TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8218, 23 August 1906, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

On the subject of the Congo scandals the Morning Advertiser writes: —The British Government has certainly not been backward in making all possible representations. The real point in dispute, however, is the right of the British Government to interfere at all. In his open letter King Leopold absolutely denied this right. He has always denied it. The British Government has steadily maintained the opposite view, which is founded on the Berlin Act of 1885. *lhe British view is that by that Act the Congo Government laid itself under certain obligations to the other signatory Powers, which those Powers, if not individually, at all events colleotlvely, have the right to see fulfilled. Among these is the proper proteution of the natives. King Leopold maintains that there is no question of enforceable obligation, that the Act constitutes the Congo an independent State, and that in accordance with the ordinary usages of international law no other State has any right; to interfere with its internal administration. At present the matter is left so. Neither side has ia the least receded from its position. In fact, however, the British representations bare in away been attended to, but if the reforms should prove ineffectual or unsatisfactory the question must be raised again, rrobably the best solution would be the annexation of the Congo by the Belgian Government But King Leopold is by no means prepared for this at present. He Is personally deriving vast wealth from the Congo. No doubt he desires that his reforms should produce all possible good results; but it is likely that he will be very loth to believe that they have not done so.

The strikes which are reported from India are of the deepest significance. They are indicative of the feeling of unrest which has teen observed among tho natives for some time past. There are signs that a new spirit is springing up in the East, says a northern contemporary, which we may expeot to find manifesting itself in many different channels—eoonomio, political, and religious. That fundametslly this new spirit is racial in its character only intensifies the possible danger that snay lurk heneath the surface In spite of our long and close coptaut with the East we still know little or nothing of tho real thoughts that are at work in the Asiatic mind. These continue to be hidden behind an impenetrable veil. The unreadable faoe of the Asiatic tells us nothing, though we may suspect that beneath his fair and outward seeming he has a deep and irradicable contempt for the European and all his ways. It is this which creates a certain feeling of uneasiness whenever we hear of sudden and widespread movements amoflg the native populations of India, for whatever may bo their external and ostensible object we never know what is really Lt/hiud them. We won India with the sword, and notwithstanding the many blessings our rule has brought to that country, we still hold it witb the sword. The present strikes may be only an organised attempt on the part of the natives to obtain better terms for their services, but on the other bancs they may be part of a much more serious movement, the true character of whioh has not yet been disclosed.

The recent action of small bands of the unemployed ut West Ham and Manchester, who seized vacant sections of land with the intention of cultivating tbem, was possioly due less a sudden determination to act on advice given by the Hon. John Burns twelve years previously than to emulation of the example set by a re-cently-formed association in London. Some years ago an American Mayor, named Pingree, conceived the idea, ouring a period of acute depression, of utilising vacant spaoes in his city for the benefit uf the unemployed. "Pingree's Potato Patch Plan" met with a good deal of ridicule, but it achieved so muoh good that it was adopted in many other £ merican cities. The idea, as may be imagined from its popular name, was to grow market prodiicß on the vacant sections which disfigure all growing towns, and are to be found in greater or lesß numbers even in long-established cities. .London, one would think, hardly lends itself to fiuch a scheme, laud being too valuable there to be allowed to remain idle and unused. Yet here and there throughout the Metropolis are waste spaces, odd shaped,

9 surrounded often by dead walls. The association to wnich we have referred hopes to get permission from the owners of these vaoant sections to have them cultivated by those who cannot And employment, and do not wish for charity unless they work for it. An undertaking will be given that when required to do so, the "settlers" will abandon the sections allotted to them at a week's notice, the association paying them compensation for the work they have done. Any land that can be borrowed will be out up into gardens, varying in size from one-sixteenth to one eighth of an acre, aod the association will prepare the ground, supervise the sale of seeds, plants, and tools, keep an eye on the workers, and take away any man's plot that is neglected. It is hoped that in time the scheme will be made self-supporting.

It is somewhat lafe in the day to be officially informed of the enormous waste that notoriously occurred in the Supply Department after the close of the South African War. Rut since, according to the belated report of the Royal Commission, between £750,000 and £1,250,000 of British money was flung away in preventable losses after peace was proclaimed, we are able to form a faint conception of what went on while the war was actually ,in progress. Apparently the only officer in high authority in the Supply Department who is credited with capacity and knowledge turned his opportunity to a family ndvantage in a manner "contrary to the spirit and the letter of the King's regulations." As to'tbis, the Commissioners find "no evidence of corruption" againut Captain Morgan, which will probably enable that able officer and the money-making army contractors whom be patrunised to maintain their equanimity under the "severe censure" allotted to him. His successors are declared to have displayed "irresponsibility and indifference to the public interest," and even "want ot intelligence," but the British taxpayer can hardly be blamed if he fails to appreciate any official intelligence which is employed otherwise ;itbaa in the public interest. What between competent men who eagerly help to make money for their friends and incompetent men who exhitit "inexcusable carelessness and extraordinary inaptitude," there must be a universal agreement that the entire commissariat system of the British War Office stands in must urgent need of reform.