Topics of the Day.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 25, 21 December 1910, Page 56

Topics of the Day.

By Our London Correspondent.

SIR GEORGE GREY S VISION. LONDON’ November 4. W~\ OW that we are hearing so much B of Federal Home Rule, it is infl 1 foresting to recall that the / earliest advocate of Imperial Federation was that past Umpire liuilder, Sir George Grey. He was a strong supporter of Home Rule for Ireland, and he was the earliest of all the advocates of a federal system of government for the Empire, under which local autonomy would be harmonised with Imperial unity and liberty. Mr. James Milne, in his “Life of a Great Pro-Consul,” pictures to us Sir George Grey scanning the future with prophetic eye: — “Peering into the twentieth century one ■who would never see it, he foretold that its great problem would he this of AngloGaxon Federation. . . . He doubted whether any question equal in importance to federation had ever before engaged the attention of so large a proportion of mankind. . . . He wanted a golden chain binding men to men the AngloSaxon world over, but a curb drain nowhere. “I am (he spoke) merely expressing what is generally agreed with when I »ay that the end of the nineteenth century has brought us to a critical period an the history of the world. Systems of government do not last for ever; they decay and have to be replaced. The most perfect of machines wears itcself out, and another has to be substituted. Not merely that, but the new one has to be ©f a different design, adapted to a fresh, most likely a severer set of circumstances. . . . To dread wise and ordered change is to court trouble..” Sir George reasoned that we had arrived at an epoch of federation. If it were possible, he said, to solidify the English-speaking people for common purposes, the gain to them and to mankind would be splendid. The blessings of federation were a hundredfold.

“ THOU ART THE MAN.”

It is sometimes said that no evidence as so good -as direct evidence, and that juries ought to be very chary of accepting evidence that is merely “circumstan«Lial.” This is more or less a delusion, for evidence, whether “direct” or “circumstantial” may be either strong or weak. Strong evidence is not rendered weak because it is only circumstantial, nor is weak evidence made strong merely Say reason of being “direct.” If, indeed, any distinction had to be drawn, it might snore reasonably be in favour of the “circumstantial.” “Circumstances,” said an eminent lawyer, “cannot lie,” but witnesses of “direct” identification may easily be mistaken. Of this fact the Gorse Wall murder case affords remarkable proof. Two men have been tried for this murder, and the jury has returned a verdict of “Not Guilty” in each case. It is not easy to recall a murder case in fwhich two men have been separately rliarged ami both found innocent, and, writing without consulting the authorities on criminal history, one is tempted to write tin? Gorse Hall case down as unprecedented. Events which have become known since the murder make it one of the strangest and most mysterious cases in modern times. It was shortly before ten o’clock on the night of November Ist, 1909, that Mr. George Harry Storrs, a wealthy Stalybridge contractor, was murjlered. Gorse Hall is a large house on the borders of SI aly bridge. A month or more before the murder an attack had »}>cen made upon Gorse Hall. A shot was ■fired from the shrubln ry outside, and the ibullet piercing the dining-room window, flattened itself on the wall. Because of ■this, an alarm gong was placed on the roof, and the house was watched for Fome time by the police, who had only just been taken off this special duty when the tragedy of November 1 happened. One of the m lids at Gorse Hall on .going into the kitchen saw a man hiding behind the door. The man pointed a revolver at her. “Speak and I will shoot,” he said. The girl ran away screaming. Mrs. Storrs appeared on the

scene, and tried to wreneh the revolver away from the man, and then rushed up to the roof to start the alarm gong. In the meantime, Mr. Storrs, who was a big man, had rushed at the intruder and grappled with him. The intruder, a much smaller man, dropped his revolver, which afterwards was found to be almost useless, and attacked Mr. Storrs with a knife, stabbing him sixteen times. When help came the murderer had disappeared, leaving the revolver behind. Sixteen days later, Cornelius Howard, a cousin of the dead man, and an Army Reservist, was arrested. At the inquest, Mrs. Storrs caused a great sensation by pointing at him in Court, and saying: “There is the man!” Howard was tried at Chester Assizes, and saved by proving an alibi, the landlord of a public-house twenty miles from Gorse Hall, swearing that on the night of November 1 Howard bad been playing dominoes with him. After a sensational trial, Howard was acquitted on May 4. Some months later, the police thought they had found a valuable clue in the revolver left behind by the murderer. As a result of their investigations, Mark Wilde was arrested. Wilde was an exArmy man also, liaving been in the Worcestershire Regiment. The same witnesses, who had sworn so positively that Howard was the man,

now came forward to swear that Wilde was like the intruder at Gorse Hall on the night of November 1. At the request of Wilde’s counsel, Howard was placed in the dock alongside Wilde. The result was that the evidence of the witnesses of identity was shown to be entirely unreliable, for the men could not by any stretch of imagination be considered sufficiently like each other to cause confusion as to their identity. The “circumstantial” evidence against the prisoner, though weak, was far stronger than the “direct,” but it was fairly counterbalanced by points in his favour, and this being so the jury had little difficulty in arriving at a verdict in his favour.

