THE New Zealand Mail. PUBLISHED WEEKLY. FRIDAY, MARCH 8, 1895. OUR TIMBERS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1201, 8 March 1895, Page 20

THE New Zealand Mail. PUBLISHED WEEKLY. FRIDAY, MARCH 8, 1895. OUR TIMBERS.

There are some things very suggestive in the last report of the timber expert from London. First, for example, is his hint about replanting. Here we are cutting down and burning timber which is increasing every day in value, in order to grow wool and meat and grain, the value of which is going down every day. . That sounds supremely absurd, and it is what it sounds to be. Timber cannot be grown again on the scale of virgin forest, for the same reason that horses cannot live while the grass is growing. But timber is a substantial part of the wealth of every country, and one of the necessaries of life everywhere ; likewise one of the necessaries of climate. Wood we must have always for building, for furniture, for manufactures. If we have not wood, we shall have an unsuitable climate, disastrous floods and expensive droughts. Therefore we must replant largely, for all other countries are becoming deforested. Russia, Norway, the United. States, all have to tell the same tale, just at the moment when the world’s consumption of wood is increasing. The use of iron for shipbuilding eased the pressure on the world’s wood supply, but the call for wood pavements has increased the pressure far beyond the easement of that bygone day. How to replant in the absence of a Forest Department is puzzling to the most knowing. There, is no puzzle about why we have no Forest Department on a scale commensurate with the tremendous importance of the timber resources of the country. Absolutely the worst decade in our Parliamentary history is the decade between 1870 and 1880. There were great names in those days it is true. And the names represented great merit. But for all that it was a decade of . small aims, petty policies, sickening compromises. The “ old man of the sea ” at that time was not Provincialism, so much as the band of men who disorganised the general politics by fighting under the banner of Provincialism. They are responsible for muddling away the Crown estate, they ruined the public works scheme, they sacrificed everything to their local jealousies. The Forest Department, as planned and established by Sir Julius Yogel, was one of the finest institutions in the list of the good institutions New Zealand possesses. But it was starved and stultified by Parliament and eventually whittled out of existence under pretence of economy, and in a spirit of the pettiest jealousy which prefers the annihilation of an opponent to the conservation of the resources gf the country. No wonder that in quarters where the value of a country’s woods is understood, the cry of “ savages ” should have been raised against the men who did this. It is not too late to mend matters. It is not too late to plant wealth and look after it and get a profit out of it as it is growing. We have a Government that looks ahead, and we trust that it will take the necessary measures. That, of course, is only one branch of the subject. The other branch embraces tlie utilisation of the wealth which is now standing, but will shortly be cut down to feed bush fires, and thus, instead of enriching the people, destroy property. The Government has begun well, but there is a great deal yet to be done.

A CHINESE BOBADIL.

We have come across a delightful apology for the loss of the Port Arthur stronghold, which is too good not to be reproduced. It is from a newspaper published somewhere in North China, called the Ohung-Psi-Yct-Pao (Chinese - European - Daily Mint), which is edited apparently by a man of ingenuity and faith beyond the average. We take it from the Times , which acknowledges it to a Mr Dawson. “ In allowing the Japanese to take Port Arthur, General Tso was actuated by motives of the deepest strategy, and the able manner in which he attained his end, without allowing his opponents to penetrate his designs, stamps him as one of the greatest military commanders China has ever seen. “ Knowing Pekin to be the ultimate goal cf the Japanese, General Tso was satisfied that should a too obstinate resistance be offered at any point, the Japanese would leave the Chinese unconquered in his rear and would 1 ptvsfc, 9» te til? capital ; whereas if an im-

portant place like Port Arthur should fall into their hands the little men would enjoy the sensation as children do a new toy, ana it would delay them in their march while the road to Pekin was rendered impregnable. “ General Tso, therefore, inflicted all the loss possible upon the Japanese without allowing them to be absolutely discouraged, and then when defeat was staring his opponents in the face gave the signal to his troops to retreat, which they did in good order. So great was the loss of the Japanese that it was not till some hours after the last Chinese soldier had departed that they ventured to enter the forts. “General Tso displayed marked military skill in his defensive tactics, and by ordering half-charges of powder to be used in the big guns and filling the shell and torpedoes with sand deluded the innocent commander of the Japanese fleet into the belief that the sea forts and defences of Port Arthur were innocuous. As a result the Japanese fleet boldly ventured close to the forts and within the line of the torpedo defences, and before they discovered their mistake three men-of-war, seven transports, and 21 torpedo boats were sunk by the Chinese fire and submarine mines. “ The results of General Tso’s actions prove, as we have always maintained, that it is inadvisable for China to employ other than native commanders in the present war. In hand-to-hand combats the savage and flesheating Fanquoi is physically superior to our men, but no man other than one conversant with the military wisdom of our enlightened race could have planned and brought to a successful conclusion the train of events which ended in the offering of Port Arthur as a bait to our diminutive opponents*'’ We remember a recent cable which reported that General Tso had committed suicide, because he had been deserted by his officers. It is more probable that he committed the rash act to save himself frem his friends. If the readers of the Ghung-Psi-Tet-Pao swallowed the story, and the editor is probably a judge of their capacity, we can realise the hopeless condition of Chinese public opinion about the war.

