The Otago Witness THE WEEK.

Otago Witness, Issue 2677, 5 July 1905, Page 49

The Otago Witness

THE WEEK.

WITH WHICH IS INCORrORATEB THE SOUTH ERH MERCURY {WEDNESDAY, JULY 5, 1f>90.)

" Xanquim illmii datura, aliud i&piealia dlxU."— Jdtiuw.

Lord Plunket might well be excused were he to exclaim with the poet Tie GrieTances Lowell, "Tit language there of a (jOTercor. is none for the heart's deepest things." As Governor of the colony and the representative of his Majesty the King, Lord Plunkei has a- reputation to maintain, which has been seriously, endangered by the composition of the Speech put into his mouth at the opening of Parliament. The Governor's Speech, has become such a mere formal affair that no one expects anything remarkable in the matter of which it consists ; but there can be no reason why its literary form should not be of an average order. Unfortunately, the Speech this session, approached from any and every point of view, is a most deplorable production; it is turgidly commonplace, ungrammatically involved, and discursive to a degree. The authorship is generally attributed to the Minister of Education, a sarcasm which cannot be altogether lost sight of. It is high, time there was a change of personnel in Mr S&ddon's literary coips, s i that the standard of future speeches may t>3 perceptibly heightened. Poor Lord junket's troubles, however, did not finish with his Speech from the Throne ; there was another difficulty with the Address-in-Reply. This Address, as originally drafted, did not correspond with the subsequent text, and v inquiries from curious members, who "wondered Avhether it was in order to edit a document after it had been adopted by the House, elicited the explanation * from Mr Speaker that the alterations were absolutely necessary in order that the perplexed Governor might understand what Parliament was driving at. And although I the Premier somewhat lamely endeavoured tj lay the -blame upon the punctuation, it was evident that something far more serious than inadequate punctuation was at fault. New Zealand has already had the reproach laid at its door of being a Greek - I less land, and now ii is in danger of bej ing stigmatised as a grammarless land. j Ie is well, therefore, that Lord Plunket ! should have been the recipient of a Birthday honour in the shape of a Knight Commandership of St. Michael and St. George, as under the cover of this wellj deserved honour he will be able to con- ! ceal his chagrin at even being suspected of an offence against the Engli&h language, and the society and counsel of Father Hays will doubtless help the Governor to , eschew that foroefulness of language which the occasion evidently demands. Already the ding-dong of party strife has commenced in Parliament ; Prore?<liii!js in the Opposition members are Parliament, in good fighting trim, and the Premier has little prospect of peace during the duration of the session, more especially as Mr Tom Taylo>* has announced his attention of fighting with the gloves off. The specimen of this sort of fighting which the House lias already witnessed does not redound to rhe credit of either of the combatants, and the pursuance of such methods will be calculated to end badly for all parties concerned. The collapse of the debate on the Adress-in-Reply was the prelude to a

squabble on the Shops and Offices Bill, diligent endeavour being made to sheet home the blame for the existing impasse to the Premier. Mr Seddon, for his part, was generous enough to desire to distribute the blame impartially between Opposition and Government members alike. The famous clause 3, around which most of the trouble centres, is a tribute to the quality of the legislation produced by an all -night sitting. How mucli better would it have been for the colony at large Had that particular all-night sitting never been held, and had the Shops and Offices Bill never passed the law. The present position is that the amending Act has been referred to the Labour Bills Committee, who are summoning witnesses from the four principal centres. It is a queer backhanded sort of procedure, first to pass a Bill into law, then to suspend its operation owing to the outcry raised again&t it, and finally to summon the parlies mainly interested to give evidence as to what "the shopkeepers really require, if tha business of the country is to be delegated to commissions and committees, what particular function is the Government called upon to perform? The debate oq the Imprest Supply Bill was productive of a number of sharp passages-at-arm3 between the Premier and the Leader, of the Opposition, and Mr Massey succeeded i.i eliciting from Mr Seddon the interesting information that the members' of -the Land Commission were, in receipt ' of three guineas a day and travelling expenses. This, at the 'rate of twenty-one guineas a week for each Land Commissioner, represents a payment in the aggregate of nearly £350 per head for four months 1 work. And who will venture to say that Government employment is npt profitable? There is every reason to believe that tbe appointment of the Land Commission will prove, in more senses than one, the most costly blunder ever perpetrated by the Seddon Government.

