TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8285, 13 November 1906, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

Already the public is beginning to cry out nt how muoh.it costs to see the Exhibition, and no wonder. Evidently the Government is anxious to get baok its money as soon as possible, but at the rate people are paving out there must soon be a big deficit in somebody's exchequer. The Exhibition is expected to last another Ave months, and . not five weeks as the pace would suggest. After the first rush of the tourist traffic is over, the burden of carrying on will rest entirely on the shoulders of the local people, and as millionaires and semi-inillsona : res are scarce in Christchurch, it ia hard to see where the money is coming from to keep the Show going. The man with a small income will do well if he can treat his family to the Exhibition oice a month, without doing it at the expense of bis butcher and baker, and as for poor people they must be content with looking at the show from over the liver. At present it costs three or four shillings for each adult to go round the Exhibition, and if anyone wants tea, he can get a very ordinary cup, the flavor of whioh i?j not improved by the stalenesa of the pastry, for Is, wiile if fthe wan*s to sit down it will cost him 3d more.

Professor Redaiayne, of Birmingham University, w(jo is revisiting South Africa, where he] lived 13 years ago, gives his improssiocs of the country ia a letter to a friend. He says that a very pleasant feature is the utter absence of hitterneßS on the part of the more intelligent Boors towards the British, "I have

on several occasions talked over tbe war by the hour together with Boers In their lonely farmhouses, and in no oasejhave i beard them give egression to any illfeeling towards us, towards the colonial, and, strangely enough sometimes.- towards the National Soouts (tfhom they ouriously term 'rebels!'). Indeed, they like discussing the war, and |do so with great frankness, and are almost universal in their praise of 'Tommy,' as they now call the British soldier; it used to be 'Rooilathf*,' but thafc word one never bears no <v. It appears that 'Tommy Atkins' frequently acted ai a gentleman. I heard of one case where several Tommies used to give no part of their rations to a Boer lady—-Bhe told me of the in cident herself—and procured her what delicaoies they could, and when oompelled to burn the farm bouses used to apologise for doing so, and showed themselves most desirous of helping the Boer womankind in every way they could. It 19 Rood to bear these things, for Tommy does not always get his ineed of praise. Nor does brother Boer despise Tommy as a shooter and warrior, as is so frequently sup - posed, though be does think both bayonet and lanae most unfair in warfair—the game be thinks should be played in the way that he thinks proper—something upon the lines of deer-stalking 1"

The world is becoming accustomed to the existence of anarohy in Russia that it is no longer amazed at Buy of the astounding incidents which perpetually ocour. Yet the mere fact that the Government manages to exist and to maintain itself amid suoh general anarohy is in itself an amazing and instructive lesson. It emphasises the gulf that exists between the European and the Asiatic systems 'of society. The iSuropean Stat*, founded upon a constitutional recognition for rights and liberties as possessed by every oitizen, and only to be forfeited after due process of law, would crumble to pieces it that institutional basis were broken up, would be rent in twain by civil war at an attempt to arbitrarily alter it. But the Asiatic State depends for suoh law and order as it is able to assert and seoure upon the will of a despotic Sovereign, who does as he pleases for just so long as he can find dependents to obey his commands. Russia seemed to be slowly emerging from Asiatic barbarism to the plane of a low-giade European nation. Trial by jury even in a modified and mutilated form was a Btep in advance of judgment delivered, without appeal, by the deputies of autocratic authority. A "free" press, even though surrounded by restraints and restrictions which would appear impracticable even in Germany, was an improvement upon the time when there was practically no press in Russia. And the open advooacy of freedom of pnblio worship, of the representative parliaments, of 1 the responsibility of Ministers to the people, led the Western world to anticipate that in a comparatively short time the autocaracy would fgive place to some suoh form of constitutionalism as has been introduced into the Balkan States. J was thought that Russia was ripe for reform. Even when the refusal of paclflo reform was followed fry wild uprisings, it was thought that the Tsarooraoy must collapse. But year followed year, as months are added to months, and Russia appears to have done little more than slip back to the anarchy above which every Asiatic State is so slightly elevate 3.