A NEW ZEALANDER ABROAD.

Otago Witness, Issue 2928, 27 April 1910, Page 15

A NEW ZEALANDER ABROAD.

BRITISH AND CONTINENTAL. IMPRESSIONS. AN INTERESTING INTERVIEW. (Feom Oub Own Cobrkspondent.) WELLINGTON, April 20. Mr T. G. Russell, the well-known 'Christchurch barrister, returned to New Zealand to-day, after a trip to Great Britain and the Continent of Europe. What struck him most was the prevalence of unemplovment. Poverty, too, was very noticeable. Business was very stagnant. There seemed to be a feeling of uncertainty in regard to political matters.. He noticed less poverty in Scotland and in Ireland than in England. Perhaps the cause was the personal entity. Mr Russell says that there must be another election in England before long, but if the Unionists keep tariff reform as one of the principal planks in their platform, parties will probably come back not very much different from what they are now. There is a tremendous number of people in the cotton manufacturing districts who are now in employment at fairly good wages, and they reason thus : " We are pretty well off now, but we do not know how we may fare if tariff reform is carried." There is no doubt, says Mr Russell, that the unemployment and poverty in England are largely due to foreign competition at low prices, and that the industrial unions are not facing the problem properly. Their one idea is to increase the cost of manufactures in England by the obtaining ot higher wages and shorter hours. Mr Russell found that there was no real feeling against the House of Lords in England, and the present Government never got a greater surprise in their lives than when they found that all their attempts could not raise a popular agitation against it. AH their speeches were arranged with a view to inflaming popular feeling against the ~ ->-ds, and Mr Lloyd-George in particular sed the Lords in a very vulgar manner. ' He hoped to raise an agitation, and expected that large meetings would be held throughout the country in condemnation of the peers, but his intemperate tactics fell flat, and there were no hostile meetings held. The people did not care twopence about his suggested campaign. On the contrary, they recognised that the hereditary peers who were political aonentities did not influence legislation In any way, and that the real business in the Upper House was done by a splendid body of men—men of outstanding patriotism and ability, whose names, many ot them, were already written large in the history of the Empire. Mr LloydGeorge then endeavoured to heap odium on the peers individually, but that bolt also fell short, because most of the aristocratic peers spent their incomes liberally, and were most popular within their own districts. Mr y Russell says that tariff reform will be carried eventually, but not for some time, and he believes that if the unions were to relinquish it as a plank of their platform at the next election, the Liberals would be for a certainty defeated. On one point the present Government had had to give way. They had been compelled r to increase their ship-building programme, and with the colonial vessels there were now 11 Dreadnoughts provided lor. As Mr Russell spent some considerable time in Germany, I asked him about the feeling there, and his remarks were decidedly interesting. " As far as I could see," he said, " the Germans themselves were beginning to realise that they weTe face to face with an almost hopeless task in endeavouring to keep pace with Great Britain in regard to naval armament. The optimistic views held in Germany a few months ago in respect to this matter were now gradually giving way to a feeling that the problem they had undertaken was a much more difficult one thaco they had ever dreamt it would be. He had met both army and navy men in Germany, and he found this feeling was growing. Indeed there was all through Germany, particularly amongst the commercial and industrial classes, a feeling that the expenditure on naval defence should be moderated. These people were all remarkably prosperous, and they deprecated a Witt with England, which would under any circumstances destroy the wealth they were building up for themselves, and which would, in the event of a reverse, lead to the almost total destruction of their trade. They were making money now fairly and squarely, and "they dreaded a war in which there was always the possibility that things might go wrong." In regard to this feeling, I put it to Mr Russell whether it was sufficiently strong and of sufficient weight to resist the desire for armament on the part of the officials, both civil and military. At present, he thought, the feeling was not strong enough to resist the demands of the militarists, but there were two factors operating in Germany that would soon make it the predominating factor. One was the increase —a perpetual increase—in the already heavy taxation that would result from any attempt to keep pace with Britain's naval programme. The other was a growing feeling on the part of the ordinary German citizen to take a more active part than formerly in the Government of the country. It was the same feeling that was spreading in the colonies. In Germany they called it Socialism: here we called it Liberalism. In addition to all this, the Germans were beginning to realise that the resources of our Empire in connection v/ith fleet-building were greater than theirs. Furthermore, Germany had to keep up a large and costly standing army, and no country in the world had ever yet been able to maintain a great army and a great fleet at the same time. Such a programme would put an endless burden upon any country attempting it. Mi" """ssell was tremendously impressed with comm<-- ' " and industrial activity the Their capacity

for work, and their physique, compelled attention. At the same time he said there were no signs of decadence in the English people. They were as strong a ■nation as ever. In France Mr Russell spent altogether about three months. He found that country productive and prosperous to a degree. It was a very fertile country, and was most scientifically cultivated, while the people were very saving. If a peasant went to market and sold a calf for £l, he did not leave any of the £1 in the town. He took it back with him and it went into a bottle until there were four otheT pounds with it, and then it was invested in Government bonds. "In France," he added, "there are scarcely any beggars. We see a lot of our own people in rags and tatters. The poor of Paris are too proud to be seen in garments that do not look respectable, and what beggars there are are well-to-do. With them it is a profession, and the people know they are not poor." " France," he continued, "is just teeming with industrial life. It is the same in the country districts as in the towns. There is no evidence of the blighting poverty which you see in England. ' Mr Russell returns to Christchurch by to-morrow's boat. He will be glad to get back again, and meet his old friends. Of all the places he had seen in his travels no town impressed him more than Melbourne, and there was no better country to live in than New Zealand,