ECHOES OF THE WEEK.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1440, 5 October 1899, Page 31

ECHOES OF THE WEEK.

" Satire's my weapon, but I'm too discreet To run amuck and tilt at all I meet." , - "- ■"•;■ —Pope.

BY SCRUTATOR.

War! war! war! As I write (Wednesday morning) there appears to be no nope of peace. It is perfectly evident to all save the "Little Englander" section—not unrepresented, I grieve to say, Here in Wellington—that the Transvaal. and Orange tree Store have been preparing for war for the past five years or more, that they aim at the complete destruction of British Imperial rule m South Africa, and the- establishment of the Dutch Afrikander .Republic, that Kruger is:-a eanting hypocrite, who wants war, and has wanted it, all along, but has wished'to throw the blame on Great Britain. To talk about an unjust war, a Goaless war, .-of British jingoism and bloodthirstiness, is /wicked nonsense. And how men of British blood, living in a British eolony can talk and write as certain, people in Wellington are talking and writing, is quite beyond my humble comprehension; One worthy gentleman, who, as a minister of the gospel, has felt iv incumbent to unburden his soul on the suoject, calmly tells his congregation that Great Britain is going to war in order to "wipe the Boers out of South Africa." Sheer bunkuni this. There can be no wiping but of the Boers, any more than a wiping •but of the British. Great Britain is be'.ing forced into war by an ignorant, tyrannical, corrupt Government, which defies all reasonable justice to nearly 100,000 people: resident in its country, ' which : brutally illtreats women, which concocts bogus" "treasonable plots" in order to stir up strife and imprison innocent, law-abiding men, whose only desire is for good government and fairplay. If, as a result of the war, the South African Republic is abolished as a separate State, there will still be no wiping out ; of the Boers, who, under British government, will probably enjoy more persona) .privileges and liberty than they do undo* the corrupt oligarchy at Pretoria. ■ .' Mr Glasson. is a minister for whom 1 have the highest possible respect, but on this Transvaal question his utterances can scarcely be commended for either wisdom or accuracy. He quoted, I notice, a violent, tirade by Vernon rlarcourt against Imperialism —in winch that discredited: politician—virtually kicked out of the leadership of the Liberal party at Home—declared that "Imperialism means that the aristocracy and their sycophantic following were in a vile conspiracy. Their aim was to divert attention from the social pro oleic that was pressing upon uxe English people at home. If they cornel keep the bublic mind occupied with adventures n China, Africa and elsewhere, they wouk still enslave them and batten upon tht agony and sweat of the workers.' Surely Mr Glasson does not approve o. : this wretched fustian and claptrap, more worthy of a rag like Reynold's i>ewspapei than of an English statesman. In England at the present time, the great majority o: the workers are strong Imperialists. They recognise that unless Britain's markets abroad are kept open and new markets acquired, the manufacturing industries of the Mother Country will iadt away, and the exports will fall off to ar alarming extent As to the workers being "enslaved" by the aristocracy, whe "batten on their sweat and agony," there never was a time when the British workman was better paid, had such snort hours, and was better off generally, than he is at the present time. Mr Glasson has, I hope, noticed the opinion of the Rev Hugh Price Hughes, the eminent Wesleyan. No one would accuse Mr Hughes of being a Jingo, but be has had the pluck to. say "no" tc the peace manifesto of that typical "Little hmglander," the notoriety hunting W. T. Stead, who is backed up in his" unpatriotic attitude by played out political failures like Jonn Mbrley and Harcourt, men of the "Perish India'' school, who are now quite prepared in their '"peace at any price'' mania to say "Perish British rule in Sovith Africa." I may be wrong, but I venture to assert that "the great majority of our colonists .do not share these wretched narrowminded views. To get back to the war, it seems certain that the Boers contemplate a dash across the i>atal frontier, and a good deal of anxiety will be felt as to the position of the British forces in that colony. We have very little detailed and satisfactory information as to what is the exact British strength, but until the Indiah reinforcements arrive it would appear, from what news we have received by cable of late, that a much stronger foi-co is required by the commander than he has - at his disposa I. The great danger is that the Boers may gain some considerable advantage at the outset, and thus discredit the British mana with the Zulus and other natives, who' may be tempted to throw in. their Ipt with the side that is apparently the stronger. ' - " f The disloyal Afrikander Premier of the Gape Colony, Schreiner, is .evidently

