TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Lake County Press, Issue 980, 19 September 1901, Page 2

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

[From the Evening Stag's Correspondent.]

LONDON, July 26. THE BATTLE OF THE BOILERS BELLEVILLE BEATEN, BURST.

The opponents of the Belleville water tube boiler are jubilant just now, for the last, of the long series of trials which have taken place on the second class cruisers Hyacinth and Minerva points to the conclusion that, so far from being " a boon and a blessing to the navy, the present type of Belleville boiler is rather "a delusion and a snare. The Hyacinth, which is fitted with the Belleville boilers, is a vessel of 5,600 tons, with a book speed of 20 knots. The Minerva whose boilers are of the ordinary cylindrical or Scotch pattern, is a sister ship in tne matter of size and armament, and is also on the books as a 20-knot cruiser. The latter was completed in 1896, and is about a year older than her rival, so that, in all respects other than boilers the two contestants were equally matched. For the purpose of the trial each ship had its ordinary complement of trained stokers. They left Plymouth together about a fortnight ago with their bunkers filled with hand-picked coal, and steamed out to Gibraltar at an average of 7,000 horse-power, or three-parts speed. The vessels did not race out, but the Minerva arrived off the Rock a few hours before the Hyacinth. Each ship kept at sea until all the coal had been exhausted. The run home was to be the great test, for the cruisers were ordered al a {riven signal to proceed to Spithead at their 'highest possible speed. Their bunkers were filled from the same head of Welsh coal. Neither captain knew when to expect, the signal for the start, but it. was made from the Rock at ten minutes to live last Wednesday evening. The Hyacinth was the first to work up to full power, her Belleville boilers giving her that advantage, and she got a good lead at the start, The race was to finish when off St. Catherine's Point, Isle of Wight, and the distance was 1,160 miles, but it could not be carried out under the conditions desired by the Admiralty, as for close on twenty hours the vessels had to slow down owing to fogs. At 8.20 ou Saturday evening the Minerva passed St. Catherine's Point, and anchored at Spithead at 9.55, the Hyacinth coming in at half-past eleven. The former covered the distance of 1,160 miles in seventy-five hours and a-balf, her average speed, allowing for the delays caused by the fog, being 18.6-7 knots per hour: while that of the Hyacinth was about 18 knots. So far as the Minerva was concerned, her boilers gave no trouble, the only delay being caused by a. slight overheating of the bearings in the machinery, which was soon remedied. The Hyacinth's boilers gave some anxiety, which culminated in an unfortunate accident as the vessel was proceeding up the English Channel. One of the _ boiler lubes blew out, and a stoker named 'Crumlish was severely burned. Her men, too, complained of the heat in the stokeho.u having been excessive. By her performance during the trials the Minerva has scored a, victory which cannot fail to strengthen the hands of the opponents of the Belleville boiler. Not only chu Ihe Minerva reach Gibraltar first, but, owing to the fact that she had more coal in hand on arrival than the Hyacinth, she was able to keep the sea for a longer period without replenishing her fuel supplies. And she arrived at Portsmouth over an hour and a-half ahead of her rival, with the additional advantage that throughout her boilers had given no trouble, while her competitor had cue of those serious mishaps which in the Belleville boiler have been painfully frequent ever since its adoption by the navy. DEATH'S HARVEST.—" MY OLD DUTCH." Death has, in the course of the last few days, removed several well-known characters from the stage on which they played " small leads.' - Mrs Kruger, Miss Ormerod, Piatti, John Farmer, have gone to the " Great Beyond." With the old President, in his lonely exile everyone will sympathise, whatever their view's as to the war or as to his conduct. Mrs Kruger seems to have been to her husband quite " the Old lJutch " of Chevalier's once-famous song. " She was a good wife and an excellent woman. Only once we quarrelled, and that was six months after our marriage," was her husband's eulogium of her. "L.W.," in the 'Daily News,' explains Mr Kruger's leaving his wife behind bv the fact- that for the past twelve years Mrs Kruger has been a victim to dropsy, ' often could not move from her arm chair for days, and could never have risked even the railway journey io Delagoa Bay without incurring very serious consequences. The final parting of husband and wife is thus recorded by " L.W." : " I saw them part en the afternoon of May 26. 1900, when the last embrace took place on the stoep of ' Presi- ; dent's Huis.' prior to the official flight to Macbudodorp and Lydenburg, which has ended with the exile villa at Hilversum. For one moment —and only a short one—Paul Kruger the man shook with suppressed sobs, bending down in the last loving parting: then he rose, and, without looking back, the man once more became the President, going out- of his home into the uncertain future, ncoing his capital, people, and country, md obliged to leave his wife ill the hands of a gallant enemy—to die." "L.W." tells us that Mrs Kruger "was particularly proud of her grand-daughters, the Misses Eloff, all beautiful and highlyaccomplished girls, quite capable to mix in any West End drawing room. It was Nettie Eloff whom I saw one day in January, 1900, reading the news of the Spion Kop carnage to her ' grannie.' who was shedding copious tears at the official reports of the frightful loss of life on the top of the bleak hill near the Tugela. Mrs Kruger was weeping over British dead that afternoon. 'Why must this war be!-' she exclaimed sorrowfully to me. 'What will their mothers and wives fee lacross the sea when they get. the news. I '' Since then she has lost a son and three feel across the sea when they get the news?" with resignation. She loved her country and her people, and was until the last, moment, persuaded that Divine help would come to her nation at the most unexpected moment. Bub she never mixed herself up in polities, and Own Paul never consulted heron matters in that line. Her influence throughout, was for peace, and one of the greatest problems unsolved to her was the fact that, Queen Victoria, for whom she bore a great personal admiration, did not. apparently have the power to stop the war at any time she thought right." Another South African describes Mrs Kruger as a "typical, ignorant Boer woman. She was a very good wife, and made very good jam, and you cannot say more of her than you would say of an ordinary farmer's wife—and less, perhaps—for she was born to the life of a pioneer, and had no other experience. Mrs Kruger had a square, almost, expressionless face, but the forehead was broad. Over it was parted the hair, in the style of the old Duich doll. The eyes were small and sharp, her nose broad, the under-lip thin, and the chin firm. Mrs Kruger's one care in life was to see that, her husband's clothes were properly aired and his meals cooked to his liking. ' She was distinctly non-progressive, and steadfastly refused to enter the train which was the first on the railway to Pretoria." Another story told of her is that when Mr Kruger came back from Europe with pyjamas she expressed strong disapproval of such new-fangled ideas, and told him to continue to go to bed like a respectable Doppcr in his trousers. The suggestion that the tali hat which crowned the President's statue in Pretoria should be indented so that the birds might, drink from the. hollow came from Tanto Sanna. Mrs Kruger is said at Ihe time of the. Jameson Raid to have used her influence with the President ou the side of moderation. She was born in Cape Colony, and took part as a child in the Great. Trek of 1836, was the second wife of the President, was a niece by marriage of the first wife, and was a Miss Dii Plessis, the descendant of a, surgeon who went, to the Cape in the service of the Dutch Hast India Company in the seventeenth century, and who claimed relationship—apparently on good grounds—with the family from whom Armand Du Plessis, otherwise' Cardinal Richelieu, had sprung. Mr Kruger's first wife died soon after the birth of a son, who did not survive Lis infancy, and Mr Kruger married Anna, the niece. She bore him sixteen children, and there are now over 100 grandchildren.

