TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7971, 23 February 1906, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

In Buruoab, though divorce is lamentably common, it is managed without the publicity and scandal which are inevitable where such matters are settled in the Law Courts and reported in the Press. If divorce is a necessary evil, it is a pity that it cannot everywhere be as quietly managed as in Burmab. There, if h husband and wife decide that life together is an impossibility, she goes out and buys two little candles of equal size, made especially for the use of the unhappily wedded. She brings the oandles home, and then she and her husband sit down upon the floor, placing the uandle9 between them. The oandles are lighted at the same moment, and one represents the husband and the other the wife. The pair watch the burning taper anxiously, for custom decrees that the owner of the one which first goes is to at once leave the house. The second candle may have onl.y flicked out a moment later, but its possessor remains the owner of the house and all its con tenvs, his or her late partner going away with nothing but the clothes worn at the moment.

It is very difficult to follow the process by which aao called "Liberal" Administration in England should propose to .alter the intended basis of Transvaal government in a manner antagonistic to demooracy all the world over. The discussion on the question now proceeding in the United Kingdom should teach us the folly of paying any great attention to party nomenclature, and of imagining that because a man dubß himself "Liberal" he is more truly liberal in his modes of political thought than his neighbour who !does not. We do not suppose that the Balfour Administration was inspired by any aoademio passion for democratic principles, whenj it decided that the vote of a miner in a Transvaal town should count equally with the vote of a settler upon a Transvaal farm, by the common and ordinary and aimost universal expedient of giving about the same number of electors to every electoral district. But whatever the motive, there was the adoption of the modern oonstitu< tional method, universal iu the United States, in Australia and in Canada, and only slightly modified in, New Zealand.

The fascinating question as to whether or not Mars is inhabited wos disousßed by Dr. H. Hall Turner, Savilian Professor of Astronomy in the University of Oxford, recently, at the Koyal Institution, iu the fourth of a series of lectures on heavenly bodies, adapted to a juvenile audience. He said the question most often put to the astronomer was, were the heavenly bodies inhabited? He, however, could not himself answer it; he had to rely on the help of the physiologists. Owing to the great heat, with one or two exceptions, all the stars must be uninhabited; but the temperature of many of the planets was favourable to life. In reply to the question, therefore, "Are the planets inhabited?" be answered, '"I don't know, but I feel sure theylare." Ou Mars the canals seemed to show that thoy were made by human be-

ings. He paid a tiibute to the discoveries in regard to Mara made by Mr Peruival Lowell, who had succeeded in photographing the canals on the planet. The planets were so like the earth in many respects that it seemed unreasonable to assume that life was confined to our globe.

The Echo de Paris publishes an interesting account of statements made to M. Henri de Noussanne in the Berlin Reiohstag by two leaders of tbe Sooialist party, Dr. Sudekum and Herr Bernstein and by Prince Radziwill, the head of tbe Polish group. Dr. Sudekum said that there would be no war ootweun Germany and France. "The Emperor does not seek war. He said so half a dozen times not long ago in the presence of someone who can bo trusted and who repeated it to me, 'Je veux la paix, je veux la paix, je veux la paix.'" But, suggested M. de Noussanne, the Emperor might change his mind—had done so before. "Do not believe it," replied Dr. Sudekum. "Let the newspapers talk. A war for Morocco is impossible." M. de Noussane asked whether, if things should after all grow worse, the German Socialist's would maroh against France. Dr & Sudekum's only reply was that- Herr Bernstein could answer the question better than he himself. Tbe question was put in a still plainer form to the latter—Would the German Socialists fire upon their brothers, the French Socialists, in the event of war? After some reflection, Herr Bernstein said: "That is a question on which it is necessary to have the opinion of Jaures." "But." persisted M. de Noussane, "suppose you were in the place of M. Jaures and 1."