LONDON TOPICS

Dunstan Times, Issue 3516, 6 April 1931, Page 3

LONDON TOPICS

PAYING BY BORROWING February 12. A distinguished publicist has called the present House of Commons “ stupid.” A more suitable adjective would bo “ mud.” No other epithet fits an assembly that ignores the obvious for ten years, and then goes into a panic when someone points it out. Every intcligcnt citlizen realised years before it was indicated by a Treasury official to the Unemployment Commission last week, that we are paying our way by borrowing, and that the swift Nemesis must be a currency crash. Yet only now are a few members of Parliament waking up to the menacing situation, and the remedy is another Geddcs Commission. Those who remember how the first one was thrown on the scrap heap will derive little comfort in that direction. Had Sir Eric Geddes’s proposals been implemented ten years ago, things would be vastly different to-day. Not even an interim report by the Unemployment Commission is practicable before Miss Bondfield’s next appearance in the role of Oliver Twist asking for more money for the bankrupt insurance fund. The dole is a millstone round the Government’s neck, and Ministers lack both courage and strength to shake loose. There were gross abuses by workers as well as employers before the present Government deliberately weakened existing safeguards, and thereby greatly stimulated exploitation. Thousands of women are on the dole who have no intention of working, and getting a temporary job after leaving school is now, with a certain class of people, as much an accepted graduation for the dole as matriculation is with another class for one of the professions. Ministers know this as well as anybody. LEAGUE AND INTERNATIONAL DISARMAMENT. Not many people realise that the London Naval Conference, which was either a partial success or a partial fiasco, as you please, was itself merely a spadework prelude to a general disarmament conference at Geneva in 1932. That assembly is due exactly a year hence this week, and on its result may largely depend whether the League of Nations makes good or peters out into respectable nonentity. Though undoubtedly public opinion in most civilised countries chafes under delay in official enforcement of allround disarmament, it is a grim fact that few Governments are prepared to tackle the question in earnest. Even the existing France-ltalian situation may be enough to queer the forthcoming Disarmament Conference fatally. One distinguished diplomat assured me the other day that if the delegates even agreed on their chairman, it would be “ rather wonderful.” MONSTER BATTLESHIPS.

With the accepted constructional “ holiday ” of big capital ships, and the tendency to build smaller and smaller warcraft, the pretensions of the British Admiralty not a decade ago are being overlooked. The two largest battleships in the world are the Nelson and the Rodney, each of 35,000 tons, but the archives of Whitehall contain the plans of 60,000-ton monsters, mounting 18in guns, many sets of such weapons actually being in existence and ready to put aboard. But for the Washington Conference, which effectually baulked the Admiralty scheme, we probably should have seen by this time a couple of these colossal portable batteries afloat. The policy of building such huge warships, the details of which have never been made public, excited a sharp division of opinion in naval circles. On the one hand the advantages of such gun power and steady gun platforms were loudly extolled, while on the other hand the tacticians condemned the design as presenting manoeuvre unwieldiness, too large a target, and putting too many eggs in one basket. The cost of a vessel of this type would have been anything from £10,000,000 to £15,000,000. MEMORIES OF SAMSON. Temporary officers on their way to and from "the Western front, who found themselves in camp anywhere near Harwich—at Felixstowe, for instance —in 1918, retain vivid memories of the late Air Commodore Samson. He was actually in command of the Yarmouth static nthen, and his earlier exploits in the Ypres salient and elsewhere were in everybody’s minds. Already he was known as the “ daredevil ” of the R.N.A.S., and younger subalterns were at particular pains to show their admiration with an extra smart salute when they met him and his wife out riding. This sailor-flyer seemed as much at home on horseback as further aloft. He cut a very stirring figure perched up there like a mounted Captain Kettle, or, as some of the more imaginative camouflaged civilians thought, a pocket edition of Francis Drake. YULE MILLIONS. It is not surprising that the litigation as to the domicile of the late Sir David Yule is being stubbornly contested, if the decision of the first judge, that Sir David died a British subject, is confirmed, it will mean that the Treasury is entitled to between four and five millions in death duties. If his domicile a is Indian the receipts will ' be comparatively trifling. Accordingly, it may be assumed that, whatever the view of the Court of Appeal, the losing side will seek the opinion of the House of Lords. CROWN BRIEFS. I see it is assumed in some quarters that Mr Norman Birkett’s retention for the Crown in the Rouse murder trial was a piece of good fortune for him. The reverse is the truth. It meant the loss of a whole week, which he could have spent to more profitable purpose if he had remained in the Strand courts. A barrister is not entitled to refuse a Crown brief in a criminal case, and the fees allowed by the Treasury are on an exceedingly modest scale compared with those available to counsel like Mr Birkett in civil cases The only compensation is that, when a barrister is appearing for the Crown, cases in which he is concerned in other courts are automatically deferred till he can appear. INDIAN OUTLOOK. In Ministerial circles I learn on high authority that the outlook in India is regarded with considerable hope.

