LONDON LETTER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 291, 8 December 1937, Page 22

LONDON LETTER.

RAMSAY DIED POOR. A u DEATH RAY" STORY. HAIIX SILASSIZTS MONET. (Prom Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, November 12. nutrmay MaeDonald. though he spont his Inst years in comfort, died a comparatively poor man. Apart from hi* Parliamentary pay, his savings and the small royalties which trickled in from his books, he had no private income. Hi* f.'iOOO a year as Prime Minister wis more than absorbed by the duties of tlm ollice. and he received financial help from at least one generous friend. Only when he resigned the Premiership and hecame Mr. Baldwin's Lord President of the Council wa* he able to save a portion of his Ministerial salary. He might have made a very large sum from writing after he left office. His work would have commanded prices as high as that of Mr. Lloyd George, who used to niake £10,QJ)0 a year from journalism. It is now revealed that Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald wa* offered £30,000 for the serial rights of his memoirs. He wanted to write them —not for the money, but to give at last his own version of the 1031 crisis and to answer the Labour critics who called him a traitor when he deserted hi« party to found the National Government. But he never felt well enough to write, and it will be left to someone else to make his apologia. "DMth Ray" That Worked. Almost once a month for years past some obscure, experimenter has announced the discovery of a "death ray" which will paralyse machinery, stop motor cars and bring down aeroplanea--to say nothing of killing human beings. But after a burst of publicity all is silence once more, and no one has yet made good his claim. Yet there seems to be more than a germ of truth in the stories being told about the invention of a young man named Sidney Way. who committed suicide this week. He sold his "ray" invention to the Spanish Government (for £40,000, it is said),' and when be set up the apparatu* at Valencia succeeded in bringing down at least one Franco aeroplane. Before that he had offered his invention to the British Government. Great secrecy is maintained about the reasons tor its rejection. It appears that the "ray" d'id stop aeroplane engines, but its range was limited. Enormous expenditure would have been required to increase its power. One expert who examined the apparatus declares that several million pound* would have been needed to construct it even on an experimental scale. > England Insures. Last year the people of Britain paid the astonishing total of £ 150,000,000 in premiums to life insurance and annuity companies. Such a total—which means I an average of over £3 per head fori every man, women and child in the coun-1 try—ha* never been reached before.! Optimists like to think this is a sign of national prosperity, but it is not altogether so. One reason for the popularity of life insurance i* the low and uncertain yield from investments. When people could get 5, 8 or 7 per cent with comparative' safety they were glad to put their money I in shares. Now that such rates have been cut in half, life insurance teem* a more attractive way of saving. Sallai Impwor "Cots Down." The Emperor Halle Silassie is begio too henry for his purse. He has decided to sell the large house near Bath which England. Here he gathered round him : a group of relatives and faithful friends; but aa none of them can earn a living in England Halle Silassie's household expenses have made a big hole in his capital. This capital consisted largely of gold ami silver treasure, which has been sold from time to time in London auction rooms. The Emperor has sent a great I deal of his money to British Somaliland I and Palestine to help Abyssinian refu- \ gees in those countries. Rather than stop these remittances he has now resolved to cut down the cost of main- j taining his English establishment. He hopes to rent a smaller house in Bath and to board out most of the members of his entourage. HfiOOftOO Shop Thefts. British shopkeepers still lose about £1,000,000 every year through thefts from the counters; but they announce cheerfully this week that they are at last winning their war on shoplifter*. I The chief reason is that magistrates are becoming more severe. Perhaps because most shoplifters are poor women, they have in the past often got off with a small fine or merely been bound over. Now imprisonment in , usually the penalty. | i The big department stores are natur-' ally the worst sufferers from shoplift- j ing. Many of them ha.ve lately increased their force ot detectives. Retired Scotland Yard men now And in these jobs a congenial way of supplementing their pensions. Fraud on Abbey Visitors. ' Oversea vinitor* arc frequently in dinner of l>eiiig imposed upon by bogus "guides" when they 30 to Westminster Abbey. Tout* who hang around Westminster have been reaping a rich harvest of tips by conducting strangers over the Abbey. Generally the«e "snides" know nothimr at nil about the Motoric builrlincr. .After many eomplaint* from visitors, the authorities arc now takin" «t"|>s to put a stop to this iiniiov'nrr fraud. The touts have l»een warned otT. and only accredited guides will be allowed to show visitors round in future. Spurs Without Horses. While some officers of former cavalry regiments which have been mechanised are lamenting the lews of their horses, others are ronmlnining that their uniform ha« not kept pace with modern ' •-"eiN. Chief complaint is that officers ' wl-o never ride a horse still have to 1 'ear amirs. , tj,„ v My that t)|s# , makps 'i'" J P ™?,,. r . !,,H,,r,w in *'"• r»""Hc eve. „ ""'l'." '" now nresirPn-r over Tmmu . ~t' r Mt- "« *»">"* men to the •Hum Ul ?* nim to wwwnniend the abolition of spur, in hor-eless regiments Coder„/° Uth " ,atthe A ""y "*%'»