ESTABLISHED 1875. The Manawatu Daily Times. The Oldest Manawatu Journal PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. FRIDAY, MAY 20, 1904. THE WAR AND ITS LESSONS.

Manawatu Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 7979, 20 May 1904, Page 2

ESTABLISHED 1875. The Manawatu Daily Times. The Oldest Manawatu Journal PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. FRIDAY, MAY 20, 1904. THE WAR AND ITS LESSONS.

There is, remarks the London Times, nothing new, though there is much that is opportune, in the great broad lesson that is taught by the Japanese initial successes. It. is that, other things being equal or even approximately equal, the initial in naval warfare is everything. He who loses the initiative throws away half his material strength and more than half his inestimable reserve of moral confidence. . Nelson, says Captain. Mahon, never trifled with a fair wind or with time. He himself said on one occasion that five minutes may make the difference between victory and defeat, and he always acted on that principle. More than 200 years before, Drake had said the same thing, " The advantage of time and place i? half the victory; which being lost js irrecoverable." The Japanese have taken this very ancient, but never antiquated, lesson to heart; and it behoves this country, most especially, not to ignore the fresh and capital illustration they have given of it. War, when it comes, will come, not, perhaps, like a thief in the night, with no warning whatever, but assuredly wjth t)O dilatory and deliberate preliminaries. It will avail us nothing to have reckoned up our defensive strength on paper and to have satisfied ourselves that it is sufficient for all reasonably probable contingencies of international conflict, if we allow the balance to be fatally upset by a first blow delivered before we are ready. We have had ©ur own experience in South Africa of unreadiness on land and its ruinous consequences. We are now at last beginning to put our military house in order, and it may fairly be hoped that, if time is only afforded us for the completion of the task, we shall at last evolve at the War Office something like intelligent organisation and businesslike readiness for war out of the confusion worse confounded of piecemeal and incoherent reform. But we must not stop at the War Office. We must take care that its great exemplar the Admiralty is at all times abreast of its high reputation for readiness, for efficiency, for sound, strategic grasp of this or that contingency, and for tactical preparation for it, however remote it may appear at the | moment; so that, whenever the real thing comes, its "intelligent anticipation of events before they occur" may be found to have secured for this country the inestimable advantage of an instant, vigorous, and well-directed initiative. It is, indeed, almost inconceivable that any British fleet should ever be found at a critical place and time to be either so unprepared, or, if pre? pared, so badly placed as the Bussian fleet was at Port Arthur on the fatal Bth of February. British naval officers may assuredly be trusted not

to " grow fcired" just when the real thing comes. That, therefore, is not the real lesson of the occasion. The "warning for us is not the unreadiness of the Eussian fleet, but tho readiness of the Japanese fleet and its instant seizure of the initiative. Drake gave it more than 300 years ago in words which go to the root of the whole matter: —" These great preparations of the Spaniard may be speedily prevented as much as in your Majesty lieth, by sending your forces to encounter them somewhat far off, and more near their own coasts, which will be the better cheap for your Majesty and people, and much the dearer for the enemy."

On the fourth page will be found yesterday's cables, telegrams, and general news.

The body of an elderly man, unidentified, was found floating in Wellington harbour yesterday.

A good second crop of apples o£ fair size is being obtained at Patea.

A social and dance iu aid of the building fund is to be held at Fit/.herbert East Public Hall on Tuesday, May 31st.

_ The business people of Rangitikciline have arranged with the Municipal Band to play in Rangitikei-street every Saturday night.

Mr Charles Hoppiug has just purchased 350 acres of. the Oroua Downs estate and Mr Andrew Guy 114 acres, both at £20 an acre.

The Ruahine Mounted Rifles have reorganised, and the corps appears to be in a fairly prosperous condition.

The Palmerston Cycle Club will hol.l a match liere on July 6th to select a rider to represent the club in the road race from Timaru to Christcrmrcb.

Inner tubes ss, Oceanic covers 12j Gd Reflex Clippers £1 3s 6d at Clarkson's.*

A concert is to be held at the Lyceum Theatre on 24th May (Empire Day) n aid of the South African -^Veterans' Association.

Mr Montgomery will preside at the first meeting of tho Palmerston High School Board of Governors, prior to tho election of a chairman.

A whale, about 35 feet long, was washed on to Ocean Beach, Dunedin, early yesterday morning. It is claimed by the two men who discovered it and also by the Domain Board.

At the Pahiatua District Court a barmaid named Miss Fogarty recovered £5 and costs from Timothy Cotter, hotelkeeper, Pahiatua, for slander.

