ENGLISH NEWS AND NOTES.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXIV, Issue 4872, 26 January 1903, Page 5

ENGLISH NEWS AND NOTES.

(From Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, December 6. Mr A. ML Jose criticises the AgentGeneral's book lu the “British Australasian" this week. While noting the impartiality of the book and its human element, Mr Jose expresses a doubt whether down South there are enough administrators of the type required to carry on the great State trusts in an effective and practical fashion. He has his, “doots.' •Asking himself the question "Wnere are all the keen, impartial, trained subordinates in whose hands the working ol so intricate a system really lies,” no replies, “The history of Conciliation Boards in New Zealand and Wages Boards in Victoria the proved nepotism of departments and the troubles of Railway Commissioners do not help us to an exultant answer.” The weak point cf the book is, Mr Jose thinks, “ that it does not speak from close personal knowledge of things as they are to - day. One feels the defect doubly: first, because all things Australian are ever shifting, and no amount of letters or newspapers will explain the changes to you if for two years you hare lost touch with the actual men: secondly, because it is the everyday working of the Acts which matters after they have become commonplace, not the first year or two of results, when the host men have been nicked to start the new enterprise, and all its supporters are on their mettle to make it a success. But it is onlyfair to say that Mr Reeves—whoso candour is a* very valuable nart of all his Troj-k himself warns Us of this defect in his preface. Nor does it invalidate the accuracy of his main statements: it onlv makes One feel now and again that words and sentences and Paragraphs would pro. bahly have been altered here and there ;u a direction away from. GU+liusiami if the author bad sne-nt the twelve months in Australia, arrl studied <he present attitude of Victorians tow?. l ns the Factory Acts, for instance, or the

