The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1912. MOSLEM AND CHRISTIAN.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 79, 26 November 1912, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1912. MOSLEM AND CHRISTIAN.

-Mr Salter, the European Manager for the Canadian Grand Trunk Railway, was interviewed in London last month after a business tour through Asiatic Turkey and Greece. When' he left Smyrna, a few days before, the town was, he stated, in a high war fever. All business hi that great commercial centre, with its cosmopolitan population of Turks,.Greeks, and other Euro-

peans, was stopped. it was then impossible to cable direct to Europe except by the line through Trieste. Turkish troops were busy gathering and mobilising. Smyrna has a large and thriving commercial colony, who regarded the prospect of war with the greatest alarm. An enormous business is done in the export of fruit to the Continental ports, to Canada, and to America. The Grand Trunk Railway, for example, runs a line of steamers which bring fruit twice a year from Smyrna and from Patras. The usual autumn sailings had been stopped, and when Mr Salter was in Smyrna all shipping was paralysed. The war therefore means huge losses to trade not only in Asia Minor, but in many parts of the commercial world. Mr Salter was much struck by the intensity of fanatical feeling between Moslems and Christians, and his impression was that the war wpuld be entirely a religious war. It was the common opinion that it would be a war of terrible severity, so stirred were the passions of the opposing races. He spent some time in Greece and had the opportunity of meeting some of the leading politicians in Athens. The war ferment in Greece was fully as great as in Turkey. The cables were cut between the two countries, and he was told that it would take a week to get a message from any part of Greece over the frontier to Smyrna. An ambitious ideal was sketched to him by one leading statesman—that of a hegemony or confederation of the Christian States of the Balkans something apparently after the pattern of the confederation of the German States, and in this confederation Greece, in virtue of her traditions and leadership in civilisation, .should be given the leading place, perhaps with the King of Greece as the President or Emperor. Events have marched .rapidly in the few weeks since Mr Salter’s impressions were given, and the terrible severity of war he predicted has come to pass. The

loss of life has 'boon enormous, but though the conflict still rages the outlook is hopeful that Europe may yet escape being drawn into the strife.

CANADA’S WHEAT FIELDS. Some idea of the easiness of the Canadian wheat harvest—and also of the up-to-dateuess of the railway authorities in their preparations for coping with it—can he gained from the fact that the Canadian Pacific llailway Company added 125 locomotives and 5000 freight cars to its equipment

in order to handle the western grain this year. Ideal conditions prevailed early in September, and by the eleventh of the month less than 10 per cent of the grain was left standing in the three prairie provinces. According to Mr J. Bruce Y\ alkcr, Commissioner of Immigration at Winnipeg, 115.000 harvesters had been distributed over the wheat Helds by the end of August. Fifty thousand men were still needed, however, and the Saskatchewan Government was contemplating asking the railway companies to release their section men and transport them to the harvest fields. The j railway estimate, when 50 per cent of the grain had been harvested, placed the wheat yield for the year at between two and three million bushels in excess of last year. The Northwest Grain Dealers’ Association estimated the wheat yield for 1912 at 179.828.000 bushels, the oat yield at j 220.209.000 bushels, the barley yield at 48,000,000 bushels, and the flax yield at 12,210,000,., bushels.

KING NICHOLAS’S INCOME. King Nicholas’s foreign policy is said to be based on cash, considerations tempered by matrimony. From the Sultan Abdul Hamid King Nicholas re ceivcd, to the very day of the Sultan’s deposition, the salary of a Grand Vizier, in consideration of his services in abstaining from causing trouble, anti in 1899 he accepted from Abdul Hamid £40,000 under a promise not to encourage sedition in Macedonia. With Russia his relations have been particularly intimate. He succeeded in marrying two of his daughters into the Russian Imperial Family, and he has been receiving regularly a grant of £17,500 a year from the Czar’s private purse, to say nothing of the various presents from time to time, chiefly in the shape of war material. Similar presents flowed to Get tin je from Italy, for the Queen of Italy is a third daughter of King Nicholas. Lastly, Austria was in the habit of paying him over £2OOO a year, and since the annexation of Bosnia four times as much. In short, Montenegro and her King have been living for. many years on their richer neighbours and patrons, and it is not surprising that when the first Skuptchina wanted to draw up a Budget it found no data to go on.