One by one the police, who were stationed in the Martinbovough district to catch Ellis, have left the locality, until now (says tho Leader) only one solitary constable is left on the longest and most silent beat over paced by a man-in blue.

The first concert of the Orchestral Society's present season is advertised for Tuesday, June 7th. Honorary members' annual subscriptions range iu price from 10s 6d to 21s, according to the number of tickets obtained for each concert.

The Northern Steamship Company intends soon placing orders for three new steamers to replace the Terranorn, Glenelg, aud Chelmsford. The company's superintendent engineer is now engaged preparing plans and specifications.

For bedsteads and bedding. Best value in town at Pegden's.*

From police to pulpit. An exchange says that Constable W. Skinner, stationed at Auckland, is resigning from the police force in order to study tor the Roman Catholic priesthood.

Dr Paterson can be consulted at A. A. Lissaman's. chemist, the Square, Palmerston North, from 11 to 1 and 3 to 5. Specialties: Surgery and diseases of women and children. Residence, Empire Hotel,*

The Masterton people want to entertain the farmers' delegates to the forthcoming conference at a banquot, but the local caterers seem averse to taking the job on, reports a local paper. Are they afraid of tho agricultural appetite ?

The case of Cotfcle v. Cottle, wife's petition for divorce, was heard in camera by the Chief Justice yesterday. A decree nisi was granted, to be made absolute in three months, respondent to make an allowance of £d per week towards the support of wife and children. Mr Cooper appeared for petitioner, and Mr Innes for respondent.

John Hurley, a ship's pantryman and a native of Victoria, was arrested by Constable Hattie last night on a charge of theft from tho person. It is alleged that while walking with a man the worse for liquor Hurley took his watch from fiis pocket.

Mr E. H. Buckingham will deliver a free lecture on Scientific Voice Culture in the Church of England Schoolroom on Monday night, at 8 p.m. Admission will be by ticket only. Full particulars and tickets may be obtained at Messrs Leary and Dixon's music rooms.

The following letter was received from a resident by the Eketahuna County Council :—" Enclosed you will find 10s for registration of my dog. You may boast of freedom and liberal laws in New Zealand, but it 10s isn't compulsory cohesive taxation, I do not know any other name to give it. It is as bad &a it could be in Ireland."

Second-hand mactiineß, 30s upwards, easy terms. Dayton Depot.*

The Taranaki Provincial Conference of the New Zealand Farmer's Union met yesterday. About thirty delegates were present. The chairman reported that there were 1063 financial members and another 500 were on the books, and the subscriptions were available when asked for. There are about fifty remits from branches, and it is expected the Conference will last two days.

• The body of Edgar Hall, who was 26 years of age and a resident of the Thames, was found near the Thames wharf yesterday. Deceased left his boardinghouse that night and did not return. His hat and coat were found at the wharf near where the body was discovered. The affair is wrapped in mystery.

Dead-beats and professional cadgers will soon be as extinct aa the dodo around Hawera. If a suggestion which the district Charitable Aid Board has made to the Borough Council is adopted, all applicants for public charity will in future bo introduced to a heap of boulders conveniently placed by the wayside and informed that their remuneration will be on the piecework principle.

Dr McArthur gave judgment yesterday in the case of Chappie v. PJiinmer, in which plaintiff claimed £188 for medical services and Plitnmer counterclaimed JE2OO damages for alleged unskilful practice" and undue influence. The Magistrate gave judgment ifor plaintiff for £133 6s and costs, and on the counter claim he also decided in favour of Dr Chappie with costs.

A contributor of hunting notes to the Wanganui Chronicle writes:—" I noticed Miss Campbell out in divided skirt, riding astride—always in the van of the followers—an example that could well bo followed by our other lady riders, for it looks both graceful and womanly, which meets with the approval of all inen folk, and many would lend their mounts more. willingly if other ladies would adopt this more unconventional and easy style of riding."

Sir Koberfc Stout delivered judgment in the patent case Temple i'age v. Donald Donald yesterday morning. His Honor held that thore had been no infringement of Donald's patent, As to the threats, it was evident they had been made under a bona fide belief that his patent was being infringed. They would doubtless cease now that the question in dispute had been decided in favour of plaintiff, and there was therefore no necessity for an injunction. Costs amounting to i=2s were allowed plaintiff.

Discussing the licensing situation and the impending fight a southern contemporary says:—A Wellington brewer who has gone to America is said to bo going to bring back with him the strongest " liberty " orators of the States, and enough evidence from Maine and Kansas and elsewhere to bury prohibition for ever. There are not wanting signs of present activity in the colony. With the possibility of another Licensing Bill hanging orer their heads, the publicans are in a distinctly uneasy seat.

