DAY AT GLASGOW

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 54, 27 November 1926, Page 9

DAY AT GLASGOW

DOMINION PREMIERS’ VISIT WARSHIPS INSPECTED BY TELEGRAPH FEES’ associauos Copyright, London, November 25. Glasgow provided one of its most dismal days of tog and drizzle tor the visit of the Dominion delegates. Mr Coates’s party travelled early and separately from Edinburgh Mr Bruce and the others were later welcomed at Aberconway by Sir Thomas Bell, chairman of Messrs Brown and Co., .whose works are at Clydebank The Australians and Newfoundlanders inspected the cruisers Australia and Canberra The hull of the Australia is completed, and the launching will take place in Febru ary She will be commissioned a year later, and the Canberra three months later The. work has been held up bv the strike creating a lack o' materials The cruisers will include the latest im provements In the language of an Australian officer aboard, “They’ll be the most efficient fighting machines permitted by the Washington Treaty” Mrs Bruce, on board the Australia, started the electrically driven machinery for planing the edges of the gunturret base, and took away the first shavings. Later the party saw the boilers, complete with their turbine unit, for the new high-speed cruisers. Three Australian engineering officers, Commanders Ross and Mears and Lieuten-ant-Commander Carr, were presented to Mr and Mrs Bruce.

Later, Mr and Mrs. Bruce and Mr. Monroe, with a large attendance of Glasgow commercial people, had luncheon at Messrs Brown’s works Mr. Bruce, unexpectedly called upon to speak, delivered one of his most forceful utterances on Empire defence and the Dominions, and claimed the rights, privileges, and status defined bv the Imperial Relation* Committee The Dominions, he said, must shoulder corresponding burdens. Mr Coates’s partv this morning, inspected Arrol’s works at Briigeton, which recently received a £1,500,000 order for steel work for the New Zea land railway workshops. They also saw a new turbine locomotive which specially got up steam to give the visitors a ride to Messrs. Beardmore’s, where thev saw the engines of the new airships. Al! of the party took tea at the University. In the evening they were the guests at dinner of the Glasgow Corporation. A dav-long topic at Glasgow was the Corporation’s vear-old embargo against alcohol at municipal functions It was not removed even to Honour the Dom inion visitors. Light was thrown on the Corporation’s drastic decision bv a Glasgow citizen’s declaration that there was more drunkenness in Glasgow in one day than in the whole week in any other city, thcugh it was not now apparent owing to the shocking state of unemployment.