CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 314, 28 May 1913, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

A DISASTROUS EXPERIMENT. The Labor Government of Western Australia has appointed a Commission to make enquiries concerning the steamer service of the State, with special reference to the three boats purchased by the Ministry last year. There seems to me no doubt that the operations of the Government steamers have involved a loss of nearly £12,000, apart from the interest and sinking fund, charges on about £IOO,OOO of loan money. The Una, which was intended to undertake mail services, has been laid up for some months. The West Australian is carrying mails and passengers on the coast between Fremantle and Port Darwin at a loss. The Kwinana, after a few trips to Kimberley last year for cattle, was put into the'general carrying trade, and it is stated that .she brought timber to New Zealand for a private company at 20 per cent, under the ruling rates. The position is made awkward for the Government by the fact that the steamers were purchased in the first instance without the authority of Parliament, which voted the money a little grudgingly after the Ministry had made the contracts. A REAL DANGER. "A very real danger to the continuance of peaceful intercourse between the nations appears to be involved in the practice of encouraging Ministers of the overseas dominions of the British Empire to travel away from home, and when released from the steadying influence of their own constituents and their own Press to give free reign to their after-dinner eloquence without reflecting how far from the safe road of common sense that flighty steed may carry them." This is the comment of the Sydney Daily Telegraph upon the Hon. James Allen's recent speeches concerning defence matters. The Australian newspaper, which the Reformers will scarcely suspect of being biased against them, says that Mr. Allen had a fine opportunity of making "a sound and logical contribution to the discussion of the great question of Imperial defence" when he was speaking at Winnipeg the other day, but his actual speech, read dispassionately in New Zealand or Australia, "must appear to be positively pernicious where it is not flavored with the element of the ridiculous." "The New Zealand Minister of Defence," adds the Daily Telegraph, "in one and the same speech declared that 'defence questions were more pressing in New Zealand than in other parts of the Empire, because of its proximity to the Far East,' and also that if Canada were attacked —and her chief danger, too, is from the Far East—New Zealand would send an expeditionary force of 80,000 men to her assistance. ... It

is much to be feared that the Canadians who listened to Mr Allen's after-dinner oratory must have experienced an unpleasant shock at finding a Minister of Defence 'talking more like Bombastes Furioso than a sober-minded exponent of military and naval policy. New Zealand defying the potential enemy of Canada—whoever that potential enemy may be—resembles a fox terrier 'shaping up' to an elephant."

THE NO-COLLAR CRUSADE. A year or two ago the journal the Hospital gave prominence to the views of Mr. W. G. Walford upon the injudiciousness of tight neck-wear. To collars of every kind he entertains a rooted antipathy, and attributes a long train of disorders in remote parts of the body to the direct or indirect results of constriction about the neck. In a recent communication Mr. Walford sends the journal de tails of a lady who had suffered for ten or twelve years from menorrhagia, which was getting worse. She had had several operations for this trouble, but could get no relief. At last she applied to Mr. Walford, and on following his directions as to neck coverings, she very greatly improved within two months. The directions are that every scrap of clothing above the collar-bone should be so loose that the whole hand can be passed down inside it. By this simple device its inventor believes that an enormous amount of ill-health can be prevented. Obviously, it entails a disregard of fashion and. convention quite beyond the ordinary, which probably explains the fact that no very great number of converts has as yet been made.

THE DEADLY PEA-RIFLE. Mr. Justice Cooper recommends that all pea rifles found in the possession of boys should be made liable to confiscation. If this is not sufficient to check a growing and serious evil, the possession of a pea-rifle by a boy, unless under the supervision of an adult, might be made a misdemeanor, and parents made responsible for any fine imposed. Unless scores of lives are to be needlessly sacrificed yearly some drastic steps must bo taken to eradicate a most dangerous practice.—Auckland Herald.

PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION. We have the very best of reasons for believing that if Mr. Massey had been allowed to have his own way he would have introduced a Bill last session providing for proportional representation in both branches of the Legislature. His colleagues saw, of course, that this inevitably would give the progressive parties a. majority in both the' Council and the House, and we mav lie sure the proposal will not be revived while thev remain in office.—Lyttelton Times