Harry Placke, the giant Dutchman, at one time resident in Wellington, an aspirant for boxing champion honours, and who recently challenged Jeffries, has been beaten by M'Coy inside four minutes. Placke, after the fight, was voted by the papers " a windbag fighter from a windmill land," and " the biggest false alarm {hat ever made bjd for pugilittic distinction " Placke will pot now fight Jeffrie.,

The residents of Linton will hold a concert and duncu in aid of the hall fnml mi tho tilth inst.

T--11)11110 " Bluo Streaks " j£2o. New Z..iil...nd agency. Clarkson's, Colcman l'liia-.*

The gun which w.ir reeont'y brought to Piilmcrston from Wellington has been dismantled and is at present lyhi" in the drill hall.

An Invercargill livery stable keeper was fined 10s and costs yesterday for permitting horses to be at large on the railway line and town belts. Two of the horses in question were killed by a train. They were valued at i-65. Four others worth £100 wero injured, and havu.since been sold for £14.

The Suuth Csiritrrbury Hospital Board has hiM.-\\ served with n. writ, claiming jE2.jO damages by tho father of a nurse who was lately dismissed from tho institution, and who claims that his daughter's health was injured owiii" to her being given a damp room to sleep in in a new building at the hospital.

Farmers and stockmen have pretty healthy appetites. Auctioneers fi.jd this out when nuiking arrangements to " feed the hungry " through the medium of the sale lunch. At an ordinary clearing sale down South recently, tho following provisions were used :—Sixty loaves, thirty pounds of beef (roast and pickled:, one sheep, four cheeses, six pounds of butter, besides sundries in the way of sweetmeats, etc.

Centaur cycles £20, Paidge-whitworth cycles .£lB 18s, Premier cycles from £17 17s, Clarksou's.*

There arc several old rssidences at Foxton which do not comply with the sanitary regulations, and unless considerably altered their days are numbered. In some cases also residents are showing small regard for health principles. There arc iust'inces where p oplt) are living practically over the mouth of reeKing cesspits, and others where the floors of tho houses are placed on the ground, while some back yards arc by no means wholesome.

" The farmers in this country are doing too well," a gentleman who is interested in commercial matters remarked to a Lyttelton Times reporter. " They like to farm sheep because that occupation does not involve much labour. There is a good market in South Africa for bacon, yet the export industry hardly exists here. It is a fact that Canada, in spite of its climate, is sending large quantities of bacon to South Africa, while we are sending none."

The vagaries of vegetation this year are numerous, owing, doubtless to the exceptional fine season. In some parts of Taranaki sweet peas are flowerin" a second time, and the rata is in full bloom along the coast. In many gardens in Mayfield (Ashburton County) raspberries are being gathered and a second growth of peas is common. A garden in Linwood produced in the open rive good peaches last week, and is still bringing forth sweet peas. At Akaroa all the spring flowers are blooming luxuriantly.

" Allday's English war cycle, 2 rim brakes, free wheel, £20. Dayton Dopot.*

At the meeting of the Terrace End School Committee, it was resolved that Messrs Collis and Bobbie be the visiting committee for the ensuing month ; that Mr G-. J. Scott be treasurer and that i\lr G. H. Bennett co-operate in signing cheques. The headmaster reported:— Number on tbo rolls 298, average attendance 258, highest attendance 271, number of times open 40. A sub-committee was appointed, consisting of Messrs Smith, Robbie, and Jarrett, to confer with the headmaster with a view to the formation of a tennis court.

Thus a recent visitor to Japan—an American—discussing the war: "Great Britain knew wbat she was doing when she signed up as Japan's senior partner. She did that little bit of business as she usually docs—quiet, and without any ostentation. That's her way. She takes up a thing that doesn't look to be worth a discount stamp, but whenever she turns up the thimble there's a sovereign underneath. She goes in to do something and she muddles and puddles along with it until she's got it done; but when it is done it's done as no other nation could do it."

