Thus Lord Rosebery, speaking at Chester

Otago Witness, Issue 2499, 5 February 1902, Page 5

Thus Lord Rosebery, speaking at Chester-

I venture to say that 111 the whole histoiv of England, so far as I cm recollect, there is no parallel to the hatred and ill-will with which we are regarded almost unanimously by tue peoples o£ Europe. And the reason why, is it far to seek? We have merely to look at the map and observe how much of this terraqueous globe we have painted red. Russia is a big country; the Sibeiiiin pio\incts alone cover half AMa. But what is Sibeiui compared --with Australia, and its attend. ml archipelagoes? Or with Canada? All the o\erse<i possessions of France put together — Algieis, Tunis, Senegal, Tojiqinn. Madagascar — are not equal to a single India. Germany, with a few odds and ends of tropica' dependencies not worth mention, sees hei surplus popuhition sti earning into lands that aie eithei under the British or the Ameiican flag, or are ring-fenced against European Governments by the Monioe doctnne, — J Brazil, for example. All the strategical lv important points, coigns of vantage, corner shops,, the world over, are Biitish. Look at , Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, Suez Canal, IjAglen^ Colombo^ Singapore, Hongkong. Of

late years we have virtually annexed Egypt ; the war is to give us two new colonies in Africa ; this very week we are taking over Swaziland. Not content with occupying a third of the habitable lands, we also pretend ,to an Empire of the Seas, proclaiming with effrontery that " Britannia rules the waves." If I were a Frenchman, a German, or a Russian, these facts would madden me ; I should not be able to look on a map of the world without foaming at the mouth. What has wrought European irritation to the point of delirium is the visible certainty that the Transvaal and the Orange State — areas equal to Prussia, plus Holland, plus Denmark — are about to pass into our insatiable maw. Hatred and ill-will — to take Lord Rosebery's words — are at the highest just now because it is just now that we are consummating this crime. What we. can .say in defence I hardly know ; except, perhaps, that of old it was ordained -that the meek should inherit the earth."

To Civrs. — Sir, — It was. with much pleasure I read your nt>te in Saturday's Times advocating the claims of the short man to help his country in time of need. Like you, .Sir,' I don't think that inches should tell against a chap, when he is healthy and can ride and shoot.. I thiilk the time is past when' the soldier' is* merely^ required for show. But -I may tellyou straight that I applied for a place in the Eighth Contingent, but was told I was too short, and even now I am nearly Jin short of standard, but my patriotism is as big as the biggest.' So I hope you will still use your influence for us.

I had almost despaired of being any use to our Empire until I saw your note, which inspired new hope, so I am going to apply for enrolment in the Ninth, and should I fail, for want of inches, I will feel that I have done my duty. — I am, yours, etc.,

A Tommy. I give to this letter ,the honourable place it deserves. " Tommy " speaks for a large fellowship. In New Zealand alone there must be thousands of light-weights to whom the thought of their physical unfitness for military service has been a humiliation and a distress. Yet, as a matter of fact, the light-weight as such is not unfit : — absolutely the contrary. Unfitness goes with the heavy-weight. Slowly, very slowly, has this fact penetrated our denseness ; and now — in the third year of the war, the Boer still leading in a stern chase and new contingents wanted to take up the running — we talk of " not excluding " the lightw eight. Not excluding him ! — why. we ought to accept him first and him only, excluding every other. Let the Ninth be a light-weight contingent, through and through. Anybody who Avishes to see this, question — long men versus short men,' heavy-weights versus light-weights — argued out conclusively may turn to a lively article on the subject in the last " Nineteenth Century."

