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Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 8448, 21 February 1899, Page 4

The liltio girl who presented the Premier with a bouquet at Dunedin in acknowledgment of his old acre pensions effort, was rewarded with a kiss from Mr Seddon in full view of the audience, who cheered heartily. The Government of Iho Transvaal, says the Pretoria correspondent of the Times, has expended nearly .£SOO,OOO since ISP.4 in trying to influence the European press and European officials to prevent the leasing of Dclagoa Bay to Great Britain. A very pointed criticism of the Christian Endeavour Society was made hy the Rev. W. Gillies at the Presbyterian General Assembly. The criticism was drawn forth by a, comment hy the Rev. W. Douglas on the omission from the report of the Committee on Religion and Morals of any reference to the society in question. Mr Gillies said he did not think the Christian Endeavor movement was doim* the groat amount of good work that it was represented to he doincr. True religion, he added, was jiofc all in the tongue and the heels —in the tongue by speaking and in the heels by running to meetings every night in the week. A {Treat many of those who spoke at Christian Endeavor meetings would often be better employed at home helping their mothers to darn their socks. In repty, the Rev. W. Douglas said his experience was that the young women who went to Christian Endeavor meetings were those who were most dutiful in their homes. The movement was warmly defended by other members of the Assembly, including the Rev. Dr. Erwin. The London Spectator, December 31, writes : —" We wish that the anxious and timid people who are always worrying about our commercial and industrial decadence because we are 'flooded' with cheap German cutlery and cheap German lamps would look at the very striking article in Tuesday's Times entitled ' The Shipbuilding Boom.' Half England has never heard of this boom; for though all England rings with an ' ominous shrinkage in the tin-pot trade,' nobody troubles to advertise an increase in a great and profitable industry. Our shipbuilders will close the year with about two million tons of work on hand. That is nearly four times as much as the total amount of tonnage built in all foreign countries in 1897, and half-a-million tons more than that of the shipping under construction this time last year. The total value of the mercantile shipbuilding completed during the year is £^0,000,000. But of course the benefit has not been : solely to the shipping industry. All the allied industries — engineering, electrical engineering, iron and steel manufactures, and a hundred other industries —have been helped and stimulated. In fact, the ball set rolling has run through innumerable trades. And yet there are people who think that we ought to abandon frcetrade and adopt a policy of protection I The shipbuilding trade, remember, is the direct offspring oi freetrade."