NEWS AND VIEWS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1440, 5 October 1899, Page 50

NEWS AND VIEWS.

FROM VAIUOUS SOURCES. The Berlin eorresnondent of the "Daily News" asks : —Does the mere fact that $ private lecturer (privat Docent) at a ."university belongs to the Social Democratic party make him unworthy of that position? The question was on July 22nd answered by the Philosophical Faculty . of Berlin in the negative. Sitting as a disciplinary court they acquitted Dr Axons, whose removal from his position had been proposed by the Minister for Public Instruction. Dr Arons, a lecturer on mathematics, is confessedly a Social Democrat. ~ He, however, has never taken part in agitation, nor given expression to his political conviction before the students. The Philosophical Faculty had already once refused to proceed against him, but meanwhile the Prussian Diet, with its reactionary majority, passed a •law making the Ministry of State the court of appeal in such questions. It is therefore to be expected that the Ministry will quash the sentence and remove Dr Ai-ons'from his post. Dr Arons is fighting the case as a qiiestion of principle. He is a millionaire, and would lose nothing by his removal from office. ''The London newspapers have recently been booming the employment of petroleum on an American railway for binding the road, and suggesting its application to other kinds of roads. Crude oil may be siiitable for keeping down dust on railroads, but the claims made for it as a cure for dusty and loose roads are at this moment somewhat under a cloud. The authorities of Boston," says "Science Sittings," ''thought they would try its value in laying the dust on the drives in the parks. ' The result was a failure. Instead of becomiug compact, as it would have done if water had been used, the dust was scon churned up into a mealylooking composition! by passing vehicles. People also began to object to the odour, and to say that if the oil was used extensively the park would be anything but an agreeable plpce to drive in. Last, but not least,.came the plaint of the cyclists, who said that the oil was more to be dreaded in its injurious effects on the tyres of their wheels than a dozen punctures." Among "the various devices which have - recently been pressed into the service of the Royalist propaganda in France must be reckoned the "leaflet," so . familiar to the party politicians of England and America. "You can scarcely get into r. railway carriage," says the * "Daily Chronicle." ''without finding the seats bestrewn with what looks like the advertisement of some patent medicine. On closer inspection these little bandbills are discovered to be headed thus : —'The Duke of Orleans, chief or the Royal House of France, descendant of Henry TV., to-morrow's King.' Then follows a suit cf Royalist catechism thus worded:—'Who is the Duke of Orleans?' 'He is the Prince of energy, on whom the country justly builds its highest hopes. Ho has a will of iron, and at the same time a benevolence that wins him every heart.' 'What will his government be?' 'lt will be new and popular, retaining from the past only what is good, and casting overboard ruthlessly everything else.' 'When will the Duke of Orleans assume power'?' 'At the next opportunity, which is not far distant.'" Under the title "One Per Cent.," Dr Adolph von Wenckstern, of the Berlin University, has edited a work, the object of which is to make it clear, firstly, that Germany needs a strong navy; and then, that she is able to afford it. The German taxpayer, says the author, is much less burdened than the subjects of other States. "We have," he remarks, "the men, we have the skill, and we have the money, and it is a crime and a treason against the Fartherland if we do not use a due part of our national income for what is wanted for ships." Altogether Herr ven Wenckstern demands the building and maintenance of a fleet of fifty-seven line of battle ships, fifteen large and thirty-six small cruisers. The expenditure, he reckons, would be £85,000,000, the yearly estimates £10,600,000 during the first seventeen years, and £19,000,000 • later. This expenditure, it is suggested, should be covered by a loan for the redemption of which one per cent, of the revenue of rue Empire should be reserved every year. Honolulu (says the Sydney "Dadly Telegraph") is being rapidly civilised. That is to say, it is having a land boom. Also, it is becoming the resort and abid-ing-place of a host of seedy adventurers. Its commerce is increasing rapidly. So is the number of its beer saloons, its murders, its suicides, its dens of shady iniquity. ' A United States military officer expressed the opinion, formed after careful study, that-Honolulu had become one of the worstVhells-on,earth. This may be exaggerated: But the country is fast losing all its .quaintness, all its beauty, all its primitive Qneen Liiiuokalani may have been a bad Qceen, or she may notl: But when she was deposed in the interests of civilisation, one cf the prettiest spots on the whole earth began to transform itself into one of the ugliest. The ports are filled now with the magic sails of fcbuntless argosies, soldiers, sailors, merchants, crimps, vagabonds. A force of thousands: of men is present to maintain the supremacy of the United States. sln the days of the monarchy all that was' required was the regal body-

guard. The process of Honolulu's civilisation has not been completed yet. Tt T hen it is, Honolulu wiil be a magnificent place not to be in. It will be what Samoa must eventually become. Meantime, it is visited by numbers of tourists from the United States. Two persons write to a London contemporary to maintain that the American correspondent who declared that cherries and milk are "poisonous" ds quite right. One of them, Mr J. H. Szeweinski, says that "the Vienna municipality, acting upon the advice of the medical faculty, (which, it is unnecessary to say, is second to none), has issued a notice containing many valuable rides of health, one of which is to abstain from milk or water after fruit." A third correspondent writes : —"To the American idea that cherries and milk form a fatal combination may be added one which is very prevalent all over the islands of Jamaica. This is that the drinking of spirits after eating bananas will inevitably cause death." Another correspondent has been experimenting with the "poison." "A.E.C.'s" report is:—"We were much agitated by the suggestion that cherries combined with milk were poisonous. During the evening cherries combined with junket happened to come to the table. We tried them on a dear friend. We have watched her anxiously ever since. No result! So we sampled the same mixture ourselves last night, and invited a friend to the orgy. We all live to tell you the tale."