LONDON CHAT.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 11189, 1 February 1902, Page 3

LONDON CHAT.

(FKOU OXm OTVTI COHRESPONDEXT.) LONDON, December 20.

Really it dues begin to look as If we were to have what silly people call, "a good old-fashioned Christmas" this year. As I write it is freezing hard, and skating is expected to be feasible by Sunday if no sudden change should take p!ece in the weather.' We had another terrible-gale and snowstorm this week, causing fresh destruction, while the damage done by last week's tempest is still unrepaired. Nobody can have the slightest conception of the extent and severity of the devastation unless he $ad actually seen it as I did last Monday, when I specially travelled on the footplate of a Great Central locomotive for 130 miles through the worst of it. Over all the English Midlands, and indeed throughout a great part of the Kingdom, the electric'telegraphs have to be virtually reconstructed. The wreckage is absolute. For scores of miles pne continuous stretch is to be seen of telegraph poles either broken in'two or prostrate, and wires either snapped asunder or lyingon, the ground in a hopeless tangle. , Strenuous efforts are being made to restore communication, but this must be the work of weeks, and meanwhile so entire is the break that one day this week an urgent telegram from London to Glasgow was actually sent by way of America to save time 1 . This is a fact! Another from London to Liverpool, for a like reason, went via Ireland. \- Naturally the railway services between the metropolis and the north are utterly disorganised, and this, coining on the eve of the Christmas holidays, is deplorably awkward. It is now suggested that a beginning should at once be made in. laying down underground tubes for the telegraph wires, if even this were done only on a small scale at-first for use in case of emergency such, as'the present "What would have; happened had we been at war with a European Power just now," many people are nervously asking. Even for strategic and defensive reasons alone, were there no other, some substitute for the overhead system is urgently needed. Hopes are entertained that the Marconi wireless, plan may yet solve the difficulty, but it is too soon yet to express a definite opinion on this head. Still, Marconi's success in telegraphing across the Atlantic has inspired great hopes on the part of his disciples. Coronation talk is growing more tire■some than ever. Nobody outside a small and select inner circle of a very few thousand persons will be able to see anything at all .of the actual Coronation itself. Indeed, not more than a few hundreds of those within the Abbey itself will really see anything at all of the veritable ceremony. So let intending New Zealand visitors be forewarned. ■"•■,. . ■:'"- ■ .■•'., -~ .■<. .

Birmingham has just been distinguishing itself in a peculiarly unpleasant way. Mr Lloyd George, the rampant pro-Boer, was announced to address a meeting in the Birmingham; Town Hall, rendered ever famous through its having been the place where .Mendelssohn's immortal "Elijah" first obtained public performance, springing at a bound into a position which has never been seriously shaken. .Some thousands of the Birmingham people did not relish the idea of having their Town Hall profaned with talk which they deemed treasonable and disloyal. So they resolved to prevent

it, «nd mustering to t&e number of many thousands, they not only prevented the meeting, but in a large degree wrecked the hall itself. At any rate they smashed every mca of glass "they could hit With stones and bricks, and injured the building itself, even the historic organ being considerably damaged. There seemed a good deal of the practical "bull" in this mode of protest against" the views of Mr Lloyd George and his grew, but such was the methou chosen. Lloyd George himself just escaped with his life in the disguise of a policeman's uniform. A "worthy Alderman who was to have presided, -who kept arway by a singulatily fortuitous "unwellness," A force of some 400 police had been brought on the scene in good time, but did nothing until the mob had wreaked all the mischief it chose and was drawing off. Then the police made a most valiant attack, and belaboured the people with their truncheons right and left. One mild young man, fleeing nervously from the wrath to come, was knocked down—by a- policeman, it is alleged—and striking his head oh the kerbstone, was killed on the spot, whereat there is grumbling. Some people are never satisfied! .

Disgraceful and thoroughly reprehensible as the affair assuredly -was, there does seem another, ire to ik . Why. should disloyal persons be permitted, at *a time when the country is at -war, to declare for the enemies "of their King and country, to encourage resistance to the King's soldiers, to defend sedition, and defame their own country? No other nation in. the world would stand this sort of thing for a day. The pro-Boers 'have themselves furnisfhed a gauge of what they deem "freedom of speech." They boast loudly of. the brilliant way m which they vindicated this right at Mr W. T. Stead's Exeter Hall meeting. Their method consisted, it will in providing some 200 or 300 hired bullies who assaulted and "chucked out everybody that ventured to dissent from the pfp-Boer speakers, or to utter anything on behalf of tfieir own country. Oan «he votayiee of jraoh methods justly complaan af /their own weapons be turned against themselves?