The Odessa mutiny, following so closely upon the heels of the rbts Re»l in Poland, points to the beBerolulien In ginning of that real revoluKussia. lion which for so long oas

threatened the Czar's dominions. The present outbreaks may be subdued by the ruthless savagery of the Cossacks, but the causes of the uprising stili remain, and the fearful harvest will have sooner or later to be reaped. A w^llinformed writer in the Fortnightly Review sums up the situation in the following masterly fashion: — "The watchword of the Throne to-day in Russia is laissez fane, which in practice means that Ministers do nothing but shed tears and wait for events, on the principle that nothing '.an by worse than the tilings that are to-day, and that the scales of justice and the sword of repression are handed over to underlings with full authority to do as ] they will, and full absolution from responsibility. It was this dropping of the reins which produced the initial tragedy of January ; and it is this which is fostering anarchy and 1 vengeance all over the Empire to-day. The local rulers — and the only j local rulers left are the gendarmes, the ' Cossacks, and the censor — clothed in brief i but terrible authority, are combining to drive into despairing revolt a people whose ' meekness has for centuries been a byword among the nations. During the past month arrests have been multiplied, and ruthJessness has degenerated into savagery. Tfo-s provincial Governors, whose power the late M. Piehve, with accustomed foresight, j two years ago plotted to augment, have lost all control over their subordinates, and I am told that one — by no means a mirror of chivalry — complained to M. Buluigin. the Minister of the Interior, that unless they were given a free hand his hirelings would decline to repi'ess, whereas if they were given a free hand their methods of repression would drive the people ma,d. With savagery, stupidity goes hand in hand. The innocent are arrested and chastised, though it is in ihe interest of the powers themselves to chastise only the guilty. Dvorniks ,md mushiks, set upon students and schoolboys, are taught the license which suner or later will recoil upon the heads of the instigators. The first fruits of thesp Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return To plague the inventor are already being reaped, if the reports from the provinces or strifes among the dvomik-police-spies are true. Roughs drag " disloyal " intelligent® coaityards, where, with the privacy and leisure ensured by official approval, they may beat them into insensibility or death. The people retort in their aimless ineffective way with bombs and bullets. Both sides suffer, and though neither oppressor nor oppressed advances one inch to victory, the disintegration of society proceeds apace, the situation moving towards solution independently of personalities and powers." j Last week we gave some particulars concerning the character end Russian career of Prince Klnlknff, Railway described as the master Enterprise. mind of the Trans-Sibeuan railway. This may be now supplemented with some details of the completion of the Circum-Baikal seaion of the line, an engineering teat which deserves to rank with the best English fud ' American records. The Circum-Baikal railway is of great strategic importance, seeing that it links together two bilhtrto broken sections of this immense trans-cm- ) tinental line, and under normal conditions i the Far East may be said to be brought quite within easy distance of Kurooe Mr Julius Price, of the Illustrated London News, who has been with the Rusmn armies in Manchuria, recently wrote. — " !io much has been said and written during the past year by so-called authoihios about this portion of the Trans-Sibevisn railway, and so little appears to really known, even now, of the enormous ctiificulties which had to be conteuded against and overcome during its construction, that it is not realised that Prince Khil-

koff and his staff have accomplished an engineering feat second to none in tLe world in an incredibly short space of time. Tlnough the courtesy of the officials I was invited to be the first passenger over the line, which was then barely completed, and had a long, interesting chat with General Inspector Yon Zela, who accompanied me, in the course of which I learned that the length of the line round tlv. end of the lake is 244 versts (roughly 162 miles) of which 55 versts from the military port of Tanchoi to Missovaia hive been ready for the past two years. The track follows the sinuosities of the ror.kbound coast the whole way. All the difficulties to be overcome, and which so long retarded the work, were concentrated in the 80 versts (56 miles) between Baikal and Koutrulik, and some idea of what these difficulties were, and which at times were considered almost insurmountable, will be gathered when it is mentioned that in this comparatively short distance there are no less than 39 tunnels and 11 £>alle.:ies or cuttings roofed in as protection against landslides. The longest of these tunnels is 1600, metres, - and there are several averaging 600 metres, all of which have been built wide enough for two lines, whilst owing to tbe peculiar geological formation of the rocks, all had to be lined throughout with masonry. It is said that 'every verst of this section cost 240,000 roubles,, as against 50,000, the average cost of the other portions of the TransSiberian line, and 20,823 on the Samar-kand-Merv railway, or, roughly speaking, £1,170,000 for the 56 miles. Of course. I give these figures with reserve,-- as I naturally had no means of checking them. So unsparing was the expense, and so energetically were the operations pushed on, that it is claimed that during the last ten months three years' work was accomplished. As a matter of fact, one could not help being deeply impressed by the unflagging zeal and, on© might also add, enthusiasm, were not such a word foreign to the Russian temperament, of the railway officials all along the line." This tribute to the remarkable efficiency of the railway organisation is in striking contrast to the ineptitude and indifference with which the Russian military opera-turns have been characterised. It goes to indicate the mighty future before the. Russian nation when the right men are placed at the head of affairs, and also m-jy be taken to show that the Russian eclipse is but temporary, for she possesses that inherent force which will compel Ler sooner or later to emerge and once more take her rightful place amongst the Great Powers.