Covers 12s 6d, tubes ss, cheapest place for cycle sundries. Dayton Depot.*

The Methodist .Times Bays of the method of '• making ministers ":—" We take men from the plough's tail or from behind the counter, give them a passable elementary education, with a smattering of theology and tag ends of Greek and Hebrew. Then we thrust them into the maelstrom of itinerancy, where they are made to rotate, with the dizzy rapidity of a whirlpool, until exhausted Nature drives them at last into the backwater of supernumerarydom, often at the very age when their influence would be greatest. What sort of solicitors, barristers, architects, and engiueers would be produced by such a fatuous system ? "

In view of the controversy that is taking place as to whether it pays to farm poultry in Canterbury, it is interesting to learn from Mr Gilbert Anderson, managing director of the Christchurch Meat Company, that the company is unable to secure sufficient supplies of either poultry or eggs to meet the demands. This week Mr Anderson answered several inquiries. He receives them often from London and the West of England. A short time ago the company endeavoured to establish an export trada in poultry and eggs, but was unsuccessful, owing to insufficient supplies coming forward.

Cycles £2. 100 to select from. Mubl be turned into money, Clarkson's, Cole man Place.*

It ahould be remembered that under our Bankruptcy Acts a debtor commits an offence if ho obtains credit when he could not, at the time, have had any reasonable or probable ground of expectation of "being able to pay the debt, as well as all his other debts. But it is not necessary that the debtor should be made bankrupt in order to secure a conviction, as there is a similar provision in the Criminal Code Act. And if, upon inquiry, a tradesman or landlord should find that a certain person is obtaining credit from first one person and then another without ever making any attempt to pay, that is that he is wilfully living beyond his means, or is adopting any scheme to victimise his creditors, then the tradesman may, under the above decision, be able to bring evidence sufficient to stop such practices for some time at least.

In the Supremo Court yesterday, Smith, Hurdle, and Dowdall, the youths convicted of robbery and assault at Feilding, were again before the Chiei Justice. Mr Baldwin stated that he had arranged for prisoners to be placed on farms, where employment would be guaranteed, if the Court would allow that course to be followed. His Honor said they would be allowed to go, on condition that they kept their employment for two years, kept away from hotels, and led sober lives. It they did not obey those provisions they would be liablo to be called up for sentence. He gave them this chance because he did not liko to send boys to gaol.

An English writer has been startling Great Britain by describing the actual conditions that exist in the large cities among the poorest people of the slums. He has shown that the rooms in which thousands of people livo aro as filthy nnd crowded, as pigsties, <»I visited scores of houses in Manchester," he says, «and found that in all of them, tho father, mother, and children sleep on a single mattress and cover themselves with rags. Tho comforts, even the bare decenoies of life, are entirely Jaoking in these homes. Many of the children are never washed. The mothers do not wash themselves. In a number of houses I found the women with bruised faces and blackened eyes. In one place I found the mother drunk and sleeping in the coal-hole, with a baby in her arms."

Won't go out to-night mother, Payne's slipper's too comfortable.*

The sporting writer of the Napier Telegraph says : - One of the interested spectators at the late Hawke's Bay J G meeting was Miss Bertha Clifford,' a niece of Sir George Clifford. This lady owns, trains, and rides in work a horse, Eonga by name, who triumphed at the late Martinborough gathering, and in these degenerate days, as Sir Eobert btout will have it, it is refreshing to see one of the gentler Bex taking a practical hand at the sport, and thus showing by her actions that she does not consider the pastime demoralising. In contradiction to the utterances of the Chief Justice atPalmerston North on Monday I will guote what a New Plymouth clergyman, the Rev. F. G. Eva,ns (he deserves to have his na,mo published), said in the course of one of his sermons gome time back. He said that "he personally was not one who entirely disbelieved in a person putting a pound on a horse if he could well afford it, and was not in debt to anyone."

Touching on the subject of technical education before the Marlboroush Provir.cial Conference of the Farmers' Union the other day, Mr A. J. McCurdy said that tho Farmers' Union whs interested in seeing thnt a proper amount of public expenditure in ihis .Hrcction was devoted to the farming community. In thetownß large numbers of young people were being taught carpentering and other trades, from which they would eventually be pushed out by stress of competition; whoreas the State was spending little on tho the work of training in connection with the productive industries of the country where there was room for all. Let them educate tho rising generation to cultivate the land on expert lines, and the exports of tho colony would soon be 113 millions instead ot 18 millions. Ho pointed to the brilliant success of Mr .Ernest Hutherford, Profess >r of Physics at the Montreal McGill University, the son of a Marlboiough sawmiller, who received his primary education at Havoloek, gained' a scholarship which took him to Nelson College, worked his way to Cambridge, and, gums still higher, made a world n uuo for himself by his researches in connection with radium. Thnrc wore other New Zealandcrs of tho saino stamp, and all they wanted was the opportunity.

A man said business was his line, We showed him several which wore fine, Now he keeps smiling al! tho time The smile that won't come off. Brophy.*