NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12239, 7 April 1903, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

NATIONAL DECADENCE. The St. James' Gazette takes a gloomy view of the disease which afflicts the body politic. Society folks, it says, are gamblers, light-minded; it may well be questioned whether, among.those who particularly arrogate to themselves the title, either the sense of duty or any principle at all exists. The greed of gold; the lust of frivolity; the appetite for luxury have grown to a pitch which brings to the mind the corruption of Paris in the days of the Third Empire as described by Zola in "La Curee." Women's conversation is of stocks and shares, money won and lost on racecourses, or, when these greater excitements are not, of the milder thrill of "bridge;" their men-folk, scorning toil, yet eager to supplement their resources to provide the luxuries which they ' crave, are an easy prey to the city shark. Is it not a sign of the times that the bearer of a distinguished name, having disgraced himself by a peculiarly sordid crime and paid the penalty, should, instead or calling on the rocks and caves to cover him, write his prison experiences in a book which is sold out on the day of issue, and that this shameless proceeding should be generally spoken of as "manly," and in some sort a reparation of his crime? What, too, can be said of the great ladies who disport themselves in doublet and hose or kilt for the delectation of Jeames Yellowplush? When we pass to the commercial classes proper (the line of demarcation is very much obscured) there is little comfort to be found. They are—many of them — ashamed of the shop; inattentive to Business; they strive to make up for their own laxity by the knavery of secret commissions and such like; the quality of their goods is a matter of indifference to them so long as they can, by lying and fraud, sell them at the highest price. The greed of luxury and idleness has spread to the working classes as well. They are losing their backbone, ar undisciplined, insubordinate to employers, unconscientious about the quality and quantity of the work they give in return for the highest rate of wages they can secure. . The sense of citizenship is dead within them. Of their physical deterioration we have spoken often enough. All : this, we are aware, may be' labelled "screed," and ; we do not endorse it as true of the nation as a whole; it is an argument from the . particular to the general. But we believe that the dread 'of national rottenness is present;in men's minds, * and that the Government .would be very ill-advised to ignore it.. ,-

THE BRITISH AND GERMAN NAVIES. . A State which can only place 12 against 42 battleships of England, two against 14 English armoured , cruisers, and 17 against 109 English protected-deck cruisers, will never (remarks the Berlin Grenzboten) be able to play the role of an attacking party. ' According to the details of the German Naval Law, the German fleet will, it is true, be in 1916 a far more formidable weapon, with its 38 battleships in commission and reserve; But, in the first place, 13 years must elapse, and, secondly, English naval construction will progress proportionately, and only find its limit in the question of personnel, namely, in the possibility of manning such an enormous fleet with officers and crews. Even if we went a step further, and constructed, by 1916, a whole squadron of battleships, with two cruising fleets for foreign service, which would certainly be the most that could possibly be achieved by them, this increase of 16 ships would in no way make England's strategical position worse, as compared to that of Germany. There is, therefore no sense in measuring the fighting value of the English and German fleets against each other, least of all on the German side. ... No statesman can doubt that the next war between the great European Powers will inevitably be a war on land as well as on sea; and that such a war must appear all the more imminent the weaker one of the future adversaries becomes on land or at sea— the weaker Germany, in particular, becomes at sea. Germany, however,, has to reckon with the circumstance that her 54,000,000 inhabitants demand their share in protected shipping, and in a protected trans-Atlantic trade, because they are no longer able to exist as a people restricted to inland trade. Germany has further to reckon with the fact that, apart from Austria-Hungary, her neighbours have become strong naval Powers; and, finally, that an American and Japanese fleet have appeared on the world's seas. England would have to fear Germany; if we were to build 100 cruisers, and thereby menace commerce on all the seas. A German fleet, however, that is just strong enough to remain mistress of our coasts, ought to be welcome to England for different reasons; principally because, in peace time, it would secure, much more safely," the independence of German policy. We ask nothing of England, neither land nor people; but we wish to freely navigate the seas side by side with her, and to carry our trade •nd shipping to foreign parts under the safe protection of our flag. Should this protection become insufficient, we shall, first of all, confidently address ourselves to England; and no sensible English Government is ever likely to adopt a policy which might make it impossible for the German flag to float alongside the English. The interests whicb Germany and England have in the world may very well exist side by side, if they are sustained by mutual goodwill, honesty, and equity. AMERICAN WOMEN IN EUROPE. Mrs. G. Cornwallis West, better known as Lady Randolph Churchill, contributes some interesting reflections on American women in Europe to the Pall Mall Magazine. ''Thirty years ago, in England as on the Continent, the American woman was looked upon as a strange and abnormal creature, with habits and manners something between a Red Indian and a Gaiety Girl. Anything of an outlandish nature might be expected of her: if she talked, dressed, and conducted herself as any well-bred woman would, much astonishment was invariably evinced, and she was usually saluted with the tactful remark, ' I should never have thought you an American,' by those who intended it as a compliment. As a rule, people looked upon her as a disagreeable and even dangerous person, to be very .suspicious of, if not to be avoided altogether. Her dollars were her only recommendation, and all were credited with the possession of them, otherwise what, was her raison d'etre? No distinction was ever made between any Americans ; they were all supposed to be of one uniform type. The wife and daughters of the newly-enriched Californian miner, swathed in silks and satins, and blazing with diamonds on the slightest provocation ; the cultured, refined, and retiring Bostonian ; the aristocratic Virginian, as full of tradition and family pride as a Percy of Northumberland or a Larochefoucald; the cosmopolitan and up-to-date New Yorker: all were grouped in the same category,. all were considered tarred with the same Drush. ... great in society was the ignorance even of the country, that it was thought astonishing if an American from New York knew nothing of one from San Francisco, as though they both came from neighbouring counties. On the Continent the ignorance was still greater—many went so far as to include South America. An American lady from New York being once asked by a Frenchman if she knew a certain Chilian lady, and answering in the negative, he exclaimed, 'Mais n'etes-vous pas toutes deux Americaines?' The steady progress of the American woman in the minds of Europeans can be gauged by studying their present position in Europe. It is not to be denied that, they are sharing many of the ' seats of the mighty,' and the most carping and jealous critics cannot find fault with the way they fill them. In the political, literaryj and diplomatic world they more than hold their own. The old prejudices against them, Whicb mostly arose out of ignorance, have been removed, and American women are now appreciated as they deserve."