Otago Witness Illustrations

Otago Witness, Volume 14, Issue 2648, 14 December 1904, Page 39

Otago Witness Illustrations

"By Mountain, Stream, and Sea": Beauty Spots of the South and Stewart Islands.

ANGLO - RUSSIAN " GREED." ♦ One of the best-known organs of the German National Liberal party, the Hannoversoher Courier, has published an article on "Monopolising Asia," which is attracting wide attention. After pointing out that •the thunders of war in Manchuria have benefited England in diverting attention from her various Asiatic enterprises, the article shows how the situation in Thibet is not to be distinguished from a British

protectorate. It has long been the policy of Great Britain while other nations are

wrestling for fame or booty to enrioh herself by a trifling expenditure of force. Egypt was torn from Turkey after the " insignificant battle of Tel-el-Kebir " ; the Soudan, this gigantic territory, after a fight with the Mahdi's " half-naked, warriors " at Omdurman. Russia, after her great saorij fioes in 1877, was unable to annex more i than Bessarabia and a corner of the Caucasus ; but, with an expedition in which only a small contingent of Indian soldiers

was engaged, England brings Thibet within her sphere of influence, while Japan and Russia are losing tens of thousands of men in bitter fighting. Again, look at Arabia, where the Wahabis are fighting against the tribes friendly to Turkey. England is here at work to secure mastery of the Persian Gulf, and probably also of the Red Sea. England apparently entertains the plan of drawing within her power the two religious capitals of Asia — Lhassa, the centre of Northern Buddhism, and Mecca, the capital of Islam. And while this is going on, while

she is securing the lordship of those poTtions of Central and Western Asia, still the independent British press is denouncing the alleged greed and intrigues of Germany, and English correspondents are writing from every capital in Europe about the Kaiser's impatience to secure some advantage in the Far East by an understanding with Russia. Russia has also been at work in Thibet and Southern Persia and Arabia, but in the immense struggle for mastery between Russia and England, the latter is for the present on the top. Neither. Power can

boast of its righteousness in politics. They" belie-ve that all means are justifiable. Lord! Rosebery lately exclaimed at Edinburgh : " There is room enough in Asia for both," but what about other Powers when Russia, and England are sharing their booty. Germany, continues the article, must not ignore what is going on. The continuous struggle between the two monopolisers is endangering the independence of Asia Minor. It i» high time to preserve this last remnant from, these insatiable rivals. A limit must bet drawn, beyond whioh they must not go.

NATURE STUDY IN THJfi OiAUO PUBLIC SCHOOLS. Miss " Syllabus " (loquitor) : " Now my little boy, it is of the highest importance yon should observe for yourself the 'forms' and 'functions,' &c, of leaves. Notice the green colouration. That is due to a substance named ' Chlorophyl.' " Boy: " Excuse me, miss, I fail to detect the green colour. My oculist informs me I am ' congenital ly ' colour blind as to green."

THE FREE CHURCH CASE.J^T ♦ In the midst of their generally grim seriousness over the sensational verdict given by the House of Lords in the dispute between the Free Church minority and the United Free Church, the Scotch people have been compelled to laugh at one comic incident. At Kilmaloolm, in Renfrewshire, there is a church which has been understood for some years to belong exclusively to adherents of the United Free Church. After the announcement of the law decision they went on using the building in the

belief that they would be left in undisturbed possession. But they had not reckonea with a certain Scot who pursues the calling of local road-mender. He has been considering the doctrines taught by the United Free Church and finds that he has a conscientious objection to them. Accordingly, as the sole representative in the district of the victorious " Wee Kirk," he hae come forward with an intimation that he holds by the decision of the House of Lords, and demands the keys of the church. Henceforth it must be used only for its original and legitimate purposes. "I am the congregation," he says.

TWO KINDS OF t NATIONS. ♦ Now, as always (says the London Daily Telegraph), there are only two kinds of nations — the hard and the soft. The two races pitted mortally together in the Far Eastern war are of the hard kind. Woe to those who are of the soft. We cajn compress into no closer compass the one clear, relentless moral which appears to us to emerge for all Western people from the grappling of the armies which have trampled the Manohu/rian millet fields. Henceforth

a new standard of heroism is set in war, and all nations must awake to the fact that the conditions of conquest, of defence, of national existence may become at any j moment of emergency, in the midst of all I the material oomf ort and optimistic verbiage of the twentieth century, sterner, more ruthless than they ever were in the iron ages of the world. For years we have heard the whimpering cry of impotent sentimenfcalism rebelling against the unyielding, unchangeable necessities by which all nations in the ultimate resort must hold their lives, , We have been taxight another lesson. It j is unmistakable, and it ought to be ade- '

quate. Japanese and Russians alike have shown a capacity for sacrifice, a contempt of death, an utter abnegation of self in answer to the supreme demand of patriotism which have never yet been excelled by any combatants of whom history keeps record. War in earnest is a thing, indeed, for any mind with one spark of realastio insight to shudder at — terrible beyond thought, cruel beyond conception. But war, while the present generation lasts, and for many and many a generation to come, will remain the ordeal of life and death which every great people must hold itself ready to face with every resource of its brain and fibre.