rutmess alien ” across the Channel, it is plain that his sympathies did not eiid with the limits of his authority as a Catholic priest. He went on to say:

The pictures I have shown call from the recess rs of memory—where such things are sacredly stored—the vision of strong arms, and generous hearts, and loyal wills that uniformly stood by every good cause. Struggling themselves—most of them—to carve a path to livelihood and further, the scattered children of Ireland rallied round the sacred cause of Christian education, of which I was a humble exponent, determined to perpetuate beyond the seas, at any cost, at any sacrifice, tire priceless heritage ,of religion, that when all else was torn from them it - alone remained undirainished, unimpaired, because, forsooth, it stood not within the power of a ruthless, unscrupulous alien to rob them of tho faith of their fathers. And it would be ungracious, in a lecture like this, did I not gratefully recognise the steady sympathy and valuable assistance in a cause not their own that in flowing stream were lavished :n dark and difficult times, in times of strain and stress, by crowds of friends who saw not eye to eye with me in_ faith or nationality. The strong, bright faces are before me as memory carries me once again across the seas to the last frontier of the globe, and shall remain a treasure sweet, abiding, precious—a proof strong and resistless of the best elements of our common humanity. THE COLONIAL ATTITUDE.

•Mf H. F. Wyatt, the Navy League's envoy, on a recent tom- of Great Britain, sums up ns follows the colonies’ main objections to participation in naval defence: theory of no taxation without representation ; theory of need of all resources for internal development; theory of need of local squadrons for coast defence; impression of United Kingdom departmental inMiricncv, derived from the South African War ; (in Canada) reliance on a possible application of the Monroe doctrine by the United States, and the attitude of French-Canadians; (in Australia) attitude of Labor party; belief tliat navy must in any case defend colonial sea-borne commerce; and comparative want of funds. After two years of close study of these contentions, Mr Wyatt declares “with confidence” that every one of them is fallacious, and that the fallacy of most of them is capable of demonstration. He proposes to deal with them in detail at a lecture before the Royal Colonial Institute next week. In Mr Wvatt’s opinion the rootcause of Greater Britain’s .“backwardness” in this matter is want of familiarity with problems of war and of international relationship. JOTTINGS. Sir Frederick Pollock’s manifesto on Imperial organisation, to which I drew attention recently, has been the subject of some correspondence this week in 1 The Times.’ The pro]K>sai to form another Committee olj the Privy Council does not find favor with every advocate of closer union, and one dissentient seems to get at the root of the matter when he remarks that the difficulty of keeping in touch does not lio in the official organisations, hut it lies deeper in the comparative ignorance of Englishmen at Home and in the colonies of one another's point of view. “ You may multiply committees,” says this critic, “ and inform them with the highest knowledge of their duties, yet if you have. not also a people interested and informed the committees will not in the ultimate resort have the strength at their back enabling them to carry through what their knowledge teaches them should be done. Probably everybody who has been in the colonies is conscious of the great extent of this mutual ignorance.” The Belfast daily paper called the ‘ Northern Whig ’ devotes a leading article to the annual report of the New) Zealand Land and Survey Department, concluding a eulogistic review in the following words: “A careful consideration of the reports and statistics furnished by the Commissioners leads to the conclusion that, with a few exceptions, the settlements have made fa'r progress during the year; that their condition is satisfactory, and that the future prospects of the tenants are, on the whole, most hopeful and encouraging. The policy of the Government of New Zealand has resulted in the founding of numerous homes, provided the tenants with healthy, congenial, and profitable occupations, improved their condition in life, added to the material wealth of tho community, and strengthened and consolidated the colony’s position.” The third annual meeting of theMay-Oat-way Fire Appliances, Limited, was held in London on Wednesday. The accounts showed a profit, after providing for depreciation of stock and plant, of £2,033 13s 3d This sum, equal to a dividend of about 6 per cent, upon tho issued capital, will be added to the working capital, to enable the company to take advantage of the increased : scope for business, and yet continue to secure their cash discounts as before. The directory arc now in a position to make good the deficiency of £1,765 3s 2d which accrued during the earlier years of the company, when they experienced serious difficulties, now happily overcome. Since the last general meeting tho company have put in some of tho largest installations of automatic alarms in existence, and the directors believe that that supplied to Messrs J. and P. Coats, Limited, constitutes a world’s record; while the preference shown for the company’s appliances by the great railways and manufacturers having expert engineering departments, and the orders received for repeat installations or extensions from the Corporation of the City of Glasgow, Messrs Harrods, Limited, J. and B. Stevenson, and others, murt also bo regarded as highly gratifying, The value of the property protected by this company’s appliances (says the annual report) exceeds by millions of pounds sterling that covered by all other existing systems of a similar intent within the British Empire. This preeminence is due solely to the essential merits of the system, and not to reductions in premiums by the associated fire insurance offices. The directors, however, consider e hat the time has now come to apply for si’ch reductions, and they purpose lodging with the Fire Offices’ Committee within the next few days an influentially-signed petition asking the tariff companies to authorise in tho United Kingdom the rebate a ready given by them to users of the MayOatway system in New Zealand, the country of its origin. Tho directors consider that the company should become dividend-paying at an early date. ' .. . „ ■