"BLACK DEATH."

Time was —and not so long ago—that the word “rata” possessed a peculiarly ominous sound for dwellers beneath the Southern Cross. For “rat” spelt “plague” to the timorous. Suffolk is going through a similar experience just now, and there is just a possibility that ere long we who live in the Metropolis may have good reason to sympathise with the good people of that county. Some weeks ago several people in the little village of Freston, in the Shotley peninsula of Suffolk, not a great way from the popular health resort, Felixstow died very suddenly, and their death was certified to be due to a form of plague alleged to be similar to the “black death” which devastated whole counties in the middle ages. The source of infection was traced to rats, and subsequent investigation proved that a large number of rodents in the district were suffering from the dia“as°, which had also been communicated to hares and rabbits. Active measures were immediately put in train for the extermination of all rodents in the peninsula. Rat catchers were employed by every local authority, free poison was supplied to householders, refuse heaps giving harbourage to rats were destroyed by fire, rewards offered for rat tails, and, in faet, everything possible has been done to rid the area of rodents in the shortest possible time. As the disease is easily communicable to eats and dogs, and from tliem to human beings, many residents in the district have voluntarily sacrificed old pets, and a few landowners went so far as to exterminate the denizens of their rabbit w-arrens. That the danger of inifection from

rats is great is shown by the fact that the local sanitary authorities in the affected area have made elaborate arrangements for the collection and destruction by fire or chemicals of all rats killed, and have issued notices begging people to refrain from handling dead rats uith the naked hand, and counselling the use of tongs. They further urge all people who kill rats to take the precaution of immediately dropping the corpses into water containing paraffin, carbolic acid, or some medium fatal to rat fleas, which nre, it seems, held guilty of being the most active purveyors of the “bacillus pestis.” {So far, though thousands of rabbit* and hare* reach London from Suffolk

daily, and tons of agricultural and other produce arrive by ships from that county, no eases of pneumonic plague have been reported in the Metropolitan areas. But eminent scientists like Dr. Crichtoa Browne have not hesitated to utter grave warnings against a policy of “wait and see.” They point out that though the excellence of our present-day sanitary arrangements are undoubtedly a splendid defence against plague, the finest sanitary system in the world doos not form a fence proof against a disease which' can be carried from place to place by rats. One rat carried by ship from tho Orwell to the Thames might easily cause not only a fearful outbreak in London itself, but might be the means of transmitting the disease to all parts of the world. These men of science have done their best to rouse Londoners to a sense of their danger, but their voices are mere cries in the wilderness. Londoners refuse to be seared. They continue to eat rabbits by the thousands, caring not a jot where they came from; the local and port authorities are making no special effort whatever to exterminate or reduce the number of rats; in faet. for all the notice that is being tallen of it, the Suffolk outbreak might have occurred in {Siberia. The truth is that men of science have played upon our fears s> much of late years that most people regard their most solemn and well reasoned. warnings as so many cries of “wolf.”

THE NATION'S MAIL BAG.

Over five billion postal packets were delivered in the United Kingdom during the postal year reviewed in the annual report, issued this week, of the Post-master-General. The total number, to be exact, was 5,105,.81)0,000. In the face of this prodigious figure, it is surprising to read that so far as London is concerned, there was a slight decrease in letters. The decrease amounts to 1 per cent, as compared with the previous year, and it is attributed to the growing use of the telephone. But taking the country as a whole, the figures show an increase in every branch of postal packets except newspapers. How absent-minded human beings are is always brought out in the post office returns, and this year’s report is no exception. More amazing even than the record of packets delivered is the record of packets which remain undelivered still. The number of undelivered packets of all kinds, including packets entirely unaddressed and articles found loose, dealt with during the year ended March 31, 1910, says the report, is estimated to have reached a total of 31,241,000, and the number of registered letters and letters containing articles of value dealt with in returned letter offices was 398,924 —an increase of 5,456 on the number for 1908-9. The total amount of money found in addressed and unaddressed packets opened and recorded in returned letter offices during the year was £647,832, of which £15,127 was in cash and bank notes, and £632,705 in bills, cheques, money orders, postal orders, and postage stamps. Four hundred and twenty-seven thousand confiding souls posted packets of all descriptions without any address, or articles found loose in the post. Among these were bank notes and cash to the value of about £l5OO, and bills, cheques, and other forms of remittance to the value of about £16,000.