playing into the" hands of the enemy, and has done so. all through. Unless the Cape Parliament is rotten,. to tUe core with disloyalty it snquid promptly depose the fellow, who is not improbably in "the secret pay of the Pretoria executive. It is monstrous that a man who is Prime Minister of a British possession, and has taken the oath of allegiance to Her Majesty, 'should be doing everything in his power to help the Queen's enemies. A capital idea is this of the proposed winter show for Wellington, ahd I .wish the scheme every success. The old A. and P. Society came to grief, partly through the apathy of Wellington business men. who might have made more ettorts than they did to keep the institution alive, and partly through the greater natural advantages possessed by the Palmerston Society. But, although we cannot compete with our Palmerston friends in the way of a spring show of stock, we ought to be able to institute and successfully carry out a winter show of farm and dairy produce and so forth. It is proposed that the show should include such industrial products as woollen goods, manufactured flax and so forth, as well as butter, cheese and bacon. Dairy machinery in motion, would be an attractive feature, and a specially good idea could be copied from. Dunedin, where "district exhibits," in which one district is pitted against another, are a decided draw. A meeting will be held at the Chamber of Commerce next week to give: the thing a start-, and with audi gentlemen as -essrs John ixose, John Duncan, Samual Brown, and J. G. W. Aitken interesting themselves in the affair, I am hopeful that much practical good will result. The founders of the show, who have gone to no small trouble in endeavouring to enlist the sympathy and support- of the leading business men, are Messrs Finn, of the Fresh Food and Ice Company, and Mr J. T. Lang, the- Government Hairy Produce Grader. Should, as I trust will be the case, the project be carried out, no small credit will be due to the two gentlemen I have just named. It is no easy task to get Wellingtonians to take un anything in which they cannot, see an immediate and direct personal advantage. The " Mail " this week contains portrait groups of the founders and present committee of the Yorkshire Society. This association of men from the country whose coat oi arms includes th\? "flea, the fly, the flitch of bacon and, the magpie," was started some three years ago, and now numbers over 130 members. Its monthly gatherings are most enjoyable, their success being largely due to the absence of stiffness and ceremony, and to the tacitly admitted principle of "go as you please." President, the Rev J. C. Andrew, hails from Whitby, that quaint old Yorkshire seaport, where St. Hilda's Abbey is now year by year more seriously threatened by the ever-greedy North Sea, which eats away the coast with steady hunger. Cook, our own Captain Cook, was born at a village close to Whitby. Mr Andrew is a, sterling old Yorkshirernnii who dearly loves a "crack" iu the good old dialect- of the "North Countrce." Years ago he was headmaster at Nelson College, and years before, that he was assistant master at an English school, at which none other than the present member for Riccarton, the Hon. Mr Rolles-to-M (who hails from, near Doneaster). was a student. Mr Andrew is the life and soul of such meetings as he attends, and so long as he lives —and more power to him say I—the Wellington tykes will not want a change of president. Manawatu loses one of its "finest settlers in poor Mr McHardy, who, although on the wrong side of the allotted three score and ten, looked fresh and hale, and was apparently good for many more years of prosperous useful life. A line stamp of settler, did I say? The best stamp of settler would have been nearer the mark. "Canny and cute," as only a Scotsman can be. ne was no skuiflint. and was as generous in his private as in his public relations. He bred some splendid stock and encouraged others to do the same. Hawke's Bay people knew verywell that what was their loss was Manawatu's gain when Mr McHardy left the East forth© West Coast. What he has done for the A. and P. Society and in other ways is well known to the majority oi my readers, and in Palmerston he will be terribly missed. Mr McHardy's much-to-be-lamented death leaves the way clear for Mr D. Buick to come out as the Conservative candidate for Palmerston Had Mr McHardy lived, his victory at the coming general election would have been a certainty, that is. of course, if Mr D. Buick had retired, as no doubt he would have done. The fight -will now be between Mr Pirani, Mr Buick and, in all probaMr Woods. As for Mr Donald. Grant, he has not, I hear, what is vulgarly known as the ghost of a show. With the Conservatives spiit by Mr Pirani and Mr Buick, Mr Woods ought to have a very fair chance of success. .. A prominent Palmerstonianj who is a staunch Conservative, told "me the other day that if he thought-Mr Buick had no chance he would vote; straight out.for Woods.,l. "Anybody but a.' (darned LeftWinger, them's ihy sentiments," he said, and they are sentiments which I shall not be surprised to hear are shared by a good many Palmerstonians.

