CURRENT TOPICS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCVI, Issue 14428, 19 July 1907, Page 6

CURRENT TOPICS.

. Tho “ Edinburgh Review ” has a very interesting article on “ The Menace of the

THIS ARAB SPIRIT.

Desert,” which is really an examination of the sources and nature of the Arab influence. It indicates that PanIslamisin is likely to bo a formidable movement only where it is stimulated by the Arab spirit, and in another direction it helps us to understand the difficulty of the British task in Egypt. The Arab influence has always been potent and peculiar. Arabia was never tho home of a populous and teeming nation which could conquer by sheer weight of numbers, and the Arabs never exhibited true military genius. “What carried them forward in tho first place,” says the writer, “was no doubt their own furious energy, hut what assured them dominion, or, at least, a dominating influence, was tho power they possessed of making their ideas felt and accepted, of exerting over other races a natural ascendancy and communicating to them their own impetus. ... It was the desert clan, tho physical and spiritual impetuosity which the emotional temperament has so extraordinary a power of communicating.” That influence, al-

though it yields in contact with Western civilisation, is not yet decadent. It still makes the emotional appeal to lees ardent races. The French have found it at work among the hill tribes of Algeria, tho British have encountered it in Egypt, and it is visible all through Central Africa, although the Arabs are there in small numbers. El Islam is credited with most of tho energy of its devotees, but in truth only tho Arabs have made the faith a militant one. “ None have over succeeded in propagating the faith save the Arabs,” we are told, “ and every great movement of revival and resuscitation which has fanned Mohammedanism into a fresh blaze has proceeded from the desert. . . . Those who belonged to tho Egyptian Army in tho days when Wady Haifa was the front will remember tho days and nights of strained vigilance and the attack that came at last like the swoop of a kit© out of the bare sky. Unreasoned, unthinking, blind, but constructed of pure impetuosity, those Dervish attacks had the very quality of the Arab temperament.” Most writers agree in attributing the highly strung nervous organisation and the fiery intractable spirit to the peculiar influence of the intoxicating air, wide spaces and burning sands of the desert. Away from the influences of the desert the Arab loses his fire in a generation.

IRISH EVICTIONS.

There was an unpleasant revival of the “ good old times ” on

Leahy Estate at Kilmacowen and Gowlane in Ireland six or seven weeks ago, when a force of some three hundred sub-sheriffs, bailiffs, agents and policemen attempted to evict a number of small tenants who had refused to pay their rents. The Cork “ Weekly Examiner,” in giving an account of the proceedings, says that the work “ was finished without the attendant exciting scenes which were anticipated,” but if this was so, anticipation must have run in the direction of a very serious riot. The force was marched out to Kilmacowen at an early hour in the morning, ■ and on arrival there was met by a large crowd of people, including many women, with groans and hisses and very offensive epithets. On entering tho first house the sheriff was confronted by a medical certificate, stating that one of the occupier’s children was dangerously ill, and he had to retire without making any seizure. Tho tenant, who had eight young children, owed nearly five years' rent which had accumulated at the rat© of £ll 19s a year, but his land was of the very poorest description, and would have been dpar enough at a gift. The sheriff met with a similar experience in the second house, a- medical certificate again saving the tenant from disturbance, but while he was indoors the crowd commenced pelting his supports with manure and turf, a young woman making herself particularly conspicuous by her activity in tho attack. When the officer reached a house which was not protected by the convenient certificate, a number of girls tried to approach the position which the bailiffs had taken up with the evident intention of plastering them with mud and other noxious matter. So persistent wore they in the endeavour that the police, who were drawn up in cordons to protect the civil officers, handled the girls roughly, and the indignation of tb.e crowd was at this juncture manifested by several stones and sods of turf being thrown at the constabulary and bailiffs, but the missiles fell wide of their mark, with the exception of soft mud thrown by the female portion of the gathering, which frequently reached the bailiffs’ faces, and occasionally besmeared policemen who came in the line of fire. Later on stones were added to the ammunition of the assailants, and by the time the. force was withdrawn from the village several of its members were rather seriously hurt. The ladies, however, were much the better shots, and their mud often took effect when the stones thrown by tho men failed. Altogether, the incident was of a very lively character, and if the representative of the “Examiner” found it unexciting it must have been because his taste for the sensational had been satiated by more alarming disturbances.

CONGO I’EFOKM.

Mr E. D. Morel, the honorary secretary of the Congo Reform Association, makes some very

biting comments on the operation of the “ reforms ” which the Congo Administration announced last year. Generally speaking the consular reports show .that the new system of administrating justice and the labour concessions granted to the natives, though looking well on paper, really mean nothing to the natives themselves. Mr Miorcl takes the now “ labour-tax ” as his text. The Administration gravely, announced a year ago that in future the natives would not be required to give more than forty hours’ labour per month to the Government. The year’s “ tax ” was to bo sixty days. Mr Morel was indignant that even sixty days should be demanded, declaring it to be shameful that “an Administration which, by claiming the ’entire natural wealth of the country, has robbed its subjects of all powers of economic expansion and of increasing their wellbeing, should advertise as a ‘ reform ’ the fact that in future it would bo content to demand but sixty days’ labour per annum from its subjects for the purpose of revenue-raising and producing food supplies for administrative purposes!” Now ho shows how the tax regulation really operates, quoting from the consular report from the Stanley Falls district. Each native is taxed in 251 b of rubber every six weeks. It takes each man- thirty days’ labour in the forest to produce the quantity required, so that the whole adult male population is working 240 days in the year gathering rubber. It takes the natives live days to carry the rubber to the Government station, and three days to return; in other words, each man spends sixty-four days in the year in conveying the rubber to its destination, over and above the 240 days it takes him to gather it. The pay for each 251 b is two pounds of salt, nominally worth 94d (in reality costing the Administration, delivered on the spot, about 3d), and if the rubber is deficient in quality or quantity, the man is liable to be whipped or imprisoned. The Administration thus obtains 304 days’ labour from each native in the s'ear, paying him 6s 4d for 2001 b of rubber. The rubber is worth, at a modest computation* £24» so that the Administration is

making a clear £23 13s 8d out of th# “labour tax'” imposed on every native. It is not surprising that the native? should think themselves worse o® now than they were under Arab rule.