vagaries of State Government in New South V, ales." Probably, however, 31 r Jose has somewhat exaggerated this weakness. In the only instance in which it has so far been possible to test the correctness of Mr Reeves’s forecasts, viz., the recent local option results in tho colony, the AgentGeneral has proved that he has by no means lo b t touch with the progress of affairs. The Western Union Telegraph Company has very thoughtfully notified me that the laying ot the Paeiiic cable having been completed it will, on and alter Alor.uny, December Sth, bo prepared to accept telegrams for all parts of Australasia, including New Zealand, Tasmania, .Norfolk Island and Fiji at 3s a word. Unit all registered cable addresses in use over the old or Eastern route are available over this route, and that if I desire to cable am! don't want to waste my lime in visiting any one of its nun-crons offices a telephone message will produce at my office door a messenger, who wi!! eonVev my message to tho clfioo of despatch. 'This is an indication of “liveucss” on the part of the Western. Union-Telegraph Company quite grateful and comforting in these days of ‘‘lf we don’t suit yon go somewhere else.” When tiie so-called ''Maori” team first came Homo they tried to give t.hsir entrance to tho field of bailie a certain amount of distinction by wearing their mats and giving vent to the war-cry “Alee. Alee. Ake, Kia Kalin.” But they tit no spirit into this by play, and the should have been inspiriting cry as it came from, their throats Bounded rather like n supplication to (heir opponents to treat them tenderly. Very soon the team voted the mat and war cry preliminary "bally ridiculous” and dropped it altogether. In America and Canada t.ho college football teams make a speciality of introductory manifestations, and when on November 16th the Ottawa Ciiy Rugby team beat Ottawa College by five points to nono and won tho Canadian championship, two weird new college crins wore produced by the Megaphone Baud, which cheered on the losers. Their appearance on the field was greeted by a rendering of tbo lyric, Hobel, Gobel, Razzle, dazzle. Sis. boom, ba. College, College, Rah, Rah and when the teams lined up for tire kick-, off a still more original lay w-as produced for. tho first time: An a hobo, atn a by bo, and a bo bo •'by ■ boom. Boom tat a rat trap, bigger than a cat trap. Boom, boom, boom. I do not, of course, desiro to suggest, that tho next New Zealand football team, to come Home should burden itself with a Megaphone Baud, or tickle the oars of jaded Britishers with weird lyrics of tho sort sampled above. The “Manchester Guardian” devotes a long and thoughtful loading article to Mr Reeves’s ‘‘State Experiments in Australia and New Zealand,” by which it says “a great service has been rendered to tho English progressive movement." "The view,’’ it says, “latent in much English Imperialism still is that the colonies have toy Govcrnihcnts playing with so much rope as wo omnipotently allow them, and only not hanging themselves because wo omir.lsciently do not allow them morp. Such notions of our .omnipotence and omniscience (which are, after all, what many of us mean by our Empire) look rather foolish beside a picture of the real thing—tho millions'of capable modern men working oitt modern problems for themselves, not uninspired by tho contemporary English spirit, but almost wholly uninspired by the contemporary English Government, building up not one but half a dozen political organisms, expecting them to perform not only tho accepted but many novel political functions. and, on tlio whole, succeeding.” The "Guardian” grtos on to refer to the advantages enjoyed by the Australasian colonies in safety from external attack and the lack of the deadweight obtruded into British politics by the hereditary principle, and says that the Australasians have mot the pressure of European social problems “with a peculiar Robinson Crusoe resourcefulness of which perhaps only pioneer colonists are capable.” , Referring to Arbitration Courts tho "Guardian”’ says in tho Australasian colonies tho class of good administrators needed from” whom to appoint Dio impartial desnots "is ready to hand in; the •Judges. But it is impossible to road Mr Reeves’s record without perceiving that an Australasian Bench has rentabilities which our own hardly had. Tho gulf out there between class and class is so much slighter; the rich have so much less prestige: tho workers so much more; tho class feeling of whose unconscious sway the most impartial English Judges could scarcely bo independent has little power at the Antipodes. What also is never to be loft out of sight is the greater responsiveness of the Government to the will of the people. At the Antipodes the State is. as it perhaps has never yet been elsewhere, tho expression of Die will of the whole people, and that will is much more of d single and simple matter than it can! be in older, larger, more complex communities. To such a State much more can be entrusted and from it more can bo tolerated than will be possible in Europe till Europe has gone further with her political reform.” i Miss Annie Taylor Blacke (Duncdin>l had from last Saturday to Tuesday an exhibition of her pictures and sketches . of the Thames and Devon at the studio, which she has taken, overlooking the Thames on Ciieync Walk, just two doom from Turner’s old house. Tho embankment has not yet crept up quite so far, and just before Miss Blacke’s studio there are old wharves, barges moored in the river, or lying in tho mnd, a tangle of roofs and chimneys on tho opposite bank, always picturesque whether wrapped in blue mist or silvery haze, lit by tho rising or setting sirn or darkened byshowers or storm clouds. The old wooden Battersea bridge that Turner loved is no longer there, but all the inexhaustible variety of light and shade ef-i foots that drew first Turner and. then. Whistler to tho spot are still to be seenAViien you have lived in Chelsea andstudied "the Thames in its various moods, then you begin to see Dm meaning of Whistler's symphonies. Miss Blacke. who has made great advance in her art since she came to this country, has evidently studied Dm Thames in sympathetic spirit. By far the most interesting feature of her "show” is the series of a dozen and a half sketches in oils and water colours recording, as the names indicate. various effects en tho river, ex “Evening Effect.” “Early Morning, "Sunshine,’’ “A Grey Effect.” "Barges at, Wharf,” “Sun Breaking Through Mist,", "A Rough Day,” “A Sunset.” Hiss Blacke's "impressions” Vary in strength, hut all manage to convey to’ the spectatorthe atmosphere intended, whether it bo the strong blue in Which tho scene is bathed at four o’clock ill tho morning,; the golden gleam of sunsec, or the silvery evening wrap of mist. A good many of the Thames sketches boro tho welcome, red star, so that they have evidently appealed {.O the visitors.'Miss Blacke also showed some nice "bits” of Devonshire rural scenery and a number of flower nieces, harmoniously and • delicately handled. One of them has been exhibited at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, and at Oldham, . and X Understand that one of Miss Blacke's flower studies is now on exhibition in Afanclipster and is afterwards to be transferred to the gallery at Leeds. Her largest picture, which is at the same time the most ambition? and the most successful that she has yet done, is a plei-u air harmony in green, a cluster of trees at the back of a brook winding Borough meadows w ; th rain clouds about to hur-t in tlm background, and a chi Hr damp feeßnc ebnut Dip whole scene. Wi th a fine satire Miss Blacke names it "Midsummer. S. Devon,” It is a realistio presentment cf nature.