NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVI, Issue 16912, 19 July 1915, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

The Royal Colonial Institute is a body of whose purposes and uses the average colonial has but a very vague notion. The pr.t/ailing idea, perhaps, is that it is a kind of social club, with plea.sant offices and agreeable officials and a committee of highly influential and titled? personages who endeavour to keep the eilken bonds and crimson threads of Empire-kinship taut by means of eloquent after-dinner speeches. The annual report of the Institute just to hand, however, shows that it has been of very solid service in several specific directions, particularly during the period of the war. Not only is it a general meeting place for representatives of all Britain's lands over seas, a place whero Canadians and New Zealnnders may meet on common ground and discuss common interests—it has over ten thousand members, according to the latest figures—but it has placed itself fully at tho disposal of the Empire, and has devoted itself especially to recruiting and tho raising of funds for Army work.

At the outbreak of hostilities tho council of the Institute resolved to offer the Government the use of soro<: of tho rooms of tho Institute for the accommodation of special departments created on account of tho war. and the War Office gladly accepted the offer, and installed there tho Voluntary Assistance Department. It is the duty of the Department to arrange for volunteer recruiters to attend tho various recruiting meetings in London and district. The number of recruits thus enrolled for Lord Kitr ehener's Army through the efforts of the Department amounts to many thousands of men. From November onwards tho work of obtaining recruits for special trades in Lord Kitchener's Army almost entirely devolved upon this Department, and it has been carried on with grent success, some three hundred recruits per week being obtained through its agency. The council has l>een informed that, were it not for the accommodation afforded by the Institute in such proximity to the London reoruitina head-

quarters in Scotland Yard, it would be impossible for tho Department to carry out its work with tho present satisfactory results, and the Army Council has expressed its warm thanks for the help the Institute has afforded.

There is also a War Service Committee, through which the Institute places in the most suitable branches of the military forces colonials who wish to roach the fighting line. Motor ambulances, clothing for wounded British soldiers and entertainment for men in camp nro some of the other directions in which the Institute is working. Owing to the war, naturally some of the ordinary work of the institution has been suspended temporarily, such as the "Illustrated Empire Lectures," which have been designed with the idea of enlightening the stay-at-home British on the subject of Britain overseas. The official lecturer, Mr Garrison, however, has been even more usefully engaged, for he has delivered scores of addresses on the war and its relation to the Empire, and has not only secured a largo number of recruits, but has raided large sums of money for the various war funds. As an active patriotic agency,' the Royal Colonial Institute certainly appears to have acquired considerable mana lately, through the ene»gy and resourcefulness of t2ie managing body.

The men of the merchant service continue to win distinct'on, and in some cases wounds and glorious deaths in the grca.t war. During the month of May, according to an announcement by the latest mail from the Old Country, e ; ghty-six officers of the British mercantile marine obtained commissions in the Royal Naval Reserve, and.they are now on active service with their brothers who have spent all their sea lives in the Navy. Others, again, are serving as officers in the Royal Engineers, in which their professional technical qualifications are not without special vr.lue. One of these merchant service officers, Lieutenant A. C. Brooke Webb, R.N.R-, took part recently iru the blowing up of submarine El 5, after she had gono ashore in Turkish territory and was likely to becomo a valuable prize in the hands of the enemy. Another, Acting-Lieutenant Reginald W. Lawrence, 11.N.R.., is mentioned as having won the D.S.C. for his share in the daring exploit of submarine El 4, which on the passage to the Sea of Marmora sank a Turkish gunboat, and in the Sea of Marmora itself sank successively a transport, a gunboat and a large transport full of troops. This business of the submarine's occupied twonty days, and tho professional skill which it necessitated, to say nothing of the courage, which goes as a matter of course, may well be imagined. The mercantile marine officer quickly adapts himself to his new trade of war-mak-ing, and, aa events have ehowm amply during tho last few months, ho is not long in " making good."

Whatever the political attitude may be in Holland, there is at least one considerable section of the Dutch cominunitv which makes no concealment of its opinions of the Germans and their war methods. The association of Dutch captains and officers of the merchant service established at Amsterdam, lately met and passed the following resolution.:—" Seeing the fact that of late defenceless merchantmen and fishing boats hare been sunk by submarines of the Imperial German Navy, without search or previous warning, to which already many innocent non-combatants and oven neutral people and children fell viotims; considering that theso proceedings must be held contrary to every law and all feeling of humanity; considering that it is rightly feared that soon again Dutch merchantmen and Dutch people will fall victims to this barbarous and not to be justified proceeding: considering that they have a right and that it is their duty to express tueir opinion on the manner in which the war at sea is carried on by the German submarines, the members of this association express their indignation at the waging of this war of extermination against dofonoeless merchantmen and non-combatants, resolve to publish this motion in the daily papers and to express to the Imperial Merchant Service Guild their sympathy with the members of that association and their relatives left behind who fell victims to tho above-mentioned attempts, particularly to the one on the steamer Lusitania." There is a dignified comprehensiveness in this resolution that is perhaps characteristic of the Dutch people, and certainly there is no doubt aw to the side upon which the bra.vo Dutch merchant sailors would wish to range themselves.