CURRENT TOPICS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2358, 4 May 1899, Page 3

CURRENT TOPICS.

One curious feature of the China Blue Book was the frequency with -which the the name of The Times was influence mentioned in it. It is, of of course, triteness to say that no the times, paper in the- world possesses a finer (system of foreign correspondence than that of the "Thunderer " of Printing House square. These China papers, however, serve to show what is not perhaps so well understood — namely, that it frequently happens that the correspondents of The Times secure information in the foreign capital's in which they reside, not only to the exclusion of the representatives of other great dailies, but also to the exclusion of members of the diplomatic service to whose interest it would be to obtain the information. The corfespond-, ent of The Times in Paris is well known io be the trusted repository of secrets of the highest importance. A journalist is frequently trusted with State secrets — it is so even in this colony, — and the confidence that is reposed in him is never abused, although the temptation to use information of which he is, among his colleagues of the press, the | sole possessor is stronger than would be the I temptation on the part of a man following I any other vocation in life. The observance of the seal of secrecy in France may, however, be an uncommon virtue. Be that .^s it may, M. de.Blowitz, ; who represents The Times there, is a man implicitly to be trusted, and, besides being made the repository of secrets, he is also on frequent occasions ex- ! clusively supplied with early information for i publication. Tlje Times seems to be equally 1 fortunate in it") Pekin correspondent. In proof of this the China Blue Book may be cited. On the 3rd Jur.o last The Times published the text of the Russo-Chinese agreement with regard to Port Arthur and* Ta-lien-wan. Its Pekin correspondent had supplied it with this. The Imperial Government had, however, not received the information. Consequently Lord Salisbury in-

structed Sir N. R. O'Gonor (then the Ambassador at -St. Petersburg) to., inquire whether the published verjiori' ot the agreement was correct. Count Miiravieff was accordingly interviewee! on the subject, and lie replied that the agreement was ones, exclusively 'between the Russian and Chinese Governments, and. was not meant to be published. He avoided saying whether the text of the agreement was accurate or not, and when pressed on this point replied that he was ■ unwilling either to admit or deny its correctness. Substantially, it may be taken that Count Miiravieff admitted that the Times had published a correct version of "an agreement, which was exclusively between the Russian* "and Chinese Governments, and was not meant to be published. The Times itself is unable to conceal its gratification at the tribute to its influence which is implied in the China papers. " The frequent references 'in the despatches to this journal by name," it says, "and to 'the papers' when no newspaper except The Times possessed original information on Chinese affairs, indicate very clearly one salutary and important factor in the education Ministers have undergone with marked profit to themselves and to the welfare of the Empire. ,Not merely the early and accurate information on matters of fact regularly sent Home by our Pekin correspondent, but the shrewd and penetrating. judgments in his telegrams, described by Lord Curzon of Kedleston in a phrase that has become historic, as ' intelligent anticipations of events before they occur,' have plainly exercised no small influence of a direct nature in fixing the aims and stiffening the backs of her Majesty's Ministers."

The information that Russia will adopt the Gregorian calendar from the THE year 1900 implies tl>at she is GREGORIAN " coming into line with the other CALENDAR, civilised nations of Jtjie world. At the present time"the Julian calendar is observed in that country, as it was elsewhere until, in the year 1582, Pope Gregory XIII issued a brief abolishing it in all Catholic countries and introducing in its stead the calendar now in use. The amendment that was ordered was this, that ,10 days were to be dropped after the 4th October, 1562, and the 15th was reckoned immediately after the 4th. Every hundredth year, which, by the Julian style, was to have been a leap year, was now to be a common year, the fourth excepted. The effect of this was that 1600 was to remain a leap" year, but 1700, lEOO, and 1900 were to be of the common length, and 2000 a leap year a^ain. In this calendar the length of the solar year was taken to be 365 clays 5 hours 49 minutes 12 seconds. The difference between this and subsequent observations is immaterial. In Spain, Portugal, and the greater part.of Italy the amendment was introduced -'fe 1582, in accordance wiljh -the Pope'e instructions,- and in France these were departed from only to the extent that the 10 clays were dropped in December, in which month the 10th was called the 20th. In Catholic Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands the change was introduced in the following year. Poland accepted the Gregorian calendar in 1586, and Hungary in 1537. Protestant Germany," Holland, and Denmark fell into line in 1700, and Protestant Switzerland followed suit in the first year of the eighteenth century. In the German Empire a difference still remained for a considerable time as to the period for observing Easter. fn England the Gregorian calendar was adopted in 1752, an act of Parliament authorising the change Jiaving been passed in the previous year, and the 3rd September was counted as the 14th. The change adopted in England embraced another point. There had been previous to this time various periods fixed for the commencement of the year in the various countries of Europe. In France, from the time of Charles IX, the year was reckoned to begin from, the Ist January, and this was also the popular reckoning in England, but the legal and ecclesiastical year began on the 25th March. The Ist January was, however, in 1752, adopted as the beginning of the legal year, ' and it was .customary for some time to give two dates for the period inter* vening between the Ist January and the 25th March— that of the old and that of the new year. Sweden adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1753, and at the present time Russia is the only European country standing out from the general agreement upon this point. • The observance of the Gregorian style will, however, be universal in Europe from the beginning of 1900,

