The Feilding Star. Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette Published Daily. TUESDAY, APRIL 15, 1902 SOUTH AFRICA.

Feilding Star, Volume XXIII, Issue 1410, 15 April 1902, Page 2

The Feilding Star. Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette Published Daily. TUESDAY, APRIL 15, 1902 SOUTH AFRICA.

While the British forces are busy fighting the Boers, the re-organisa-tion of the administration of the Transvaal is proceeding with rapid strides. In Johannesburg the people are much too occupied in putting the affairs of the city in good working order to pay much attention to the fortunes of the campaign, and there is an air of buoyant self-confidence amongst them. A correspondent of the London Times says everyone seems busy from Lord Milner downward, but the busiest citizens find time to take an active personal interest in the public service. Lord Milner has drawn " the whole community into the work of governing itself and by an extended system of committees on which the very best men are serving, he has established a representative government as a reality which leaves Parliamentary far behind." The result of all this is that the work of restoring the city to its normal condition is making rapid progress, and while streets are being made, tramways constructed, lighting and sewerage systems installed, and so forth, the future requirements of the city are receiving the earnest consideration of experienced and able men working together in the public interest. " Everywhere," we read, " the invigorating sense of new life, and a clear field in the future is at work. It is difficult to describe, without seeming exaggeration, the vigor, the interest, the brimming hope with which the place seems to overflow. Everyone is at work, and everyone works at public affairs with the keenness that is generally kept for personal affairs." It is an encouraging picture (says the Press) the more so when we consider at what a cost the new lease of life has been purchased by the Empire for these South African dominions. It is not too much to hope that the brighter day so earnestly desired has dawned in that unhappy country. Johannesburg, the future centre of the Transvaal, if not of all South Africa, has shown how rapidly the ground lost through the outbreak of the war may be recovered. It is expected that in another four or five months' time the mining industry will have regained the position which it had before the war, and the next few years should witness a wonderful expansion in the Transvaal's industrial life. Peace has yet to be declared, but the foundations of new South Africa are already being laid, on broad and generous lines, which give promise of a splendid and enduring structure.