LONDON LETTER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 170, 20 July 1935, Page 14

LONDON LETTER.

A COOL PALACE.

GERMAN ARMING COSTS

UNPOPULAR STAMPS.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

LONDON, June 12.

Londoners, sweltering under the year's first heat wave (and any sunny spell is apt to be called a "heat wave" here, just as a fortnight without rain is a "drought") are thinking enviously of Buckingham Palace. The Palace is one of the coolest places in town, and one lof the few buildings which possesses an iair-cooling apparatus. Overseas visitors commanded to this week's Courts had an opportunity of appreciating the apparatus as they entered the Palace from their hot closed cars. Incidentally, those who think of air-conditioning as a very modern American amenity will be interested to know that it was installed in | Buckingham Palace more than 30 years ago by King Edward. Hitler's Money Worries. Germany's difficulty in paying her foreign debts is well enough known. News now leaking out suggests that the internal financial situation is becoming more and more serious. No Budget has been published, so that it is impossible to learn tho exact truth. One authoritative estimate places the cost of Hitler's various schemes at £1,800,000,000 —more than twice what Britain spends in a year. The biggest item on the Nazi bill is, of course, rearmament. It will cost a huge sum to reach, more or less immediately, a level of armanmt which rival nations have built up gradually through the years. Apart from this, Hitler lias launched costly schemes of road-making and other public works to relievo unemployment. Atlantic Air Expresses.

An Atlantic air service has been "imminent" for so loug that many people arc becoming ueeptical. " Plans are announced, and then nothing more is heard of them; and the world's most important sea route remains unconquered by the aeroplane. But even sceptics must be impressed when it comes to forming a company and issuing capital.

Within the next week or two a £500,000 British company will be formed to build giant llying-boats for a regular daily service between Liverpool and New York. The machines will be of the American Sikorsky design, and will cost about £23,000 each to build. Ten of them will be used on the Transatlantic service.

Britain's Only Air Record. France's capture of the long-distance seaplane record, with a non-stop ilight of 2GSS miles from Cherbourg to West Africa, is a reminder that Britain now no longer holds any of the chief world air rccords—distance, speed or altitude. For purposes of the great Empire routes, ■ however, it is perhaps more important that Britain leads with such a record as Scott and Black's flight from England to Melbourne in less than three days. But two of the other international records—long-distance and speed—may come back to Britain again before ! long. It will be recalled that the Air Ministry recently ordered the construction of two special 'planes, one for altitude flights, and the other for an attempt on the distance record. World's Phone Exchange.

London, as every user of the international telephone knows, is the world's exchange. Calls from all over Europe and from most of the Empire countries, have to pass the London switchboard before they can reach America. France has long been jealous of this telephone monopoly, and now she is making an attempt to start direct communication with New York, cutting out London.

This is a Government matter, and Washington lias been asked to help. France's chief reason for wanting a direct line to America is a desire for secrecy. It is feared that London might tap the wires and listen in to trade or diplomatic secrets.

Jubilee Stamps Sold Out. The British Post Office has now practically sold out of jubilee stamps more than a week before the special issue was expected to be exhausted. One thousand million stamps were issued, with a face value of almost £7,000,000. Collectors must have played a considerable part in this quick sale—in spite of the fact that jubilee stamps will never have any rarity value, because so many were issued. Ordinary stamps sell at the rate of about 20,000,000 a day, but the jubilee issue has readied 30,000,000 daily.

Despite their ready sale, the jubilee stamps have not been really popular. They are dull compared with some of the beautiful pictorial issues of the Dominions. India and the colonies. Post office clerks will be heartily glad now that the jubilee issue is exhausted. These stamps take twice as long as ordinary ones to tear off the sheet. A little job, peihaps, but irksome when you have to do it hundreds of times a day.

Photographing Statesmen Unawares. One of the most celebrated and most ingenious of international Press photographers is holding an exhibition of his "scoops" in London. He is Dr. Erich Salomon, a German, who lias specialised in unconventional pictures of statesmen. Ordinary posed pictures do not interest him. He likes to take his victims unawares.

Dr. Salomon has attended all the international conferences in Europe since the war, and has managed to get pictures when all other photographers have failed. Once he pretended to have broken his arm, and hid his little camera in the sling. On another occasion he got pictures of a forbidden sccnc by boring a hole in his top-hat, which he used as a screen for the camera.

| Prison Comedy. I London is laughing at a little comcdy of a woman's night in Holloway prison. I The only person who is not amused is the prisoner herself—not because she was sent to gaol, but because she was not allowed to stay there. The one-night prisoner was Miss Fay Taylour, a wellknown racing motorist. She was lined £1 for speeding. Considering the fine unjust, she refused to pay and elected to go to prison for a week "as a protest." Amid a blaze of publicity, Miss Taylour duly went to Holloway prison and was put in a cell. But that night an enterprising journalist, seeking a story, paid the fine for her. In the morning the governor sent for Miss Taylour and told her she was released. Iler protests that she did not want her fine paid were in vain. The money had been received and she had to go. Now Miss Taylour is looking ioi the jourualict.

In Quest of Silence. The National Physical Laboratory, which is principally occupied with such major problems as the effect of wind currents on aeroplanes and of eea currents on ships, i» now turning to more homely problems. Visitors this week watchcd tho Government scientists experimenting in their search for an ideal lloor covering. They saw electricallyoperated hammers, weighted so that they struck the floor with exactly the same force as a: normal footstep. Under these hammers- were placed various kinds of flooring, to find which transmitted the least noise. When the ideal is discovered it will be used to floor the big new apartment blocks which are being built all over London. ' 60 M.P.H. Pigeons. Two pigeons set up what must be a new speed record for these birds las»t week-end. They averaged nearly 00 m.p.h. (faster than most express trains) in a flight from Arras, on the one-time battlefield of France, to Durham in the north of England. These birds were the winners of a race in which 20,000 pigeons took part.