All the same/ it is idle to deny that it will take a strong man, and good organisation, to put out the mentally and physically wiry little member for Palmerston. When Scobie McKenzie is not .playing the political "jack-pudding' and cracking feeble chestnuts for the edification of the gaping galleries he is generally—this session at in some peculiarly offensive or ridiculous;—often both —attack upon, the Government. The Premer, I imagine, is about as indifferent to the good or evil things that Scobie can say about him as is a rhinoceros to the sting of a mosquito. As an old campaigner Mr Seddon troubles his head not one jot. But when Scobie. in orde~ to make some miserable '"party" point, goes out of his way, as he did the other night, to attack in the most grossly offensive terms, a useful and justly respected Civil Servant, then it is just as well that he should receive the castigation he got from Mr Seddon and other members on Friday night last. Mr Mackenzie emptied the vials of his wrath t.l-on Mr Tregear, bee oi vortain, phrases used by that gentleman in the Renort of the Labour Department-. Mr Tregear was accused of " debasing and degrading servility and sycophancy" ; his English was sneered at, and he was pictured generally as a useless, crawlsome creature. "This man, Tregear," as Mr Mackenzie was pleased to call him, is one of the most esteemed gentlemen in the public service. A gentler, more sincere, more truthful nature than his could not well be found, and it was enough to make any decent man's blood boil to hear him abused in the way Mr Mackenzie abused him on Friday lastIt was. as one .member said, "a. base and cowardly attack." This expression was not one whit- too strong. Base it was because there was nothing whatever in the report to justify the language employed by Mr Mackenzie; and "cowardly" it equally because the attack was made upon a gentleman who could not, and cannot, reply. Time after time we have heard the Opposition members and press upbraiding the Premier and the Minister of Lands for referring in terms of condemnation to magistrates and other Civil Servants, and I am not going to say that in certain cases Ministers have been altogether blameless in this respect. But here we have an Opposition member doing the same thing, and a much worse thing, and doing it. too, in a way which can only arouse feelings of tlie. utmost disgust. Mr Mackenzie can sneer at and vilify Mr Tregear as he pleases, but I can tell him this, that as a writer, as a public man, as a private gentleman, he is not in the same street with Mr Tregear. For Mr Mackenzie to sneer at- Mr Tregear's "classical" English comes well from a slipshod, pedantic and nearly always inaccurate writer such as is the former gentleman. Mr Tregear's eontribufiohs to the bistort of the Maori race and to the study of the Maori language and Polynesian dialects will live and be remembered with admiration when Scobie's silly and ill-natured scribblings to' the "Australasian" have been forgotten. Scobie's conceit and egotism are nqtorious. When he was writing the New Zealand letter to the "Australasian" he actually had the impudence to adopt the nom-de-plume of "Yorick." Ye gods and little fishes! Fancy the society small-beer and political banalittes of a Scobie being signed "Yorick," that "fellow of infinite wit." It is enough to make the Bard of Avon turn in his grave. On Friday, as I have said, we had the senior member for Dunedin ia the character of critic of Mr Tregear, on Monday he appeared m the delightfully comic role of champion of certain oppressed Austrians, who had been mulcted in heavy fines for deliberately trespassing upon certain reserves in the far north of the Auckland province. At- first Scobie tried to be funny, but the more he grinned at his own fatuous!- feeble, would-be quips —and to have a wider grin lie must set his ears further back—the colder and less responsive was the House. Next, having espied two strangers from the city of Scotch whisky. Scotch mists, and the Shorter "Cawtechism." he put on the "heavy traggerdy" style of which his friend "Patea" is recognised as the' best exponent in the present Parliament, and ranted and roared until members in the lobbies might have really imagined a,pack of hyenas had been let loose in the Chamber. Of course he was entirely wrong as to his facts. He always is. He couldn't be accurate unless by accident, and the trouble is that the accident never assails him. As a. matter of fact, the Government had no more to do with the prosecutions and the trial and the fines imposed than has the Emperor of China. The Austrians defied the local police, and the local body, which lias charge of the reserve, they put the local body,, which—not the Government—initiated the prosecution, to great expense, and, being hopelessly bowled out by the evidence, they had to pay up and smile. Not satisfied with abusing the,Government.; Mr Mackenzie must fain revile the Mr Clenclon, who tried the case. "This man Clendon" was the term : applied. It is evident that "this man Mackenzie": has about as mueh. idea of courtesy as .he has- of wit—which is not saying much.- Mr Clendon is a Magistrate whose name is respected right through the North as that of a gentleman whose impartiality is proverbial. He