Wherever in the British Empire the farmer is plagued by pests to plant or beast, the nonie of Eleanor Ormerod is known. She found a new field for women's energy and insight, and proved that by careful observation and intelligent specialised study a woman could become a scientific specialist of world-wide reputation. Her delicate constitution, which necessitated an out-of-door life, proved a blessing in disguise, for it led her from a very early age to devote herself to plant and insect life, and to do her reading in Nature's book on the farm of her father,' Mr George Ormerod, in Gloucestershire. One of Miss Ormerod's earliest recollections was being placed in a chair to watch some lar>:e water grubs, an injured one cf which was, much to her astonishment, devoured by his fellows. Assisting her father on his farm, and being of a sympathetic nature, Miss Ormerod discovered that farm laborers had a vast fund of knowledge about natural phenomena, and that their observation only needed directing into the right channel to produce important scientific results. She collected and sifted the information she received, and in 1877, by her 'Notes for Observations on Injurious Insects,' put many willing students of nature on the right track. Her work is recorded in numerous pamphlets and fly-leaves, and in those reports the twenty-fourth of which was issued in March last * year. The confidence that was reposed by agriculturists in her judgment was proved by the fact that for ten years she was the honorary consulting entomologist to the Royal Agricultural Society, and for some time n. lecturer on agricultural entomology at the Royal Agricultural College, Edinburgh. Miss Ormerod had only to be seen in her beautiful garden at St. Albans amidst the flowers she tended with such loving care to satisfy even the staunehest advocate of the domestic sphere for women that a. woman can be the leading authority on bugs and beetles without losing one whit of her womanliness. The. " farmer's friend' will be missed all over the Empire.

