The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1886-05-22 00:00:00

Cur Kaaba Centspithtnt.

flre deem it rl,7!it to !tlte tnat wit do not at all times
oui-selves with our cor:%:si,ondent.'s opinions.]

Weather is proverbially most fickle, but no
one could have imagined a fortnight since, when
the sun shone brightly overhead and everything
seemed to betoken a fine summer, that
within a few days we should be reading of floods
in the north and midlands of England, of a destruc-
tiveness which had not been equalled for a score
of years. London singularly escaped the inflic-
tion, a fact for which many -thousands living on
the south side of the Thames were exceedingly
thankful. That is the side which has the lower
bank, and when the river is in flood the occu-
pants of tenements in its immediate vicinity
have to submit to much loss. One of the most
curious sights that even London presents is the
work of preparation anainst an expected in-
cursion of the water. The inhabitants of the
whole district abutting on the Thames, busy
themselves with procuring boards and other
materials with which to barricade every opening
in cellar r basement that could admit the flood;
and the anxiety with which the rise of the river
is noted until the tide has reached its height and
has begun to ebb must be seen to be realised.
It is because of this liability to injury from floods
of a material part of the matrons:lie. that Lon-
doners can so well understand and so fully sym-
pathise with sufferers From a similarevii elsewhere.
Apparently the most damage that has been done by
the latest visitation has been the destruction of
live stock. Hundreds of cows and sheep in
various parts of the country have been washed
away, entailing a heavy loss upon the farmers
who owned them; while the growing crops,
which had promised well for the harvest, have
in many places been injured beyond chance of
recovery.
'Such storms as have visited us in England
have, however, proved to be comparatively small
when looked at side by side with those which in
the same period have devastated other parts of
the world. Cyclones of extraordinary severity
have caused great loss of life and almost incal-
culable damage to property in Italy. Germany,
. and Spain, as well as in the United States of
America. As long as tornadoes were confined
to the last-named part of the world, there was
. a tendency to disbelieve in their extent; and
when startling accounts of them used to cross
the Atlantic, shoulders were often shrugged with
the exclamation, " Oh ! it's only another American
story." But now that such storms have come as
- near to us as the Continent of Europe, the
old disbelief has disappeared. The narrative of
the cyclone which swept across 3ladrid but a few
clays since has brought home to every reader
the awful nature of such a calamity. The hot,
still atmosphere, the gathering of the clouds,
the sudden rush of a mighty wind, the falling-in
of houses, and the shrieks of the wounded and
'dying—all these things have been borne in upon
us by recent calamities. With gales we in
England are sufficiently familiar, and great is
the damage they do both on sea and land; but
it is only on very rare occasions in our history
that we can read of storms of sufficient impetus
to be called cyclonic. The English climate is a
variable one, and it gives those disposed to
grumble sufficient excuse for indulging in their
favourite pastime; but, as Charles 11. is reported
to have said, outdoor labour or outdoor amuse-
ment can be pursued for more hours in the day,
and more days in the year here than in any other
country in Europe; and to this praise can be
added that we are freer from violent extremes
of temperature or of atmospheric condition than
most other lands—a fact upon which, in the
light of such recent experiences as la-ave been
narrated, we are to be congratulated.
London in this month of May is always dis-
tinguished in its streets by the presence of a
large number of gentlemen in clerical attire,
who have come from all parts of the kingdom
to attend what is known as the "May Meet-
ings." The number of such gatherings appear to
grow Yearly, for there is an obvious convenience
te -
in holding them at a time when others are being
held, so that a visitor from the provinces can
attend several while he is in town.. But it is not
only religious meetings, as is commonly supposed,
that gravitate towards London in May. The
reason which suggests that these should all
assemble at the same period in the same city
will account for the fact that many gatherings,
both public and professional, are called in this
month. Several of our great political clubs,
which have members scattered all over the
three kingdoms, have their annual meetings in
May; so have some societies whose adherents
are not limited to the metropolis; and, there-
:ore, just at this period of the year,
the dweller in town has the opportunity of
seeing a good many friends from the country
who have not come, like the majority of those
who visit us later in the summer, for pleasure
alone, but for business and pleasure combined.
The result • of this intercourse is for good in
various ways; the mere friction of thought
among those who, during the rest of the year,
are dwelling in different parts of the country,
and under varying conditions, is productive.
And it is not difficult to estimate that, in the
-case of purely professional gatherings, forinstance,
body of information is often thus collected
-which by 110 other means, even by that of cor-
respondence, could be brought together.
This is an age of "movements," and one
-of the latest is defined in the very title of the
ssociety which fosters it—the National Associa-
tion for Promoting the Civil Employment of
Reserve and Discharged Soldiers. 'The first
annual meeting of this institution has just been
held, and the fact that it was presided over by
"Lord Napier of Magdala, that it was attended by
General Sir Donald Stewart, Sir Henry Have-
lock-Allan, and Mr. W. H. Smith (the late Sec-
retary of State for War) and that it had the
encouragement by letter Of Viscount Wolseley,
proves that it is in capable hands. The important
effects for good which such an association can have
need scarcelybe enlarged upon,but all who know
now difficult it is for men who have been in our
army under the short-service system to find civil
maployment after their term has expired, will
recognise how necessary such an institution has
become. It is far from infrequent to meet one
who has passed through the army and has be-
:..ome entitled to a small pension struggling to
ebtain a place in civil life, and finding that,
awing to having served his country, the avenues
bay° been closed to him and that he is regarded
as being too old to start afresh. This is a hard-
ship which has become so common that an orga-
nised effort was needed to cope with it. As long
as ours is purely a voluntary army, and we are
thus saved from the hard necessity of a conscrip-
tion, it is but right that every means should be
-taken to encourage those honest and well-
eonducted men who, having passed through the
army, wish for civil employment. And it is
,-pleasant to find that this society, though it has
-been in existence only a twelvemonth, has suc-
seeded so well that testimony is forthcoming
from various large employers of labour to the
conduct of the men who have been taken into
service through its medium.
Those who have occasion to visit France during
the coming summer will do well to take to heart
-the notice which has been issued by the Foreign
Office through the London Gazette, warningthein
of the perils they may undergo. The French
Ministry, not for the first time, has a suspicion
that its territory is haunted by spies, who wish
Lo discover all they can as to the national
defences, and to report the result to foreign arid
continental hostile Governments. To guard
against this, an order has been issued that any
one attempting to enter a fortified place or en-
deavouring to procure any information regardirea
either the army or the fortress, shall be arrested
and subjected to imprisonment. The pitfall
which is thus dug in the path of the unwary
• traveller is obvious and it is one which no in-
tending visitor to France can afford to despiee.
An ignorant gendarme, roused to suspicion by
the mere fact that it was a foreigner with whom
he had to deal, might construe a most innocent
question into a desire to obtain forbidden
information; and if the suspected person hap-
pened to be something of an amateur artist and
had taken a sketch of the locality, the proof of
intention to contravene the governmental order
would be held to be certain. Travelling has its
discomforts already, but this added danger is
really too much. The person most unlikely to
be connected with anything in the nature of a
spy system might be liale'd to prison under this
enactment; and all.who hare had experience of
legal processes in their own country will see as
a glance how much the annoyance of these would
be heightened if encountered abroad.
Another side of Continental travel may be
glanced at in connection with a recent official
report of the great success which has attended
the opening of the tunnel under the St.
Gothard. The tunnels under Mont Gems and
St. Gothard are two of the modern wonders of
the world which have become very familiar to
English travellers, but they have not ceased
even yet to be objects of interest to all.
It is nearly two centuries ago that a French
monarch, rejoicing in a dynastic alliance
with Spain, destined to bear bitter fruit,
cried exultingly, "There are no longer any