has a difficult duty to perform, what, with" the Austrians ancT other gxixn-digr-gers to be kept in order, and the ever-. present native troubles, and it is a disgrace to the House that such, a useful and esteemed public servant should be attacked in the "manner he was attacked by the member tor JDunedin. However, neither Mr Clendon nor Mr Tregear • need trouble their Headfe- very much whether they are praised or abused■> by the "jack-pudding' of the House. The only pity is that the electors of Dunedin could not sit in batches, night after \ night, in the galleries, and witness a few of the contemptible antics in which their so called representative indulges so freqtie'ntly. If this could be managed, T fancy that- Mr Mackenzie would be granted a period of political rest. lie never would be missed. "Bevare of vidders," waa the advice of, the elder Mr Weller and the host of the celebrated "Markis of Granby" who spoke from, experience. But if "Boa'- could have . lived to read the "Times'.' of Monday last'.' he might have written "Beware of vridowers." An Auckland woman who asked for a divorce said that ohe had marriecjL a man who said he had three, children, but judge the poor woman's surprise, and*, probably, disgust, when after me wedding the erstwhile widower trotted out an. additional four children. Just fancy the horror of that poor woman, at being confronted with four extra step-children. I can imagine her astonishment and disgust when, after being introduced before the fateful tie waa effected to "my dear little Tommy, my darling Sally and Polly," she found when, once the ring • was placed .on the hand and the cake cut, and the parson had given his blessing and received his fee, that there were a Billy, Tom and Emma and Jane to be cared for, sewn for, cooked for, and loved with as much, iov.o as the average step-mother is capable of. No wonder the poor woman claimed a divorce, and no wonder she got it, although I expect she had to prove other laches against her husbanu than merely that of "ringing in" four extra kiddies. Beware of widowers, or, at any rate, be sure you count the kiddies before marriage; ~ The Union . Company, as agent© for the Australasian United Steam Navigation Company, send me the twelfth edition of a Handbook of Information, published by the latter company. It is a capital production, well illustrated with views of Queensland., 'Thursday Island, New Caledonia and/i'-ijij a» well as of the principal Australian cities, and some very useful maps. A valuable feature is tiie inclusion of the Britinh India Steam Navigation. Company's timetables and rates. A glance through the pages of this Handbook makes a j;;ded journalist Ic-ng for v/ealtu and leisure co as to be able to take what is known as "the long ran" by the A.U.S.N. boats, right round from Western Australia, to the extreme north ot Queensland. Tho pictures are well re-produced from photos, and the whole publication is both handsome in get tip and useful in contents.