Signor Piatti, who died in his eightieth year at his native town Bergano last Friday, was a musician pure and simple, who never allowed his brilliant and perfect technique as a "cellist to lead him astray into the region of musical fireworks. His family had been musical for three generations before him, and Alfredo was only seven when, thanks to the guidance of his great-uncle Zanetti, he became a member in the string division of his father's band. At ten he was a student, at the Milan Conservatorie, and at fifteen he made his debut as a 'cello soloist before an Italian audience. After some years on the Continent he came to London in a memorable year, 1844, when those great fiddlers, Ernst, Joachim, and Sainton, also made their bow to the British public. At the Hanover Square Rooms, where the Philharmonic concerts were then held, he made his English debut, and pl- - his solo followed directly after a grand performance of Beethoven's Grand Concerto in G, with Mendelssohn at the piano, he evoked the greatest enthusiasm on the Aniati with which Liszt had presented him. Mendelssohn himself paid him the compliment of composing part of a concerto for viola, 'cello, and orchestra with the avowed design of dedicating it to " the distinguished virtuoso, Alfredo Piatti." On the formation of the Monday Pops in 1859 Piatti became chief 'cellist, and continued so without a break until 1897, when his illhealth compelled his retirement. In 1894 a pleasing ceremony took place in the Grafton Galleries, when the fiftieth anniversary of Joachim and Piatti's first appearance in London was celebrated with tremendous enthusiasm, and Piatti slyly referred to the "plump little Hungarian boy" whom he saw ill 1844 about to play the violin, and be a rival of his own. Whether as a soloist or in concerted music, says a musical critic, he never departed from his high ideal. In the matter of execution he had a wonderfully perfect technique, plenty of emotional power that was never exaggerated or over-empha-sised, and a degree of interpretative skill that has seldom been equalled. His phrasing of such a melody as Schubert's ' Ave Maria,' arranged by himself, was a lesson to every singer who heard him; and in listening to him the glories of the old Italian school of vocalisation could be realised by those who were born after that school ceased to exist. He was a man cf the widest artistic sympathies, and he threw himself as keenly into the music of Brahms or the modem composers as into that of the old Italian masters, whose sonatas for the viol da gamba and violoncello he made so popular in London. Several of his songs with 'cello obligato have achieved popularity, notably ' O Swallow ' and ' Awake.' If John Farmer were not in the first rank of musicians, he at all events did more to make England a musical nation than many more celebrated musicians. Born in 183(3, and educated at Coburg and Leipzig, he taught music for several years at Zurich. In 1862 he was appointed music master at Harrow, and for nearly a quarter of a century convinced the young barbarians that music hath charms as well as cricket. It was an uphill fight to convert the school on the hill into " a nursery of singing birds." for when Farmer first arrived snobbery was rampant, and a musician was looked down upon with contempt. Farmer, in fact, used to relate with a chuckle that when he first came to Harrow he believed the masters, nearly nil of whom were in orders, made the vexed question whether they should call on him a matter for private prayer. But Farmer's tact and energy and the rollicking swing of his school songs soon conquered all opposition, and made music one of the features of Harrow. His popularity among the Harrow boys was largely due to his taking a boy in flannels with an inferior voice into the choir hi preference to one with a good voice who was a duffer at cricket. He had the courage of his convictions, for when en one of his musical evenings a boy of Jewish origin denied that to be the case, the author of "Harrow Songs' said emphatically: "Don't say that; don't deny the fact: but bo proud of belonging to the most glorious race that God ever created." The book of

' Harrow Hongs.' written by the late Mr Edward Bowrn and composed by Mr Farmer, lias a world-wide reputation, and the latter's oratorio 'Christ and His Soldiers' is not infrequently performed. Jn 1885 he became organist of Balliol College, but it is with Harrow that his name will always be associated. Mr Fanner had a good story about a conversation he once had with a Salvationist. The distinguished musician gently asked the converted "'comrade'' why he found if necessary to beat his big drum with such tremendous violence, to the terror of the whole neighborhood. " Oh, Mr Farmer." replied the worthy corybant, " 1 feel so happy now as I am saved that J could bust the sanguineous drum," only " sanguineous '' was not. exactly the word he used.

