NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12000, 24 June 1902, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

CORONATION HONOURS. If precedent is to I)© followed (says the Speaker) there will be a large number of peerages created at the Coronation. Queen. Victoria created 11, and both George IV. and William IV. 22, but some of these were merely higher honours conferred on existing peers. The main interest in the forthcoming list of honours will be in the lower degrees— the baronetcies and knighthoods, which will be considered the fitting rewards for services to science, art, and literature, if, indeed, art and literature are to be recognised at all. It is said that Mr. Lecky is to be rewarded with a peerage; but Mr. Lecky is a public nan, in a sense in which other men of letters are not. It is also said that Dr. Conan Doyle and Mr. Rudyard Kipling are to be knighted. Would this be a recognition of their achievements in literature or of the popularity of their writings? If the former, there are many men of letters who may be expected to be rewarded with baronetcies at least. There are Mr. Augustine Birrell and Mr. Quiller-Couch. If popularity is to be the test, we may expect a Sir Guv Boothby, a Sir W. W. Jacobs, and there would certainly be a Lord Caine of Man, and a Baroness Corelli of Stratfor*d-on-Avon.

JOHN BTTLI/S FARM. Britain may be viewed as one farm extending from county to county, interrupted by towns it is true, but surrounding them as the ocean surrounds an archipelago of islands. If we view our farming in this way (says Professor John Wrightson, in "Britain at Work"), we may grasp its wide extent and endless variety. Great Britain possesses a total area of 32,437,389 acres of cultivated land, of which 7,325,408 acres are under com, the rest being in permanent pasture, temporary pasture, root crops fodder crops, etc. It includes over 51,0 ™£ C ™n ° f ho ' 73 '°° 0 acres of fruit, and 308,000 acres of bare fallow. "** The capital employed is enormous, and may be roughly estimated at £227,000,000, while the amount paid in wages has been estimated at £30,000,000 per annum. There are at least 1,000,000 men, women, and boys employed in agricultural pursuits in Great Britain, who not only cultivate the fSAn 1 * 1 * attend to 1,500,000 horses, S'SS'SSS ™ ttle ' 26 >500,000 sheep, and j,Mi.,IW pigs besides countless poultry. Such is John Bull's farm.

THB GREAT STEAMSHIP COMBINE. The avowed object of the combination (says a writer on the subject in the latest issue, to hand of the, Scientific American)!

is to afford better transatlantic service a* a decreased cost. Hitherto the trade hat been conducted extravagantly, and as V result of the conflicting interests, the sail* ings of he various steamers have not been arranged on (lie basis winch would be most convergent and profitable, either to the companies or to the public. Other advantage-' expected are more uniform rates, a better distribution of traffic over the Ameri- | ca* and Canadian seaport*:, and additional j Hies on the Pacific and to South American

irte. as the growth of traffic may he found just if them. With lines already estohihed between Great Britain and Australia id New Zealand, and with intimate conations with the Far Ensf, the combine ill be in the position to distribute Amerim manufactured product* throughout the orld on through bills of lading, and to raid the expense of transhipments which *e incurred under the present arrangement : is claimed that the combination has no station whatever to the ouestion of the übsidv Bill. Should the Bill as considered y the Senate become law. of all the 50,000 tons owned by th i combine, onlv a sw vessels of the Americtn Line could fly he American flag, and tlis for the reason list registry would be minted only to American-built vessels. Moreover, the com'my frank b* admits that failing the pas--5 ?e of the Bill, thev wilj build their ships T the cheapest market; Phich means that . it costs 20 per cent, more to build in , erica than in Great fritain, the orders , 'tew shins will go to British yards. On the J °r hand, should lid Subsidy; Bill he b P»d. there is no qu<jtion that all the I nfe ships for the combination, or a 5 "?r part of them atßeast, will he conin American yajds. • 'i \~ ' '

A aSS I'HOTEST AG AUTO ANGLOPHOBIA. Se Swiss gentlemen from the cantons of neva, Vaud, and Teuchatel, includingjieutenant Pache, jrho went out to figlfor the Boers, ha\fc issued a protest agist the hostile attiude of the Swiss pre towards England jn connection with thenar. They say:—'We are a neutral coiiry and abide by thlt neutrality. At thniomenp when there is a talk of arbitration is t. Switzerland that one naturally ' 100, and ret with a fe\' exceptions where carte fine writers or journalists who have hadae cormon honesty to look at theouestionexcer. from the Boer standpoint? Thehaveill too quicklj forgotten that it * wasbe Bers who declared war, and that no cantncould brook such an ultimatum as Eugeriespatched tc England. . . =. Wherverre glance over that immense Empie ov which the English flag iloati we fid th it bears with it an equal justice for al-aces, giving the same rights of life aid P|>erty to all men irrespective of colour, anu commerce extending an open door to alrithout privilege for the British 1 nationality . . . Not only has the English nap. never shown us hostility, but on severalbasions has effectively come to our aid. several of their colonies there are constat Swiss in great numbers, oftea at the head; commercial and industrial concerns, andways reaping the benefits ol that colonisystem where there are no fet* ters on entj'rise, and whose freedom is in some aspecerander than that of which wa are so proif [i <.'>',:, J" 1