The editor passes on to me a letter intended by, the writer for the Daily Times correspondence column. " Information for Civis" is at the head of it, and at the nether end "I am, etc., N. Sutherland." It was very good of N. Sutherland to collect information for " Civis " ; and yet withal I cannot honestly say that I find the information useful. What is it to me that "the estimated population of the United Kingdom and Ireland is put at 40 millions fully " ; that "of these, roughly speaking, 21 millions are females," and don't vote ; consequently that " those 21 millions must for my purpose " — N. Sutherland's — " be set aside." What is N* Sutherland's purpose? — and, in any case, how does N. Sutherland's purpose in these statistical distinctions concern me? Wherein am I bettered by the information that at the last British general election a good many electors did not go to the poll, and that " whether the position would have been altered if every elector had gone to the poll is a matter for speculative minds to look into"? Mine is not a speculative mind, and I decline to employ it on any such mystery. Nor am I concerned to find out " what would happen'if am, the electors refrained from opinionating at the polling booths"; — though I confess to a momentary impression that it might conceivably be a good thing. Certain I am that it would be an excellent thing if some people, whose names are not far to seek, could be kept from " opinionating ' in the correspondence columns of the newspapers. This particular opinionator. with his farrago of totally valueless information, appends as his signature "N. Sutherland." It would have been moie in character had he written himself down " Mrs Gummidge "--the " lone lorn creetur " that cooked and washed and kept house for Mr Peggotty. " I'm a lone lorn creetur myself, Dan'l '' — would Mrs "Gummidge say ; " nothinks uat'ral to me but to be lone and lorn, and every think that reminds me of cieeturs that ain't lone and lorn goes contrairy with me. I had better be a riddanco." Add a spice of malignity, nnd N. Sutherland is Mrs Gummidge all over. The purpose of his lugubrious maunderings over the war, and also, as I dimly perceive, of the " information " he has kindly compiled for my own benefit, is to make us ashamed of 0111 country, our flag, and the century we live in ; so far as in him lies, he seeks to depress and discourage our national energies. It is a sufficient set(>i)\ pei haps, that nobody attends to him. All the same, a Mrs Gummidge with a mania for "opinionating" on war questions ought, in my view, to be chloroformed into silence.

F;u' ing an undisputed title to other virtues, the Pieinier and his chief Ministerial henchman .-eem deposed to fall back an theii siipei ioi lty in pounds avoirdupois — a merit which nobody can deny. Read thih :

Speaking at Boss, Sir Joseph Ward said thut .vnen he entered Parliament in 1887 his weight v,as list 4!b, and now he turned the scale at 15it olb. Mr Seddon's corpulency had similarly increa&ed from list to over 20st. 'lhese fijjiue* may be taken <i>- official; not even the Opposition will venture to content thfm And cleaily Sir Joseph is proud of them : — Mr Seddon not le.ss. Did \v: not the otliei day at Pulmer«,ton North drop a penny in the blot of a weighing machine in aider La demonstrate, fry turning

the scale at 20st, that he was a politician of greater, weight than Mr Pirani, membej? foi the district, and a mere atomy — all sou jj and no body? The suggestion of such conrH parisons is that we ought to judge a states; man by his weight as much as by his measures. The political-leader most "to brf trusted is he who comes nearest to the' condition of the stalled ox or the porker 1 when fit to die. And yet, for reasons bes& known to social malcontents, the phrase " the fat man " has come to be a term of opprobrium. At a meeting of the Wellington Carters' Union it was even employed with this connotation by Mr Seddon himself. But that was in the heat of an election contest. Apparently it had not occurred to Mr Seddoa that the" Premier and the Post-master-general were the two typical "fab men " of New Zealand politics. The thing to be . noted, moreover, is that they have got to be fat men as the result of being in office. Sir Joseph has advanced from list 41b to 15st 51b ; Mr Seddon from 14st to 20st and over. Which things are an allegory. The only interpretation to be adventured with certainty is that office has singularly well agreed with.-them bo-th.

" A " Science -Note " in the Daily Times this- week suggests a cure complete," speedy, infallible, -for. all. the ills that flesh is heir to. By means of the exceedingly powerful electric sparks we now make — " sparks of a few million volts " — w£ may "set fire to the -atmosphere,'" the universal .itmospheve ; as the result we ourselves, with all that is of interest to us here below, would be dissipated into space in a whifl of vapour. I hardly know whether this mode of exit is or is not to be preferred to another, equally available, that is suggested from America. A geologist of standing declares that the ice-cap at the South Pole has grown and grown for 25,000 years or more till at the present moment it makes the world top-heavy. That is why nearly all the dry land is in the Northern Hemisphere, nearly all the water in the Southern.

