LONDON LETTER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 106, 7 May 1935, Page 17

LONDON LETTER.

THE KING HELPS.

PLAYHOUSE FOR EMPIRE. THREAT TO SCOTLAND YARD. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, April 12. . The King is giving a great deal of personal attention to the jubilee arrangements. Every day now lie spends several hours in consultation with officials who arc planning details of the various processions and ceremonies. Like his father, King Edward, he has a profound knowledge of and respect for Court traditions. On many points of ceremonial etiquette he has been able to correct even the officials whose job it is to know these things.

His Majesty is particularly interested in an elaborate model of St. Paul's Cathedral, wliere the thanksgiving service is to be held on May G. This model has been made to show the exact arrngement of the seating. Giving proper precedence to the Empire delegations, the Diplomatic Corps and the British aristocracy is a ticklish problem. Empire Television' Plays.

Those people who for many years have been campaigning for a National Theatre in London have just been presented with a new argument. They had never thought of television. Now Mr. Sydney Carroll, a theatrical impresario, tells them that in a few years London will be broadcasting televised plays to the whole Empire. That will demand something bigger and liner than a 8.8.C. studio —in short, a National Theatre. The idea that people in Australia and Africa, New Zealand and Newfoundland, India and the Pacific Islands, may be "theatregoing" in London certainly sounds a powerful argument for building a worthy theatre. Running Cars on Timber. The latest fruit of Germany's policy of making herself self-supporting in all things is the establishment of a network of stations for supplying motor cars with gas derived from timber. Germany has no oil, but she has great tracts of forest. She wants ta use them to eliminate almost all her petrol imports. For the moment the aim is to avoid buying from abroad, and so keep money at home. For the future Germany wants to be independent of foreign supplies in case of a war blockade. It is claimed that all the 2,000,000 cars in Germany could be converted to the new wood-gas fuel without straining the country' 3 timber resources. Motorists are to be ofTered State subsidies to induce them to convert their cars and give up petrol.

Making Australian Sailors Welcome. Next to the Foreign Office, the Admiralty is the most hospitable of Government Departments. But while the F.O. concerns itself with diplomats and visiting foreign notabilities, the Admiralty is not above entertaining ordinary navai ratings. Just now the Admiralty is setting itself to give a hospitable welcome to the crews of the visiting Australian warships Australia and Brisbane. The men were taken to see the Oxford and Cambridge boat race—not very exciting this year. In a few days they will go racing at Epsom, though they will probably not see the Derby. It was thanks to a suggestion from the' Admiralty that the Australian sailors were entertained by the Lord Mayor at Guildhall this week —an honour reserved for the most distinguished visitors. Belated Jubilee Stamps.

Even those who receive regular correspondence from England will have to wait until some time after the actual jubilee before they get the first letter franked with the special jubilee stamps. It has now been decided not to issue them in England until May 7 —the day after Jubilee Day. Though the designs for most of the Dominion and Colonial jubilee stamps have already been published here, nobody knows what the English ones will be like. Probably they will be twice the usual size, and of different colours. But they will not have much rarity value for collectors, since one thousand million of them are to be printed. No More "Yard"? If, as Lord Trenchard suggests, police headquarters are moved from Scotland Yard for lack of space, something almost revolutionary will have happened. "The Yard" is an institution known the world over. There is a fine snap of efficiency in the name, and no other address would ever sound as good. "Yard Called In" is a headline which Fleet Street keeps ready for each new crime mystery. Nothing else could take its placc. All writers of sensational fiction would be up in arms, too, if Scotland Yard moved to some more prosaic address. "The Yard" belongs to the unimaginative detective of fiction, just as Baker Street belonged to Sherlock Holmes. But Lord Trencliard does not care. He says Scotland Yard is too small, and if it cannot take in some of the adjoining buildings it must have a new one on a larger site. London's Foreigners. The changing tide of international affairs has had its effect on London's population of foreigners. Thousands of them have returned home, or gone elsewhere, during the past four years ; The decline of political persecution in Fascist Italy has induced 2500 Italians to leave London for home. About 1000 Americans have also returned home, unable now to afford a life of idleness in London. The biggest exodus is of Russians. Over 7000 have left Loudon since 1930 though probably they have not ventured back to Bolshevist Russia. Only the German colony has increased. Figures just issued, show that there are 700 more Germans here, mostly refugees from the Nazis. Regulations make it very difficult for foreigners to live in England now. Unless they have capital to "start their own businesses, the only way they are allowed to earn a living is by domestic service. B eer — a nd Tennis Racquets. Because America abandoned prohibit tion, hundreds of thousands of British j tennis racquets will be strung with a new material this season. This is how it comes about: America, tiled ot le "hard" liquor of bootlegging days, has taken to lager beer. The ideal dish to eat with lager is susages. Sausages have skins, and those skins are made from the same kind of material as tennis racquet strings. Hence the demand for sausage skins {icross the Atlantic produced a shortage of racquet strings in England. Manufacturers have now found a substitute in a combination of silk and rubber, which is said to be ideal for tennis —and no use for cncasing sausages.