LONDON LETTER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 4, 6 January 1938, Page 20

LONDON LETTER.

ARMS RACE COSTS.

DETECTIVES AND BLACKMAIL

SEA-SOAKED AIR MAIL.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

LONDON, December 17.

Germany is the only one of the great nations which refuses to reveal her

expenditure on armaments—or at least to pretend to reveal it. Her entry is a blank in the year's survey just issued by the League of Nations. The blank has been filled in by outside estimates, which agree in giving Germany's arms bill for the year as £1,000,000,000.

If correct, that is by far the highest total of any nation. It is almost half the entire world's expenditure on armaments. The League survev gives the world total as £2,400,000*,000— £6000 a minute. Soviet 'Russia, spending £750,000,000, is shown as having the second highest arms bill. But this, again, is a figure which cannot be checked. All observers agree that Russia is making formidable military preparations, but she may have over-declared her expenditure to give the world an impression of still greater preparedness.

Britain's 1937 arms expenditure of £278,000,000 seems paltry by comparison, but it is almost as much as the combined armaments budgets of the 57 smaller nations. The world now spends on arms nearly three times as much as in 1913, and nearly twice as much as in 1932, when the Disarmament Conference opened.

Registered Sleuths. Private detectives, who are growing more and more numerous in England, may soon be registered and licensed like doctors. They already have a professional association, and this body is drafting a Detectives Registration Bill for submission to Parliament.

Recent Court cases have more than once revealed exceedingly unsavoury details about the way some detectives conduct their "private inquiries." The Detectives' Association is anxious to banish the possibility of such stigma from the profession by securing that only men of good character shall be licensed to practise.

Blackmail is the more obvious danger. The detective naturally discovers unpleasant secrets about his clients and

about those whom he is employed to

watch; and if he is an unprincipled man he can levy blackmail by threats of exposure. The vast majority of private detectives are, however, quite genuine. Many of them are retired police officers

supplementing their pensions by doing private inquiry work, generally in connection with divorce proceedings.,.

Air Mail Advice.

A few hints to air mail users are suggested by the fate' of the 120,000 letters from Australia, New Zealand, India and

other places east of Egypt which were soaked with sea water when the air liner Cygnus crashed at Brindisi. The last of this mail been salvaged, and is being delivered in England. To everybody'* surprise, almost,; .all the letters, even after a week's soaking/are still legible ;.• V The few unlucky people aire' those whose correspondents use cheap paper and cheap typewriter ribbons. Ordinary writing ink seems to stand , the sea fairly well. Least satisfactory from the salvage point of ' View is the use of gummed address'febels; these come off at once in the Cheap, roughsurfaced paper also fares badly in the sea. Best of all ii'i'the thin, smooth air mail stationery more and' more people ar& now using; some of these letters beat. np t raceof their immersion.

France'a Foreign Criminals. Just when travellers were hoping that some of EuropeVp*a*port restrictions might be eased, came news that France, one of the "free»t"countries, is thinking of tightening her. regulations.' This follows the wholesale murder* revealed by the confession of Weidmann, the' German "slayer." Already France has a fairly long list of mmea. committed by foreigners—including the assassinations of President Doumer and King Alexander of Yugoslavia. • -fi A* m check on the movement* of undesirable alien* stricter passport Control is now urged. Tens of thousands of people who have made France their home will be affected. They include Russians of all political shades from Czarist# to Trotskyists; German Socialist* and Jews; Italian anti-Fascists; refugees from both sides, in ' Spain; and political exiles from almost every country in Europe. Because! of the low cost of living and the ease with which foreigners can become naturalised, France harbours more aliens than any other country in the world, and it is inevitable that there should be some undesirables among them. The United States actually has more foreign resident*, but most of'these are Americans In all but name, having merely neglected to complete naturalisation formalities. v AirUnfri.ndlinc. i t-. ■ The camaraderie of the air has become as well fstablished as that of the se'a, and international co-operation.-, is the world-wide rulfc Germany has, .-however, given friendly'feelings a jolt hy refusing to let British airline pilot's attend the Berlin blind-landing school.

German inventors have pioneered blind-landing apparatus. Their j radio beam, which guides pilots to the airfield through the thickest fog has been installed at three English airports, hut it is still a novelty to most airmen." In Berlin there is a school where pilot* are taught to use thi* svstem, and arrangements had been made for a number of British airmen to take a course of instruction there. This has now been forbidden by the German Air Minister,' althoueh there is nothing "secret" about' the school.

Barristers Must Not "Advertise." Everyone knows about doctors' horror of self-advertisement. but few were aware until the other day that barristers can be equally touchy. The issue by the Post Office of a new trades telephone directory has evoked stern protests from the legal profession because it includes an alphabetical list of barristers—-K.C.'s included. The Oeneral Council of the Bar has sent a resolution to the PostmasterGeneral pointing out that it is a breach of professional etiquette for a barrister to allow his name to be listed in this way. *i ii.-

But apparently, the barristers did not "allow" this breach. The Post Office simply took tlieii; names out of the telephone directory and classified them like members of every other trade and profession. "After all. we own the telephones," is the Post Office reply, and there seems nothing the scandalised law can do about it.