NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13798, 10 July 1908, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

REPORTING PARLIAMENT. The House of Commons is to have a reporting staff of its own, which will cost the nation about £12,000 a year. At- present the reporting is done by contract. Mr. Hobhouse explained in the House the other night how matters now stand, and what the new arrangement is. "The present contract," he said, "ran out in June, 1907, and was provisionally extended to June o last, after which date it was liable to be terminated by six months* notice on either side. The reports of Ministers and exMinisters on either front bench were, as a rule, given in full, using that word in the technical sense; those of private members were not less than one-third of the total substance of what they said, but very often they went to a much greater length than that. The word full' in the technical sense meant a verbatim report trimmed of all those excrescences and redundancies with which members were, perhaps, in the habit of filling up the matter of their speeches. In fact, the report put into something like literary shape the efforts with whicti they endeavoured to express their thoughts. These- full reports of the occuoants of the front benches and the onethiru reports of private members were fully sufficient so long as the newspapers and ( journals were in the habit of reporting de-< bates in that House at considerable length. What was interesting to one provincial or local paper was uninteresting to another. Members representing the neighbourhood in which their newspapers circulated were reported at considerable length, so that there was an opportunity for all members to be practically fully reported. But times had changed a great deal in 'that respect, and there had come into existence the sketch report, which had taken the place of the full report that used to occupy the columns of all the morning papers. That had forced on the House a change. The proposals of the Government were these: There was to be a staff of 10 reporters who would be servants of the House, and a chief of the staff. A full report of all speeches j of all members was to be delivered at four o'clock in the afternoon of the day follow- \ ing that oh which the debate took place, but the power of correction of their speeches which members now enjoyed was to be limited to some extent. The printing would continue to be done, as at present, under contracts made by the Stationery Department. The reporting was to be confined to debates in the House itself— was not to extend to committees upstairs-—and in order that they might be satisfactorily carried out the Speaker, aided by the authorities of the House, and working through a special Sessional Committee, would take,, charge of the arrangements, and work thorn in conjunction with the Stationery Office. The cost of this' arrangement would be, as nearly %s they could estimate about £11,000 or £12,000 u year." A LAND OF ANARCHY. Macedonia continues to remain a land of anarchy. Consul-General Lamb declares that, if the work of the Financial Commission and of the gendarmerie be put aside, a report on Macedonia, for 1907 must be "little more than a record of outrage and assassination, of armed conflicts between the

troops and the population, or between various sections of the population itself." It is lamentable that the monthly reports for January, February, and March of the present year prove that this terrible picture is becoming blacker. The number of murders is far higher for the first three months of 1908 even, than for the first three months of 1907. The statistics of systematic assassination which these papers contain are appalling. In 1907 no fewer than 1768 persons lost their lives through violence, and most of them through murder. The Bulgarians killed 521 persons, of whom 120 were their brother Bulgarians and 184 Greeks and .. Patriarchists. The Patriarchists killed 392 persons, of whom 320 were Bulgarians, and the troops killed 417 armed insurgents, of whom 236 were Bulgarians and 89 Greeks. In the .earlier months of last year the Greek bands were the most active in butchery. In. May they were credited with murdering 45 persons, of whom 35 were Bulgarians and seven Vlachs. It was not until June that the Bulgarians began to surpass their rivals.. Then the Turkish authorities seem to have made up their minds that they had allowed their Christian subjects to slaughter each other sufficiently for the time being. They intervened, and intervened with impartiality and with effect, shooting down Greeks, Bulgarians, and Servians without distinction. Things improved forthwith. In the next two months the Greeks committed only 18 murders, and Mr. Lamb is of opinion that had the Turks continued to act in August as they had acted in July the evil of the bands might have been effectually stayed for some time. But the Turks took another course. They continued the pursuit of the Bulgarian revolutionaries, but they let the Greeks alone, and this invidious discrimination gave the Bulgarian extremists an admirable pretext for prolonging the campaign. They did so with such entire success that they established a "record," in political murder, even for Macedonia. They killed 156 in the single month of October. Mr. Lamb states that many competent observers, including Turkish officials of high standing, have assured him that the Macedonian peasant is in the main indifferent to all the " causes" for the sake of which he is being exterminated. His nationalist aspirations are deplorably undeveloped, and all that the poor wretch wants is to live in peace and to work his land. These men would help the authorities, it is said, to put down the bands, had they a reasonable prospect of protection from the vengeance of the survivors. They are suffering more from their professed friends than from their hereditary oppressors, and they would rally to anybody who would assure them a prolonged period of steady government.