TOPICS OF THE WEEK.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVI, Issue III, 18 January 1896, Page 62

TOPICS OF THE WEEK.

fTAHE most popular man in the British Empire to-day j is, I take it, the Marquis of Salisbury, and perhaps there is not in Europe a man more laughed at, contemned, and disliked than the very foolish and hot-headed young monarch who reigns as Emperor of Germany, and who appears to imagine he can interfere with the affairs of nations in the same very extraordinary manner iu which he interferes with the pleasures of members of his family and of the Imperial house. The favour with which the great conservative leader of England is regarded is as well deserved as the ridicule and resentment which reward the vagaries of William 11. The present British Administration was returned to power with a majority which shewed beyond dispute that the people trusted it and its leaders implicitly. That confidence has been fully justified. It makes one shudder to think what the troubles of the last few months might have meant to England had there been a weaker leader, a less competent Foreign Minister at the head of affairs. Rarely in the history of the present generation has any British government

been called upon to decide so many dangerous, difficult, and delicate matters in so brief a period of existence. Almost before time has been allowed to draw breath over one peril averted, another has shown itself. But the iron hand in the velvet glove has never yet failed to seize on the situation, and to make it abundantly clear to the world that there are still statesmen in England, and soldiers, sailors, ships and shekels to boot if they should be required. It is a good thing and a great thing for these colonies to have such a man as the Marquis of Salisbury has proved himself to be at the head of affairs in England. A jingo policy is not, ordinarily speaking, to our taste in the colonies ; but Lord Salisbury is not by any means a jingo minister. Lord Beaconsfield would have been more truculent, more jingoesque, more dramatic than Lord Salisbury in the present situation. He would have probably engineered some theatrical and showy,though practically

useless coup, but he could never have dealt with the matter with the cool, wise, firm statesmanship which has characterised Lord Salisbury’s action in each of the grave difficulties which he has surmounted with so much credit to himself and so much honour to England. I confess that when matters are finally settled up—and this time seems at present writing nearer than one could have supposed a day or two ago —I should like to see a colonial vote of thanks forwarded to the British Premier tor the very admirable manner in which he has upheld the honour of the great Empire whose sons and daughters we are. AND the German Emperor ! * The heaven-born, Godinspired ' (as he calls himself) and autocratic ruler of Germany '. What of him ? That meddlesome monarch is engaged in the humiliating and disagreeable mameuvre vulgarly, but aptly, denominated ‘climbing down.’ When one realises the depth of the hole into which Kaiser William 11. put his foot when he sent that indiscreet message to Kruger, one cannot help feeling some slight pity for the unfortunate man. His position is most distinctly unpleasant, and it will require all his well-nigh limitless self-confidence and boundless conceit to enable him to brazen out the shame of this snubbing he has received with any sort of success. And braggartly and boldly as he may bear himself in public, the man must realise in his own heart what a consummate mistake he has made, and how great a target he has made himself for the ridicule and satire of statesmen in every other European country. But certainly he is a very extraordinary young man. His passion for interfering with the business and pleasures of other people amounts to positive mania. In the same week that he committed the fatal blunder of interfering in the Transvaal quarrels he reprimands a member of his house for skating too much, and for this heinous offence sends the peccant Prince in disgrace from the Imperial Presence. When a man of lesser note than an Emperor commits tactless blunders, pokes his nose into other people's business, and behaves generally with supreme contempt for everyone but himself, his friends not iufrequentlv call him eccentric, and mention the fact as if everything should be forgiven on that account. This is convenient for the eccentric, and occasionally may save him from a horse-whipping. It is bad and mischievious that Society should have agreed to allow certain people the privilege of being ‘ eccentric,’ but after all that is Society's own affair, and will right itself in time. But in nations eccentricity of this type cannot be taken as an excuse. If the German Emperor’s head is so hot that he must needs insult the country that has and is supporting some hundreds of his relations, and has several timesputitself out to do him honour against its will, mainly to please his relations, why, there is the oldfashioned remedy of blood-letting. It is a heroic cure, but a certain, and should Kaiser William’s case become a gg ra '-'ated, he will assuredly find Britain both willing and able to apply it. He doubtless remembers that she has a somewhat extensive experience in this line, but that her charges for the cure when effected might probably be high.

