TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8225, 31 August 1906, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

Prom Christiansand, a Norwegian shipping town of about fifteen thousand inhabitants, comes an interesting account of a municipality struggling with the pauper and vagrant problem, and finally handing the whole matter over to the Salvation Army to deal with. This result was largely brought about through two lectures delivered in the town by the secretaries of the Men's and Women's Sooial Work. The Burgomaster and Town Councillors after these 'meetings communicated' with the Army, stating that the town Brandy Company was prepared to place at the Army's disposal a suitable building, rent ffee, and without any conditions attached to it. They said they would see that the Army suffered no financial loss in the matter, and should not be expected to retain the control or direotion of the undertaking if not successful. Under these circumstances, the Army is taking over the building, and a Sooial Institution is to be commenced at once in the premises.

For the first time for many years the law , as to Sunday closing was enforced on July Bth in the "White Way" portion of Broadway. This includes the theatrical centre, which has been accustomed to remain open, in spite of the law. boon after midnight on the Bth, the usual Roene of Raiety was just beginning, when the saloonkeepers and the pubiio were astonished by the police officers arriving and arresting all the waiters who were then serving customers. The street was paoked with disappointed people including the lead ing politicians of the ward, who have threatened to secure the removal of the Ccmmissoner of Police, General Bingham, who is a retired army officer, and the first Commissioner for many years to be free from politics.

Although Western Australia has long ceased to be a penal settlement, a number 5,0f aged persons still remain in that State, survivors of the old system of transportation. , The State Government has repeatedly endeavoured to procure the remission of these men's sentences, but complete success was not achieved until this month. In 1897, when the Diamond Jubilee was celebrated, the Government urged that pardons be granted twenty-nine convicts. The appeal was successful with regard to seventeen. On the inauguration of the Commonwealth the Imperial authoritiesijjwore asked to pardon fourteen of the fifteen uonviots then remaining, but only two pardons were granted. Since that time four have died, and nine 1 are now remaining. The reluctance of the Imperial Government to release these men was probably due to the fact that the crime of which each had beeD convicted was murder. All were sentenced between 1862 and 1860. The Prime Minister recently plaaed the positou of the convicts before the Secretary of State for thu Colonies, and a reply has been received by the Governor-General that his Majesty bad been graciously pleased to extend his royal mercy to the nine men named in the list, and that the Governor of Western Australia had been accordingly informed by Lord Elgin. The extraordinary conflict being waged in Russia between the Government and the 'people would seem to have entered upon a phase iu whioh military force is being met by organised assassination. There bas always been tyranny in Russia, and assassination is never absent wherq tyranny rules. Bnt the Reactionary Administration now io authority appears to have made good its determination to orush out all attempts at armed revolution and to have compelled the revolutionary leaderß to change their plan of campaign. In Warsflaw, where the Polish population is nationally as well as politically opposed to the Czar, and where armed risings have repeatedly be«n attempted and have always failed, a fury of assassination has almost driven the police from the streets. Nearly two hundred policemen have been ruthlessly murdered in that town, for no other reason than that they were in the pay of the Russian Government, and this terrible method of weakening authority, incomprehensible as it is to British minds, has extended to other cities and is apparently spreading widely. The attempt nn the Russian Premier is but one of a series of similar attempts now in progress, the effect of which no civilised people can forecast.