NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12817, 17 March 1905, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

THE KEGr.O PROBLEM. Ik a speech at Brechin, Mr. John Mor ley referred to the increase in the coloured population of the United States. His recent visit to that country suggested to him that this increase threatens to produce a problem of tremendous and perhaps insoluble gravity. He foresees the possibility, a century hence, that the negro and negroid race may .have grown to sixty or eighty millions, and will have become as numerous as the white population is now. The notion is really not so very extravagant, for the " coloured people'' have doubled in number since 1870, and there are now between nine and ten millions of them, which is about one black to seven whites. A long time must elapse before the two races can become numerically equal, unless the modern tendency to sterility which is noticeable among most peoples of European descent should become greatly accentuated ; but the proportion is already large enough to have been the cause of serious difficulties which show no sign of abatement. Will the coloured American citizen, the man equal before the law with his white brother, be content with his inferior political and social position to the end of the chapter? The colour-line sets up. no doubt, a barrier which both sides would find it difficult to throw down ; but what of politics? In some parts of the South the negroes are numerically dominant, but the white minority has exhausted ingenuity in devising means of nullifying their influence. Voting papers are tampered with, and the contents of ballot-boxes. " corrected," to prevent their getting the upper hand—the historic advice to vote early and vote often," which is commonly taken for an example of American humour, was actually addressed by a Southern journal to the white electors* Wrong as it all is, the temptation is enormous, after the experience of the South in the period before the Reconstruction, when the ex-slave was in power. Fraud, corruption, illegality, denial of justice, were everyday matters, and the negro will never again be allowed to try his hand at government in the United States unless he finds some way of circumventing these electoral devices. Dr. Blyden's pet idea of wholesale migration to Africa becomes more impracticable with every million added to the black population. Moreover, the experience of Liberia is not exactly encouraging.

BOX QUIXOTE. The tercentenary of the publication of means of merely literary interest—it lias something to say even to the man in the street. To what: extent the book is read in. England in these days of snippets and headlines and disjointed paragraphs, it would be difficult to divine, but there appears to be, on the average, at least one new edition every year. Like some other masterpieces, Don Quixote i,3 very long, yet we fancy that most men v.'ho have" ever read anything have revelled in its delightful humour, perhaps without knowing, or caring, anything about the social and historical circumstances which issued in its production. Both boys and men, indeed, read it. who would be but little attracted to it if they supposed that they were reading literature, or were doing their duty by an immortal book. Moreover, it is an obvious advantage to the world that there should be at least one great writer whose " works" have not to be read, on pain of an embarrassing confession of ignorance. Long as Don Quixote is, it is Cervantes—the rest of his output may have literary interest, but is not for the multitude. It is curious to recall that, like so many other famous fictions, the stoiy of the Knight of La Mancha leaped into fame, even in the Spain of the seventeenth century, in a few weeks. Thus was it with Waverley and' Pickwick, and yet others of the sparse and noble company that wears the mantle of immortality. HOW KUROI'ATKIN* PREVENTED WAR .WITH EN-GLAND. Mr. Low, writing in the Forum, is res-' ponsible for the following historical incident, the absolute accuracy of which he says he can vouch for, and which has never before been published : —"ln 1885, the Pen jdeh incident —the attempt of Russia to encroach upon the frontier of Afghanistan, which brought the Afghans and the Russians into armed collision—came perilously close to involving Great Britain and Russia in war. So imminent, apparently, were hostilities, that Parliament granted ail emergency credit, the reserves were called out, and the fleet was mobilised. A*ter some weeks of intense anxiety, a diplomatic settlement was effected. Some years later General Kuropatkin said to a placed British official: —'You English accuse me of being Anglophobe and advocating war with England. Do you know that I alone prevented war over the Penjdeh incident? Well, it is a fact. The Tsar sent for me and informed me that, in a few days, war would be declared, and that I was to take command of the force which was to invade Afghanistan. I expressed my sense of the honour, but urged him not to undertake the enterprise. He manifested surprise, and asked my reasons. I told him that the force available in Central Asia for a forward movement amounted only to 45,000 men, and that we should have to deal with from seven to ten millions of Afghans, a warlike people trained to fighting, and that back of them were 300,000 British and native troops. At first my statement was not believed, but when I brought forward the facts to prove its accuracy the impossibility of the undertaking was realised and the thought of Avar was abandoned' The statement is also interesting for another reason. In 1885, Kuropatkin apparently was the only man in Russia who knew the resources of his own country and those of his enemy. Precisely the same conditions appear to have existed 20 years later. The Russian war party looked upon the invasion of Afghanistan as a military promenade, much as the French did in 1870, who thronged the boulevards shouting, 'A Berlin!' and really imagined that nothing would impede their progress."