NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 13048, 13 December 1905, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

THE ANGLO-FRENCH ENTENTE. A former violent opponent of England, M. Massard, editor of the Patrie, publishes in that journal his impressions of the recent visit to London of the Paris municipal councillors. The antipathies based on ignorance, so deep-rooted in many French minds, would appear to have altogether disappeared, if we may judge from the typical case of M. Massard. "I did not believe the English susceptible of enthusiasm, generosity, and sincerity— a word, of letting themselves go for a cause not exclusively mercantile. Now, on. the other side of the Channel 1 beheld a people of broad ideas professing really affectionate sentiments for the French, loudly manifesting its joy in seeing us, and endeavouring in every way to prove its friendship. This, I own, affected me deeply. . . . I beheld those of my colleagues of the Paris Municipal Council who profess internationalism turn pale, like us all, on hearing theroar of cheers amid which could be distinguished at times the notes of the Marseillaise saluting our country." M. Massard learned by conversation with representatives of every class of society that Englishmen are determined partisans of peace. He fancied he would find rudeness in England, but, on the contrary, he found people more than amiable, even affectionate. He was at first surprised, but quickly grasped the hand held out to him, glad to find in the British soul the same hatreds and the same hopes that animate good Frenchmen. The English do not detest Germany,. he says, but they abhor its Sovereign. The situation he describes thus: —" So long as John Bull has the same interests as Jacques Bonhomme, no complication, no peril, will menace us, at least from the west (sic). j What then? Why, let us cease sulking, while not ceasing to remain on the watch." J

• OVERCROWDING IN 'GERMANY.' 1 In.gfernUtnyY writes.Mr. Sydney Low",' in an'article in the London Standard, where the apartment system has been long established, the filling'" tip of the towns Has gone on at a great pace. The manufacturing expansion ; of. the country, is largely ; based oil cheap labour drawn from the agricultural districts.- Ino peasantry, accustomed to hard living and hard work, flocked into the towns, where better wages were to be had in the mills and factories. The immigrants had to live somewhere, and they found that the land speculator and the house jobber had been beforehand with them, and put, up rents to an exorbitant figure. The result has been a "house famine" in many of the industrial towns, and an amount of overcrowding which goes beyond anything experienced in England outside the slum areas. People are thicker on the ground in Berlin than they are in almost any part of. London, and a very large proportion of quite' respectable working class families'' live in two rooms, or even in one'room, and this is for the most part at higher rents than those which rule for similar accommodation in English great cities. In this respect, at least, the German workman is not better off than his .{English brother. The German municipalities ' 'are making energetic efforts to deal with the "house famine." In recent years they have worked .out some large and comprehensive plans .to meet the difficulty, and they have expended much money, and more thought and sagacious calculation upon' them. .Neither the central nor the local I authorities ever shrink from a measure because it :is \vhat we "might call socialistic, and, indeed, " municipal social-' ism" is carried much further in some of the German towns than in any English borough or county. The city of Cologne, for instance,, owns the gasworks, the electricity works, the vvaterworks, the tramway, system, the harbour and wharves, the slaughterhouses and cattle yards, and half the shares' in the railway to Bonn; it holds 1500 acres of land, .and .has direct control over other 8400 acres. Other towns own and manage cemeteries, elevated railways, hospitals, insurance societies, and pawn broking establishments. Sometimes they vgo further. ' Dusseldorf has established a mortgage bank, which grants loans at .moderate interest on buildings, erected under proper conditions, for the housing of people of small incomes.