Pyrenees:" and with much more reason can a
traveller now exclaim, "There are no longer any
Alps." These gigantic mountains still exist to
tempt the adventurous, but those quieter folk
who have no desire to climb, and whose only
wish is toget from France to Italy as speedily as
possible, can now run under them at railway.
rate, and reflect with satisfaction that "crossing
the Alps" has now no terrors. It is noteworthy
that in these immense feats of engineering, as in
most other things, the appetite grows with eat-
ing. No sooner had Mont Cenis been tunnel lea
than our attention was directed to a similar
operation under the St. Gothard. rj he Simplon
was the next to be attacked, and lhere is now
talk of yet another French tumid under the
Alps. And although we have no sue!, mountains
to deal with, our engineers are perforneee
feats with rivers and estuaries. The tunnels
under the Severn and the Mersey are instances
in point, and, during the recent Royal visit to
Liverpool, the Duke of Connaught and Prince
Henry of BattenJurg made a point of traversing
the latter as one of the " sights " of the city.
No period, in fact, can be put in these days to
the energy of the engineer, and he would be a
rash person who would prophesy that any feat
of tunnelling or canal-cutting would prove to be
impossible.
The startling number of fatal fires which have
occurred in the metropolis within the past feW
weeks has called attention to the need for a more
simple and expeditiously-applied form of fire-
escape than we at present possess. The existing
apparatus, excellent as it is when it can he
brought into use, is too cumbrous and elaborate
to be readily put to its purpose; and it is so
costly that only a comparatively few can be pro-
vided for the public use. Minutes are every-
thing in the case of fire, and by the time that
the flames have been discovered, a messenger has
been sent for the escape, and the apparatus has
been brought and placed in position, the confla-
gration has often attained sach a height that
the effort is useless and lives are lost. The
pressing nature of this evil has been brought
forcibly home to us in London by three fatal fires,
involving thrice that number of lives, in as many
weeks, and men are casting about for a remedy.
As usual, it is more easy to describe the bane
than to discover the antidote, but surely it
should not be beyond the reach of mechanical
science to invent some apparatus by
which a descent, in case of fire, could
be made into the street, more simple
than the existing escape. The man who could
devise an instrument that would effect this
would not only make his fortune, but be a bene-
factor to his species; and although he might at
first find some difficulty in persuading those in
authority of the value of his invention, the public
feeling that has been aroused by recent lament-
able disasters would be at his back, and would
help him to success. A. F. R.