Dunedin to- Christchurch in two hours and a half ! The suggestion seem. the monstrous, and yet if the moncv ' fastest rail railway is to prove the sue train on cess which its inventor, Mr F. earth. . B. Behr, anticipates, it is well within the range of probability. The mono-rail is already a tried success on small lines, and the Imperial Parliament it this year to be asked to pass an act authorising the construction of a line on which pasFengers shall be carried between Manchester and Liverpool— a distance of thirty miles— m twenty minutes, or at the rat<rtif'9G miles per hour. The nevr line will differ from thi ordinary track in that it will consist of at single rail elevated about four feet from the ground, and supported on A-shaped steel treptles. The position of the coach on the rail may be likened to the saddle packs which • hang down on each side of a horse's back The triangular supports will be 'placed aboub 3ft 3in apart, and at each side will be fixed side lines. These are placed about 18in above each othei. These are called guide rails, and theii object is to increase th^ stability of the system, and tc engage the 32 horizontal guide wheels with which the -car is fitted. '. Th* motive .power will be electricity, and the cars, each of which contains four electrio motors, will pick up the current from an electrical conductor. There is (a writer -in " Pearson's Magazine " points out) nothing new in the idea of a single-line railway. As long ago as 1826 one was constructed, but it was soon abandoned. Since then many nystems have been mooted, but there is only one which at the present day is to be found in operation. This system is the Lartigue Mono Rail railway, which is based upon r. device adopted by Charles Lartigue, thr engineer to a French company in an Algerian agricultural district, where an ordinary ground railway was in use for the transport of esparto grass from the boundless plains to the main linen of- communication. The rails were often quife obliterated, beingburied under clouds of sand accumulated m the sandstorms which prevail in that country. M. Lartigne determined to surmount this obstacle, and the idea, of a single line railway was suggested to him in a very curious manner. The sight of a caravan of oamelf, following one another in a long string *nd laden with thelljs (a kind of wallet hanging dowi! on each side of them), brought to hi: mind'f eye an elevated rail : the" legs of the camels became trestles, their humps were transformed into wheels, and the thellis took shape as a cai. A line wa<s soon built, the rail was supported on trestles, and the trucks had wheels in tho middle so that they ran or the rail pannier fashion, the haulage boing clone by mules Such was the genesis of the mono rail railway.

In 1886 a :iew era for. 1 the mono-mi! commenced. In this year the very trials of first line on the Lartigue sysTHE loin to be worked by<locomo-MONO-RATt. lives was designed and built by Mr Behr, who had become interested in tho method and had .-onvincecl himself that it would provf. a* successful for paspenger anfl goods traffic ur. h, -hncl "done for the transport of small .igrivul'liral produce. The trial line wa« .constructed at Tothill Fields, Westminster, or- a full working scale. The object was to &hoy/ ihol p, •.nono rail was more economical, much saft-.r. more easily built, and less costly to maintain than the ordinary light railway with doubl* irack in all countries -where natural difficulties had to be"~ surmounted. Encouraged by the success of this experiment, Mr Behr in 1888 built a one-rail railway in Ireland between Listowel and Ballybunion. This line hau now been working nearly eleven years most satisfactorily, and one of its principa 1 features is its absolute safely. Similar lines, all worked by steam locomotive power, have been built in France, Russia, Peru, Guatemala, and elsewhere. The conviction had, however, gradually giown on Mr Bebr ihat Ihe demand for a rapid system of locomotion could only ba met with perfect safety by the plevated Bingle-lin« railway, as there is no hope of thd existing two-rail railways attaining more than sixty miles pei hour, because they could not with safety bo run round curves at a higher rate. In 1893 Mr Behr proposed a lightning express railway aervice at 120 to 150 miles an hour. The idea was scouted, but. at the last Belgian International Exhibition an experimental line was Built at a cost tc Mr Behr himself of £40,000. This was the first line for passenger traffic tc be propelled by electrical power. A car capable of holding 100 persons was built, and paesengers were carried around the three-mile track at the rate of 90 miles an hour ; higher speeds could have been reached had more current been available. It is, therefore, no new system that Mr Behr proposes to adopt bet-ween Liverpool and Manchester! He holds that there is no reason why railway companies should not construct lightning express railways at 150 miles an ( hour. In that clay a person will be able to travel from London to Edinburgh in 2 hours and 40 minutes, and. with the additional promise of a speed of forty to fifty miles an hour or. steamboats . filttd with rotary engines, a London resident will be enabled to carry on business in Paris, personally attend to its details day by ! day. and spend his evenings with his family in London l