CLOGS IN LONDON

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3056, 18 April 1917, Page 9

CLOGS IN LONDON

NEV FEATURE OF WAR'S ,--':? ECONOMIES, . Several, correspondents (says the .-'■'Wesfaiinster Gazette") have lately asked, "Wbat'about.clogs?" "Are you still trying to : get them into the London •'schools?" This has been rather a sere subject, since the same wave of prosperity which, during the last two yeirs, had" caused the Cockney parent to see-that his children we're better slod/before the war caused them also fo' resent once more tho wearing of the dog which he had lately rather sulleh'iy tolerated. Last winter, 'therefore, we .-abstained'from, further urging the introduction of these wooden shoes which/have, in the North of England, iri,'Frarice and Belgium and Holland, justified their existence triumphantly, aid long ago.: And now thc.i'ncrcdible las happened. ' The demand for clogs ,como spontaneously from several quarters, 1 and'while we were inspecting the children's feet in the Sienese quarter of the city a sound in the playground struck us with a shock of pleasure. Surely that was not the hard note of leather, jar nails. "on asphalt? We pounced upon the lad who thus made music in the murky square, and crossexamined him. "Farver bought 'em fer me;" ho said, unconcernedly;' "them's called clogs." And by the time the reports were all in, we know that.now at.last the clogs were beginning to'have a real chance, since Cockney, pore et mere were electing to. favour them. . ' .

'', .What pleased us almost as well was a passage from the letter of one of our friends, the headmaster of one of the larg'est and poorest schools in London. He had been among the authorities who .would not hear of clogs. And this is what he. now writes at the end of an: interesting report:—"l have been looking i!p some of the, articles in the 'Westminster Gazetie' for the past two years.. One, in 1914, has especially struck me. You-refer to my dislike of clogs. 'Tell it not in Gath,' but the noise of the clogs on our stone corridors, and upon staircases at times is. deafening! The clogs'have come, and.they will stay.'.' ,