CURRENT TOPICS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXX, Issue 10214, 7 December 1893, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

In referring to the increase in the number of military offences, as shown by the statistics in hia annual report on tho military prisons, Major-General Sir Edmund du Cane points out that the greater part of the military crime is committed by soldiers in the early years of their service, and that, the returns of the past year show that more than half of the men committed to military prisons bad not more than two years' service, whereas only. one-fourth of the men in the army were in this period of service. “As the number of men.” he observes, "in the early period of their service has much increased from 1889 onwards, it ia reasonable to expect that an increase of military offences would occur.” The gradually-dwindling race of port wine drinkers will not derive much comfort from the report of our Consul at Oporto, though their favourite drink has till lately, shown an increased export from that place. Pew industries have undergone each a series of vicissitudes. Diseases and pests of various binds. Government restraints and attendant corruption, exaggerated reports about adulteration, changes in public tastes and in fiscal arrangements; all these have in some way or other contributed to the injury of farmers and shippers. Of late that scourge of tho vineyards, the phylloxera, has caused enormous damage, and it has been computed that since the invasion of the vines by this insect, in the Douro district alone the production has decreased up to last year by 11,800,000 gallons. In replanting vineyards destroyed by this plague, great use has been made of American vines, on which European kinds hava been grafted, and the result is reported to have been very satisfactory.

On all hands one can Bee in Paris the daily spread of the cycling mania, for such in reality it baa become. One of the Parisian managers actually announces that ladies or gentlemen arriving at his bouse u en bicycletta " can Lave their machines warehoused free of charge during the performance, in a room specially set apart for the purpose. The piece which played at his bouse (the Gaite) is a " revue/' or burlesque, called Les Bicyclistes en Voyage, wherein the principal characters are on wheels.

In an interview with the editor of the German weekly ZuJcunft, M, Witte, the Russian Finance Minister, who is the father of the Russo-German tariff war, has expressed his opinion about the relations between the two Powers in a manner which (says a Berlin correspondent) is doubly interesting at the present moment, when the events at Toulon give rise to general discussion of the European situation. Ha said, “ I know that one . often talks in Germany of a Panslavist and a War Party. We have no parties at all. Wo wish to be Russians, that is all. We sincerely wish to have good relations with the German Empire. Only a madman, or an adventurer & la Napoleon, who really had nothing to lose, could to-day-—when we all have so much to' do at home, and when the consequences of any war would bs incalculable —•think of an aggressive policy. With us no serious map thinks of such a thing, and as long as wa are eo happy os to possess a sovereign who is averse from the bottom of bis heart to all injustice, and who has an extremely high sense of his serious reEponsibility, Russia will always strive to maintain peace. Yon speak of France ? Well, when a great nation—and that is what the French are, however one may think about many events—offers ns her friendship, must we not accept it gratefully ? There is nothing aggressive in this. Does it not often happen in private life that one has two friends who are at enmity with each other ? Why should not we have good relations with France and Germany at the same time ? We do not wish for anything else.”

1)3 we really at length know the great secret of the Man with the Iron Mask? If M. Bazeries is to be trusted, there is very little doubt that we do, and the mysterious prisoner of Pignorol and the Bastille was neither a brother of Louis XIV., nor Count Matthioli, nor the husband of the Grande Mademoiselle, nor Surintendant Fouquet, nor any other of the numerous persons on whose behalf a claim has been set up by the ingenious. M. Bazeries has been engaged for soma time in an attempt to discover the key of the ciphor used by Louis XIV. for his most secret State letters, and at length he has succeeded. Thera exist a number of documents in the Grande Monarque’a bandwriting in the ciphor, but hitherto no one has been able to make them out. Among them, M. Bazeries professes to have discovered a truly remarkable document. It is contained among the papers of Marshal Catinal, carefully preserved by his descendants. It sets forth the fact that the Xing was highly displeased at the conduct of M. de Bnlonde, who, against his orders, had raised the siege of Conti, and it' ends by ordering him to be imprisoned at Pignerol, where he was to be shat up at night, and only allowed to take outdoor exercise ,r ia a mask.” Supposing the authenticity of the document can be proved, it seems certain that this M. de Bnlonde and the Man in the Iron Mask (which, by the way, was & velvet mask) are one and the same.