ENGLAND AGAIN!

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 305, 26 December 1931, Page 1 (Supplement)

ENGLAND AGAIN!

PARADISE AFTER RUSSIA.

FREEDOM AND FOOD

(By NELLE M. SCANLAN.)

lam back in England again. So much has changed since I left it, politically, financially—in fact, in every way—that one is staggered that such things can. happen in so short a time in such a conservative country. I left a country •working normally in its watertight party ways. I return to find a Labour Prime Minister leading the Conservatives, with the old Tory chief as his loyal supporter, and with the Iron Chancellor Snowden belabouring with caustic tongue his colleagues of forty years; the men who saw ruin in front of them and ran away. The ,: Scarlet Runners," as they are called. To be out of touch for a while, and then to find this, is staggering. People are overwhelmed by the crisis; there was moaning and groaning on every side. Yet to me, coming back from Russia, it was Paradise. For in England there was freedomyes, fieedom and food. You cannot lay too much stress on freedom; it is a priceless heritage. Make the children feel and understand this fact. They have been born in a free country. I have seen the ravages of war in Europe, starving Austria, defeated Germany. I have seen republics old and new, East and West. But now I have seen Russia, the newest form of government. But in no place in the world is there the same freedom as under the British flag. And don't forget it! Amazing Freedom. I have come back to London in the heat of an election. Can you find anywhere in the world such freedom of speech as is permitted here? Go to Hyde Park and hear them —opinions blue, white, pink, scarlet and puce. If you can change the government with words, you are free to do so. You are amazed at the things that are said, at the freedom to make wild statements that go unpunished. The only thing you may not do is press your argument with a gun, so say it with a bomb. . Could the opposition parties who disagreed with the Government speak so freely in Russia? Or in Italy? You'd soon know all about that. Russia has no opposition, because she has an effective way of silencing them. And food. When I replenished my larder in London, when I saw the piles of food —butter, eggs, white.bread, milk, cream, fruit—and the freedom to pick and choose if you had earned the,money to pay for it, I had never been so conscious of what abundance could mean.

..Things have changed in London, miraculously changed. When I went away I had made some necessary purchases. As I packed I noticed that my shoes were made in Belgium, my jersey suit made in Vienna, my hat in Czechoslovakia, my rubber goods made in Switzerland. It was a shock to find that nothing I had bought had been made in Britain. , That is what has come of Free Trade and foreign dumping. All the most reputable and conservative London shops are packed with foreign goods. And the sad part is that they are so much cheaper and too often of better cut and make. To-day the London shops are full of alluring signs: "Made in Britain," "English Made," "Empire Goods."

England has wakened 'up with a jump; You hear on every side women asking for Scottish woollen goods, British tweeds, Lancashire cotton. It is sometimes hard to be patriotic, when faced with the superiority of foreign goods, an admission one reluctantly makes. But the manufacturers have themselves to blame for not keeping up-to-date.

When I asked for New Zealand butter the other day, a strange woman beside me nodded in approval. The come almost overnight, this emphatic demand for British goods. Yet down on the docks ships of every country are speeding in with larger and larger quantities of goods to be dumped in before the tariff comes. Russian apples, which they are calling British in dishonest' circles. Russian doors at 4/ each. European toys for Christmas. The warehouses are overcrowded. Holidays at Home. Another change has come with the slipping off- the gold standard. Thousands of people left England and Scotland every winter and spent their time on the Riviera.' Not only their time, but their money. The South of France lived on the English and American visitor. This year, partly because of the drop in the value of the pound and partly patriotism] they are staying at home, and all the places on the South Coast of England are full to bursting. The aged Duke of Connaught, who, on account of bronchial trouble, has always wintered in the Riviera, has set the pace and gone to Sidmouth, and society is following along the whole length of the coast.

Another little class has been sadly disturbed by the upheaval —those dear, middle-aged and aged.ladies, with small incomes and rheumaticy knees, who spend most of their lives in European pensions. You meet them everywhere, in droves, sad, faded, m reduced circumstances — the vicar s sister, the colonel's daughter, the doctor's widow, playing bridge and knitting and reading weeks-old English papers. They have done it to dodge income tax for one thing, and because life was cheaper and the sun warmer and the winter shorter, and they had dropped out of their old place in England—they couldn't afford to keep it up. Now, poor dears, they are all coming home because the value of the pound has shrunk. It fe worth only 16/ in Prance. You can see them coming down the gangway of every steamer, with a hot bottle in one hand and a copper kettle in the other, their two greatest comforts in a cold world. It will be cheaper to pay income tax. So they are mustering their courage to face an English winter for the first time in many years. Another change Is the disposition of people to try Ireland as a place of residence. The recent drastic Act which cut at the root of secret societies which hope to overthrow by force the present admirable Government, and their Russian leaders, has promise of extended peace. It is one of the less depressed of countries, living is dower, and already I have heard of a number of people pegging out claims, as it were, in the hope of making their few pounds go further over there. ■/