SPECULATION,

A fraud on the Stock Exchange about some Coolgardie company has made a prodigious sensation. We are glad to see that the Stock Exchange has so strong a sense of right and wrong, and we should like to see the subscription of its justlyoffended members lead to the incarceration of the 1 culprits, if there are culpi'its, for a term of years. At the same time it is impossible to sympathise with the idiots who are afraid that this open attempt at robbery will “stop business.” The business on the Stock Exchange is the very business which kills goldmining in Australasia, South Africa, everywhere. A vast quantity of capital is drawn into the vortex, shares change hands at ever - growing premiums, there is a general sense, more or less uneasy, of “ Devil take the hindmost,” but not one single penny piece ever reaches the industry languishing for help. Moreover, it is a fact that not a single mining company which has floated its shares in London in the record of mining ventures has escaped scandalous robbery and extortionate blackmail. In every case far more money is subscribed by the public for the development of a mine than ever reaches the mine. Share speculation and the enormous profits of promoters, brokers and others of the leech fraternity are between them the death of all reasonable mining investment. When anything checks business on the Stock Exchange, it is a good thing, not a bad thing. To stop speculation is impossible. We ought to almost feel obliged to the swindlers whose greed exposes them, for the salutary occasional check.

WONDERFUL WAIHI.

Reading in the Auckland papers the other day, we came across a sign of the effect Waihi has had upon the mining population of Auckland. It is a large sign. We found it in the report of the last sitting of the Warden’s Court at Paeroa. It was in the shape of no less than eighty-nine applications for leases for goldmining in the district in which Waihi is situated. Of these we observe that 43 were granted, one was withdrawn, one refused, and 44 adjourned for further information. It is clear that the Northern districts are waking up. The South will, no doubt, wake up 3 shortly also. In fact, there is evidence that the South is waking up to some extent already. The opportunity is good for investment. If money and enterprise ready for Coolgardie or Loch Awe are kept usefully employed within New Zealand, so much the better. But if speculation takes the place of investment, it will lead to disaster.

THE ARMENIAN HORRORS,

As usual, newspaper enterprise is dragging the truth out of the darkness into light. Lord Rosebery may talk as he pleases about the press being a menace to the peace of Europe, all his nonsense is outweighed by the importance of the role of the press as the educator of the world. On this occasion it is not a mere matter of stepping down to somebody’s office for information which he is perfectly ready to give, and repeating afterwards, at intervals and impressively, “ we were the first to discover.” That coi respondent who went spying through Armenia for the Daily Telegraph took his life with him amongst a ruffianly soldiery, who gave him a gentle hint of the danger of his work by murdering in cold blood several hundred witnesses who had trusted the word of a Pasha of the unspeakable Turks. These troops were the perpetrators of the murders and outrages into which the International Commission is enquiring ; this journalist was fully suspicious of the fact j nevertheless he went among them pursuing his enquiries, making his investigations, throwing his inquisitive eye over everything just as if they had been disinterested spectators on holiday from Heaven. His testimony pretty well settles the question of the

atrocities, of which numerous accounts have been published from time to time since the first hint reached the outer world last November. The Turk has, of course, lied all that time, just as he lied after the Bulgarian atrocities. What the Commission may bring forth so far as he ’is concerned will be known when it comes'forth. What happened after the Bulgarian atrocities we all know. Of all the fiends in human shape who took part in those bestial orgies of murder and lust, one only was sentenced to death, the rest getting away from the Adrianople court-martial scot free. The Sultan, as a matter of course, saved the condemned scoundrel from the gallows, sent him to the hulks, let him out in a few weeks, and gave him another appointment in the public service. When last heard of the wretch was doing duty as a police inspector in one of the vilayets of the Turkish Empire, wearing the Order of the Medjidie, which the Bulgarian atrocities had earned for him, and waiting for Kismet to make him once more a Pacha, with opportunities for murder, rapiriO and the other favourite amusements of the sub-commanders of the Faithful. Should the outcome of the Armenian Commission be similar, the Powers will have to put their heads together over the Berlin Treaty of 1878, and then, perhaps, the interest of the situation will commence.

LEGISLATIVE WORRYING.

When we first read the sketch of the Glasgow Police Bill, we were horrified. A fine for speaking to a lady in the street ! A mulct for not covering up the nakedness of butcher meat! Imprisonment for owning a pack of cards in your private house ! What will they do next ? We shall next hear of penalties for not covering the legs of pianos, and pains for referring to the necessary understandings of table birds otherwise than as limbs. Familiar as we are with the Conservative criticisms of the Labour measures in our ora country, we expected a terrific outburst of ferocious comment. This Police Bill does not emanate from a colonial Government ©f faddists. It is the work of the sober old Corporation of one of the oldest cities in Britain. Yet it’ contains provisions which would make, were it introduced here, the hair of every Conservative in New Zealand rise in horror, and dislocate every Democratic jaw with Homeric laughter. But, the Bill has been received with a curious silence. The probability is that the cable man has been hocussed. It is a fact that the Washers and Manglers Bill was taken seriously all the world over. It may be possible that some Glasgow , Buckland has been joking. If so no one need wonder, as Glasgow -jokes with “ deefieulty,” that the cable man .was ' taken in. At present, however, there is nothing to show that the Fathers of the City of Bailie Nicol Jar vie are not seriously bent on a course of prudery which will make even Mrs Grundy sigh for the comparative tolerance of the Curfew days. There we will leave the subject for the present, in the hope that some able Conservative pen may take it a step farther. \