During the whole period of its growth, s<iy 25,000 years, or ever since the latest of these recurrent floods, this vast ice continent has been drawing the ocean from the Northern Hemisphere across the equator into the Southern. This movement, says Mr Lewid, accounts for the present situation of affairs— the land in the Northern Hemisphere and the water in the Southern; the flooding of the Southern Ilernisphere and the draining of the Northern. Seme day. we. don't know when, somehow; we don't know how. this ice-cap south of Hip Bluff— so,ooo cubic miles of solid icewill break up. Tampering with it by expiring expeditions, such as that of the Discovery, may precipitate the catastrophe — a sort 'of last straw on the overloaded camel's back. Then will arrive the Great Glacial Deluge :

. The disruption of the ire-cap will cause the " pull " of gravitation to be instantly trausfeired to the northern half of our globe, and the fragments of the ice-cap, with all the ■waters which have been drawn nround it, will enter immediately upon a wild rush for the Pole, vi<i the Atlantic.

F.iiling this disruption, the ice-cap must continue to grow and grow, piling up weight at, the .Southern Pole, till at last the earth turns topsy-turvy. Which alternative is the better and which the worse, may bedebated. Either would bring the end of both the Seddon Ministry and the Boer war. But there are remedies that are worse tban the disease. Civis.

It is reported from Clyde that a Chinaman named Ah Wong, living near Ophir, is suspected to be suffering from leprosy. What appears to be traces of the disease the man pttributea to being bhten on the temple and finger by another Chinaman, and the injuries to his feet he states were caused by a fall of earth four months ago. Dr Stenhouse saw the man, but gave no definite opinion as to the case. The surgeon of the Clyde Hospital declined to admit the man to that institution. The matter ha/ been reported to Dr Ogcton, the district health officer.

Mr W. T. Robinson, chairman of the Cheviot Relief Committee, informs us that, with the Government subsidy of £1500, a sufficient sum has now been subscribed to relieve all the sufferers by the recent earthquakes who are in need of assistance.

A meeting of ihe executive of the Queen's Memorial Statue Fund was hold on Tuesday in the office of Mr It. T. Wheeler, jun., the secretary, to meet the Hon. Richard Oliver and Mr John Ross, two members of the London committee, who were both present. Sir Henry Miller, M.L.C., occupied the chair, and there were present the Hon. Mr Fergus, Me-srg Joachim, Gleridining, Rameayj The.omin, and Bathgate, members* oi the local Executive Committee. A letter was received from Messrs Sargood, Son, and Ewen intimating the receipt of a cablegram from London "requesting" a remittance of thebum to be paid to Mr Hampton, the fculptor, on the feigning of the contract. After some dircusdion, an^ liearintr a report from Mr Oliver a« to*"* what had been done by " the London committee, it was resolved that the London committee be authorised to sign the contract on the return to London of Messrs Oliver and Ross, and that Mr Ewen be informed by cable accordingly. The treasurer wan authorised to remit the necessary funds to London when required. Mr Oliver reported that Mr Henry Hayman (of Meesrs P. Hayman and Co.) had promiped a subscription of 50 guineas, and Mr James Smith one of 10 guineas. The treasurer reported that the cash in hand amounted to £2085 15s 9d, and that there w»>re outstanding -subscription* amounting to £90 Bs. A3 the fund is still pome £400 or £500 short of. the required amount, Mr Oliver liberally o'unteercd to double 111- promised subscrip- ( loir of 50 tjuiuca-.

Applications are invited for a dredgemastexj for Stonpy Creek dredge.

Creditors of the TVareatea Gold Dredging Company are required to communicate with, Mr C. H. Stetham, . " ' "/