TEANWHILE there is one grim old figure, one L splendid statesman, looking out from his retirement at Friedrichsruhe,who must look upon the follies and vagaries of his sovereign with a peculiar mixture of pity, amusement, contempt and profound heartrending regret. The portrait of I’rince Bismarck so cavalierly dismissed by the ‘ heaven-appointed ' Emperor, which appears on this page,seems to have a watchful, worried look, as if he saw the dangers and pitfalls into which the young master of Germany is rushing that great nation, and had buttoned on his storm coat with the muttered remark, ‘ I may be wanted yet.’ And shamefully as the Emperor has treated the great Prince, to whom he owes so incalculable a debt, there can be no doubt that at the very first note of danger, the first hint of acute and imminent trouble, the German people would turn to the Grand Old Man who has successfully negotiated so many difficulties, and who set Germany on the high and honourable position from which the folly of her Emperor can alone precipitate her. Nor will the Old Mau disregard the appeal. If it were only the German Emperor with whom England would have to concern herself in case of a war, the game would be easy indeed, but despite ingratitude and insult, despite a patronising manner most offensive to such a man, the German Emperor will have the counsels and help of perhaps the most massive political intellect and most splendid statesmanship of our age. It will not, cannot effect ultimate results, but it will provide England with a worthy adversary—one against whom she will have to exercise all her pow’ers before she gains the inevitable victory.

CfOLONIALS who have not visited London cannot 1 form the slightest conception of the intense antipathy felt by the masses and middle classes towards the Germans. Nor is the reason of this antipathy hard to discover. The German clerk, the German tailor, the German dock-labourer, the German waiter, have swarmed into positions formerly occupied by Englishmen, and are rapidly becoming as deeply distrusted and disliked by Londoners as the Chinese and other aliens are by ourselves. And for the same reasons. They can live ou what an Englishman would starve. They are, to their honour be it said, more hardworking and steadier. They never get stale, and never strike. They work for the merest pittance, in many cases not only receiving no salary, but actually paying premiums for their positions, their avowed object being to learn English. Of course it would be well if our youth could more closely follow the German model in the matter of thrift, economy, and hardworking faculty. English boys were not originally built that way, but times are changing, and they are changing with the times, and the reproach that German clerks are better for the employer than English will very soon be wiped out. It is, as will be see, the virtues of the Germans that have caused the jealousy and dislike of Londoners in the past, but the terrible extent to which it might be worked up in case of a conflict between England and Germany, when the faults of that nation would also be in the reckoning, is not pleasant thinking for anyone, least of all for the large German colony in London.

MR CECIL RHODES, of whom a portrait—and a very excellent one—is herewith given, has at the time of writing yet to give his version of the trouble in the Transvaal. And since Mr Rhodes attained his present position no less by his power of keeping silence when it so suited him than by his will power and great

administrative ability, he is not likely to commit himself in any way at present. The heavy loss which the Chartered Company will suffer may possibly ruin the company and its shareholders, but Mr Rhodes is a multi-millionaire, and far too knowing a financier to put all his eggs into one basket. He will be annoyed ; so

will Barney Barnato. They may drop a million or so apiece before the matter is settled, but there their financial afflictions will end. The Car, as Anthony Hope has it in his novel, of which Cecil Rhodes is surely the thinly-disguised hero, will move on no matter who or how many are bruised and crushed under the wheels.

TTIEUTONIC humour is not usually of the brilliant 1 order, and the average German has not commonly a talent for repartee. It must be confessed, however, that the German Band fellows in Melbourne scored, and scored heavily, in that street scene reported in Friday evening’s cables. It was an admirable idea on the part of the loyal and warlike Melbournians to make the Germans play ‘ Rule Britannia,’ to cheer lustily the while, and to reward the music makers liberally ; but the Germans certainly turned the laugh with wonderful adroitness and commonsense when they offered to play ‘ God Save the Queen ’on similar terms. Under similar circumstances, had the offer been made to a Frenchman, he would have spat in the face of the spokesman who proposed such a thing. The German Band wins.

TTTANrED, Stonebrokers at once I’ As might have V V been anticipated, the above advertisement, which appeared one evening last week in a very large evening paper in the North Island, attracted a vast amount of attention. The week’s racing, not to mention keeping Christmas, had provided a very healthy army of stone brokers, who literally besieged the house of the unlucky advertiser, who dared not venture forth till the arrival from town of a huge placard (sent for in hot haste), 1 I wanted stonebreakers, not stonebrokers.’ The crowd then groaned heavily, cursed volubly, and as they say of deputations, withdrew.

