THINGS IN GENERAL.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 8 February 1908, Page 1

THINGS IN GENERAL.

AT WELLINGTON AND ELSEWHEBE. I jiy Dear Horatio,— 1 see that the tonnage using th< Port of .Nelson has nearly doubled ii I the last six years. That fact opem up a very rosy prospect for your citj wnen the undoubted mineral richa of the surrounding districts come to bi utilised. There are no richer mineral re gioiis in the world than those in thj immediate neighbourhood of Nelson and as the manufacturing industries o; the Dominion develope, there will comi a great accession of population am prosperity to the town and the adja cent territory. The Minister for Public Works hai returned from his quest of health. H< has been entirely successful, for he ii now the picture of health nnd energy The jubilations that naturally occurrec to welcome his return are now over, anc he is hard at work again. An item of news that will not damp his ardour i: the intimation that £800,000 of the an ticipated surplus is to be transferred U the Public Works Fund. The Hon, Hall-Jones is widely esteemed by peo pie of all shades of political opinion for liis unvarying courtesy and kind- _ liness, and for his undoubted administrative ability. Mr J. Liddell Kelly, a former editor of the "N.Z. Times," who is perhaps better known as the author of "Heather and Fern," has just returned from a lengthy visit to Great Britain, and has been giving his impressions in a number of articles in the "Times." He says, among other things, tEat "apparently B 0 per cent, of the people of the Old Country are incapable of taking any interest in anything beyond cricket and football, horse-racing, and gambling." Some of our people are bitten that way, too. Also, among the bulk of the ordinary people, rudaness, boorishness, selfishness, and drunkenness were all too common and too openly and shamelessly flaunted. Mr Kelly is quite right in saying that one can find much more courtesy and kindliness, and also find those qualities more general and more widely spread in these new lands than in the Old Country. . Probably one reason for this state of things is that the bulk of New Zealanders are the sons and daughters of the original pioneers, men and women who were, both physically and mentally, the very pick and! flower of the adventurous one of their day. There- were no timid or irresolute kid-gloved weaklings among them, and their children have inherited their qualities of pluck and endurance, with their invariable accompaniments of kindly consideration for others. I saw, not very long ago, shipload of emigrants leaving England, the bulk of them Eiig'ishmen and Scotsmen. I saw, also, in the same brief period, a good many shiploads of Poles, Hungarians, Germans, and Italians landed in England. The poverty and squalor of these people- was almqst beyond belief, and the smell of them was thick enough to post a letter in. Some of the men were clad only in sheepskins, lots had no shirts, and most were barefooted, and the women were not much better. "Yes," said i friend of mine, as together we stood upon the dock head ana watched the squalid, frowsy crowd fighting • and juarrelling among themselves over iheir food — "that is what is coming to is now. We are losing the best of >ur people, those who are healthy and lonest, steady and industrious, and jetting, in their place this scum, these icallywags, these sweepings of Middle Europe, these " but I will not tell roil all he said, for the most of it vas quite unprintable. Another statement of Mr Kelly's :hat has areused the ire of several iritics ; is that the scenic charms of he British Isles do not compare at all avourably with those of New Zeaand. One or two of tho critics have va.xed indignant over it, and claim hat one who could not appreciate the harms and beauties of the' green lanes if England, the rugged grandeur of he bonnie hills o 1 Scotland, or the nelodious lakes and fells of Killarney, ould have no eye for tho beauties of Mature. I don't know about that. The humile scribe who indites these lines holds nuch the same view,, although he has lever had occasion to say so before. •"or instance, there is no lake in tho Jritish Isles that can begin to compare vith, say, Waikare-moana, either in ixtent or in beauty of surroundings, md there are many otherS'in New Zeaand that would dwarf into insignifiance the most famous lakes of the Old Country. Again,* nowhere in tho Old jand could one find such a never-end-ng succession of scenic marvels as :an be found in a journey from Nelson o Westport, and thence to Springield. Why, one could drop the Gramjians in among the Southern Alps, and lever notice the difference. And then the rivers ! I have seen :he Clyde, the Tay, the Dee, the spej(, the Ty-ne, Thames, and Severn, , md with memories in my mind of the 31utha, the Waikato, and ths Wangalui, I could not enthuse over any of hem. There is no river in Britain hat has anything like the spectacular ittractions of the Wanganui Biver, and few that have such scenes of natural aenuty as may be found along the oank of the Maitai. I remember I ased to think the Maitai the greatest stream in the world. After all, every tfew Zealander ought to whoop for his )wn country, and declare that in these light little islands the grass is greener, :he sky bluer, the sun brigriter, the nountains higher, and the water wet:er, than anywhere else on the planet. Captain Mahan, whose work on 'Sea Power" gained him a high poßition as an authority on international laval problems, has again been discussng the old problem of what will happen when, an irresistible force meets in immovable obstacle. There is no loubt whatever that when tho ijevit*ble conflict arises between well-equip-ped navies there will be swift a|d sudden destruction on one or both sides, [n the meantime progress in the perfection of aerial warships goes on apace, and the evolution of a thoroughly practical and reliable navigable airship will make scrap-iron of all Lhu navies of the world. It will do more, it will but these be problems too big for a column. Yours etc., RALPH RACKSTRAW. " 1 *- ewstQfSSST