TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8310, 13 December 1906, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

The arrival in New Zealand of two Chinese euvojs is but another proof that the Flowery Liind, after sleep' ing with great earnestness for hundreds of'centuries, is at last rousing herself from her slumber, and falling into lino with 'the progressive nations of the West, In the last decade.or so she has displayed an ardent desire to live down her name as the. laughing, stock of the world, and if she keeps tbo line of progress she has taken, she must soon achieve the eminence of a first class Power. Half a century ago who would bavu dreamed of China sending emissaries on a tour of the world to investigate the 3onditioua under which the Mongols in other lands were living, and her action is eloquent of the enlightenment whioh has taken place in the last fifty years.

Now that the indeterminate sentence baa become .a part of the criminal procedure of the colony it is inevitable that it should be the subject of very much more searching criticism aud of more ardent discussion than while it was still confined to the realm of theory. One of the will he sedulously kept in the forefront of the discussion is that whioh has been made by Mr McCarthy, the Inveroargill Stipendiary Magistrate, who maintains that little or no good effect can follow from it unless we introduce some sys tern of moral discipline into our penal institutions. In other words, we are told that no good can result from looking up a habitual criminal unless we confine him tinder conditions which will tend to make him a better man and thus help him 10 return to free citizenship.

The agitation in favour of rifle shooting for boys in elementary schools finds no sypmathy in the London Speaker, it says: "Nothing Ja so dangerous as for small boys to play witbjlre arms even

under clerloal instructors, and nothing can ba worse than teaching dootrinoa of violenoe and force. Their plastic minds are readily suaoeptible to militarist arguments masquerading under the gaise of patriotism, especially when they are aooompanied by temptation of martial exoitement and representations of glory and conquest. What are the oonsequenoes? Teaob the children of the country to disbelieve in moral and constitutional remedies, teaob them to think tbat the way to overcome opposition is to kill their opponents, and you may be sure you are sowing the seed of turbulence and trouble for future : generations."

« The invitation of the Cape Government to Lioid Selborne for the convening of a conference at which the federation of the South. African colonies may bB discussed marks the formal re-opeaing of a very important question. When Sir George Grey was at the Cape he endeavoured to coax the Transvaal into a Customs Union of South African States by promising in exchange to facilitate its acquisition of a strip of Portuguese territory whereon to build a railway to Delagoa Bay. But the Boer leaders were not to be thus influenced, possibly because they were shrewd euoagb to foresee that it might be greatly to their advantage to pass their railway to Delagoa Bay through Portuguese territory, and certainly beoaose they realised that a Customs Union must lead to a closer politionl affiliation. Sir George Grey would have made the Customs Union and amalgamation lead all South Africa under the Union Jack, but in the eveut the Union Jack has been planted not by a peaueful political evolution, but by a martial revolution, and the Customs Union and federation come as ;the result of it.