A GENTLEMAN by the name of Yatman, one of the promenading platform preachers who raid this country from time to time to save our souls and collect our tuppences, has pronounced the very extraordinary dictum that ‘ a man who uses tobacco loses the finer sensibilities of a gentleman.’ Now I should like to know which are the finer sensibilities to which Mr Yatman refers. The weather is something too hot for argument, as far as I myself am concerned, but if any champion of the weed cares to enter the lists against Mr \ atman, and to combat his preposterous and very absurd assertion, I shall be pleased to afford him reasonable space in these columns to do so. The value of what Mr Yatman has to say on the liquor question and prohibition may be estimated from his narrow minded dictum on smoking. Which of the finer sensibilities of a gentleman did Tennyson lack, by the way ? and is not Sir Walter Raleigh accredited with having been one of the finest gentlemen in the world ? Mr Yatman’s ideal of the fine old word is probably—Mr Yatman.

MAN never is but always to be blessed ! In the piping times of assured jjpeace we are prone to peevish plaints against the dullness and stupidity of the cable colums of our daily paper. Now when the cables are of a nature to stir the pulse of the most phlegmatic, and to rouse the martial spirit of the most unpatriotic and callous colonial, when the press teams with rumours of wars, and all the nations of the earth seem suddenly actuated by a desire to fall upon the busy Britisher and to stop forever his schemes of self-advance, ment, we shake our heads and sigh regretfully for the dull papers and stupid cable columns, which we sadly recognise meant peace and prosperous times. Now the chances of peace, for any length of time, seem getting more and more remote. The fire may be stamped out temporarily in South Africa, though that seems doubtful, but it will surely burst out in some new and perhaps totally unexpected quarter. As I said last week, I cannot pretend much to regret the fact. It is inevitable, so it would seem, that mtn must fight, and if they must, why it is better that England should not get out of training by having too long a rest in between.

IT is, however, high time Englishmen realised that under the new conditions of warfare the old idea that one English Tommy Atkins could account for four ‘ bloomin’ foreigners ’ is a fallacy and a farce, a farce that has already ended in a somewhat grim tragedy. Our men are as brave as ever ; they will fight as stubbornly, and they will keep up the tradition that they don’t know when they are beaten, but beaten and beaten badly, as Jameson’s forces were, they will continue to be if they insist on underestimating the fighting powers of their enemies. Under the new condition of warfare no man, however brave or gallant, can be safely trusted to do the work of four. The quick-firing rifle, the deadly machine gun, the hundred and one improvements in death - dealing instruments have made modern warfare a thing of brains rather than bravery, of generalship rather than gallantry. It is true that a brave and gallant deed may yet occasionally electrify the world and prove that the spirit of our forefathers yet lives within us, but far more often, and oftener still in the future, will gallant but foolish attempts to fight against superior odds result in the disaster and defeat which overtook poor Jameson’s ill-fated and ill-ad-vised expedition.

And in connection with that expedition let us not be in too great a hurry to condemn a brave and gallant officer. With the unwisdom and foolhardiness of the affair it is not now time to speak ; the man has his punishment. But we cannot but feel proud of the manner in which he and his band fought during those thirty-six memorable hours. But we must hope it will prove that even the bravest and most determined must come to grief if they insist on trying impossibilities, and still endeavour through a mistaken notion of national superiority to pit one Britisher against four times the number of his adversaries.

THE late Mr John Peter Robinson was one of the unknown millionaires of England. His will has just been proved, the gross value of the real and personal estate being entered at Somerset House at /'i,119,660 12s sd. The executors are Messrs Thomas Peter Clarkson, Philip Goddard, Richard Rabbidge, George James Wenham. and William Hitchins, to each of whom is bequeathed a legacy of / 500. The testator leaves legacies of Z 30,000 each to three of his sons, and, after giving certain specific legacies and annuities, he bequeaths the residue of his estate in trust for his other children. The business will be carried on by the trustees. This is not the only instance of a million of money being made in retail business, but cases of the kind are very rare. The fortune was not made in a single lifetime. Mr Robinson’s father founded the Ox-ford-street shop, which had obtained great prosperity when the late proprietor succeeded to its control. A very interesting article commenting on the advantages of trade over professions, as exemplified by Mr Robinson’s, appears on page 49 of this issue.