THK OBJECTS OF OUR AKjKIY OBGAJNI- - STRANGE STATE PAPER. What arc our Army forP At the first blush one would say (1) to police the Empire. Our little native wars and expeditions may be reckoned in this category. (2) To defend the Empire and every part thereof by striking a blow at the foe in his most vital part. But the Imperial Government, to judge from a parliamentary paper just issued by the Secretary of State laying down the requirements for our Army, appear to take an insular view of the duties of the Army, and to put the cart before the horse. The paper, which was originally a confidential paper issued in 1891. and is published by command, states that the question of the objects for which our Army arc maintained has been considered in connection with the programme of the Admiralty, and with knowledge of the assistance which the Navy are capable of rendering in the various contingencies which appear to \>e reasonably probable, and the Government decide that the objects of our military organisation are: — (a) The effective support of the civil power in all parts of the United Kingdom: (b) to find a number of men for India, which has been fixed by arrangement with the Government of India ; (c) to find garrisons for all our fortresses and coaling stations at home nnd abroad, aowrding to a scale now laid down, and to maintain these garrisons at all times at a strength fixed for peace or war footing; (d) after providing tor these requirements, lo be able to mobilise rapidly for home defence two Army Corps of regular troops, and one partly composed of regulars and partly of militia, and to organise the auxiliary forces not allotted to Army Corps or garrisons, and for the defence of London, and for the defensible positions in

advance and for the defence of mercantile ports; (e) subject to the foregoing considerations, and to their financial obligations, to aim at being able, in case of necessity, to send abroad two complete Army Corps, with cavalrv division and line of communication. But it will be distinctly understood that the probability of the employment of an Army Corps in the field in any European war M sufficiently improbable to make it the primary duty of the military authorities 1o organise our forces efficiently for ice defence of this country. History and reflection should have taught even the War Office that the primary duty of the military authorities is to have organised in time of peace an army ready to embark and equipped for j fighting in any part of the world—erf#pt Great Britain. Glance through any child s history of the nineteenth century, and see where our Army have fousht—Egypt-, India, South America, Portugal" and Spain, America, Belgium, China, Afghanistan, Russia (the Crimean Wai India (the Mutiny), Burma, New Zealand, Canada (Bid's rebellion), Abyssinia, Ashanti, Zululand, the Transvaal—m brier, almost evervwhere and anywhere except Great Britain. With our Navy supreme we are impregnable. If our enemies hare command of the sea they could soon starve us out, without landing a man on our shores. An invasion while we rule the waves is out of the question. With the' magazine rifle and quick-firing guns our auxiliary forces are quite equal to repelling any raid that might be attempted on the shores of Great Britain.

Our first military requirement is a completely equipped, compact army of mobile marksmen, thoroughly sound in wind and limb, and ready to go anywhere at a moment's notice. We must be ready, if attacked, to get in the first blow, and a knockout blow in the enemy's bread-basket—not wait for him to deliver one in what would be literallv our bread-basket. Some scheme of Imperial defence should be arranged, so that troops from every part of the Empire could be simultaneously embarked for the scene of action in whatever Hemisphere r-r Continent it might be. Time is of the essence of the contract in war. To lose no time, and save unnecessary journeys of transports, some scheme should be settled bv which the fast merchant steamers could fill up with troops of the country in whose port they happened to be at the outbreak of war, or in which they should first arrive after that event. For instance, suppose that the war in South Africa has only just broken out. All the fast and suitable steamers of the P. and 0., Orient, A.U.S.N., etc., in" Australian ports or arriving in Australian waters would at once take on board the troops of the State in the port of which they happened to be or to arrive. On the N.Z.S. Co. and Shaw, Savill boats in New Zealand waters the patriotic New Zealanders would at once embark, and so on. The idea that, the primary duty of our Army is to defend Great Britain from a foreign invasion is a retrograde and mischievous one, and savors of Little Englandism. Shakespeare's view of England—

This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands; This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings.

Renowned for their deeds as far from home As is the sepulchre—is still that of the highest naval and military authorities.