TOPICS OF THE TIMES

Southland Times, Issue 18810, 1 May 1920, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE TIMES

An entertaining modernisation of the ancient practice of beating swords into plowshares apd spears into pruning hooks is proposed to the French Ministry of Marine by the fishermen of Brittany. Schools of porpoises have invaded the haunts of the sardine, and have wrought such devastation that there are few sardines left for the Breton fishermen. So petition is made to the Ministry of Marine to station a seaplane patrol at each fishing port, and to equip each plane with depth bombs having a sufficient radius. Let the aviators constantly scan the sea for the porpoises as they once did for submarines, and when they see a battalion of porpoises preparing a raid on a peaceful detachment of sardines let them drop depth bombs sufficient to blow the porpoises to Davy Jones’s locker.

In the number of consequences involved, one of the most important enterprises now in prospect is the Hankow-Szechuan Railway in China. Szechuan is an especially rich province, and an especially inaccessible one, now almost completely isolated from the outside world; and this isolation includes also the provinces of Kweichow and Yunnan. The only connection is by way of the Yangtee-Kiang, and on tbite river, merchandise and travellers journey from Shanghai by steamer up the lower Yangtse to Hangkov, where a change must be made to smaller steamers going as far as Ichang, and there another change made to junks. The journey by junk through the gorges of the upper Yangtse is always hazardous, the route not always open to travel, and the trip made the more picturesque by occasional sight of a Chinese police boat patrolling the lonely sections of the river

on the watch for pirates. The police boat indicates good intentions, but it does not altogether prevent piracy: and in fact the policing of the borderland of the provinces is made altogether inadequate by the lack of quick and convenient transportation. The authority of the republic has an infirm grasp on the territory west of the Yangtse gorges, and the provinces of Szechuan, Kweichow and Yunnan ane by their inaccessibility places of refuge for bandits, revolutionary agitators, and criminals in general. The Hangkow-Szechuan Railway, it is believed, will give the republic a reasonably firm hand in this part of its territory, strengthen and increase the spirit of nationalism, provide an artery of immense importance for world-wide trade, and thus greatly improve both external and internal conditions.