CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 316, 30 May 1913, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

PROTECTION OF OUR PRODUCE. The latest issue of the New Zealand Dairyman contains an excellent article entitled "Fifty Years and One Battleship." The main purpose of the writer, who goes carefully into detail, is to show how rapidly this country's oversea trade is growing and what a boon—and a remarkably cheap boon—is and has been the'protection of our commerce by the British navy. In fifty years New Zealand's total seaborne trade, exports and imports, aggregated in value more than £770,000,000. "That shows us," says the Dairyman, "the enormous number of millions we may expect in the future, all of which will want the same safeguarding that their predecessors have had. Now, on the seven hundred and sevpnty millions, what a bagatelle is the ; couple of millions we have paid, or are paying, for the big battleship! The contemplation of the future proves to us that this is but a beginning. It is an- , other way of saying that the problem of Imperial defence is growing into the I region of practical settlement. It is a question from which all party strife should be rigidly excluded. All men of the Dominion should pull together in getting the solution, of the problem. Our .future depends entirely upon our own efforts. Whether are we to have a Dominion Imperial solution or an Asiatic subjection solution? Every man worth his salt in the Dominion knows which answer he is ready to give. In that case, every man must be ready to approve the steps to be taken to that end, both financial and personal. This is the reminder of the big battleship to the quarter of a million people who visited her. Let it never be forgotten."

THE REAL CHINA. During several months of travel in China just before the outbreak of the revolution, Miss Elizabeth Kendall, author of "A Wayfarer in China," "collected material for some good descriptive writing. Emerging at Hankow i (which has been a goal of the tourist for many years), she sees another and a very different vision, perceives a grim aspect of the "real China," which the making of railways has in no way relieved. Coming out on to the Luhan line, running northwards from Hankow, she sees—"Seven hundred miles of rice and millet fields and vegetable gardens unbroken by wall or hedge; nothing to cast a shadow on the dead level except an occasional walled town or temple grove! And the horrible land was all alive with swarming, toling, ant-hill humanity. Tt was a nightmare." Her last impression is one of the actual and potential reserve power of the race—an almost overpowering sense of their collective vitality: "You seem to be watching a community of ants, persistent, untiring, organised; only the ant-hill is a town, and the ants are men physically strong, gluttons for work, resourceful, adaptable, cheerful. Then multiply such ant-hills by thousands, and you have China."

GERMANY AND TOTAL ATiSTINFATE. It is characteristic of the new spirit in Oermany that a strong league has been formed for the total abstinence, education and training of Cerman youth. The first congress to promote the objects of the league was opened in the House of the Prussian Lower Chamber. Berlin. The Imperial Chancellor has accepted the presidency of the league, and anions (he committee are almost all the Ministers, both of the Empire and of Prussia. It is understood Hint the Kaiser Ins expressed great sympathy with the objects of the league. More than once lie has warned the academic vonth of the evil rftV-i.-i of drinkin'r and the need of fnllo»iii(' (lie example of England and the United c 'laies in naviutr more attention to athletics. The Roy Scout instil ution, which was borrowed from England

three years ago, is making great headway throughout the country. Marshal Von der Goltz, one of Germany's, best generals, has placed himself at its head. Its principles are opposed to the use of alcohol in all its forms.