It is true that Gandhi seems still in aggressive mood, but he has been out of touch with affairs for six months, and it is suspected that some of those who support him, and most of those who finance his would bo glad of an excuse to join i the conversations it is intended to resume when the conference delegates reach home. The door has not been closed against such a development, and that is regarded as a good sign. The leaders of Indian industry and commerce aro tired of tactics, for which they have had to pay, and over which they have had little control. THE INDIAN LOAN. It would be foolish to pretend that the new India loan is popular in the city. It offers a high rate of interest, due no doubt to the popular scepticism about the safety of Indian investments, and by this feature it serves to depress still further all those who 1 already hold Indian loans. The 3 per cent. India stock, which a few years ago was regarded as a 11 gilt-edged ” security, stands round £sl per £IOO stock, and compares very unfavourably with other 3 per cent, stocks, such as that of the Port of London Authority, which stands at £65. Investors say with some logic that things must be pretty bad in India, if it is necessary to offer so high a rate of interest on borrowed money at the present time. DRAMA AND LIFE. It must be rather annoying to Mr John Galsworthy to observe that a hefty young woman in breeches and sweater, who is no doubt a keen beagler, has been leading the greyhound hunt for the two escaped Princetown convicts on Dartmoor. This was not at all the attitude of the young woman in Mr Galsworthy’s thrilling play, 1 Escape,’ but it strikes me as being both more true to life and more commendable. More than one London suburb has been terrorised into curfew hours by the man with the twisted lip and the'silent tread, who is supposed to have figured in the Blackheath murder, but far more terrifying must be the position of isolated cottagers on lonely Dartmoor, when they know that desperate fugitives are roaming near their doors. It is an unhealthy tendency when compassion for transgressors swallows up sympathy for law-abiding innocents FOCH’S ALTER EGO. After being appointed Chief of the French General Staff so lately as this year, rumour is that General Weygand is shortly to become Commancler-in-Chief. It will be an honour justly bestowed on a soldier second only to Marshal Foch amongst the war generals of the Republic, and the latter’s inseparable second-in-command and strategic confrere. Those British officers and diplomats who met Weygand during the war admired him greatly. He has all the Gallic genius without its irritability. When the others fretted and fumed under Saxon tardiness to seize the crucial point, Weygand kept calm and debonair, though inwardly straining on the intellectual leash, and methodically took out his oilskin pouch, with its Coldstream Guards colours, given him by an English officer friend. For Weygand, like Foch, after he met Field-marshal Wilson, smoked not the usual French cigarette or cigar, but a seasoned briar pipe. That pipe solved some of the war’s knottiest problems for the Allies. TALKIE ORDEAL. Taking part in a modern talkie film is no light ordeal, a,s a very distinguished amateur has just discovered. With characteristic good nature General Sir lan Hamilton consented to give his services quite gratuitously for a new war film, of the talkie variety, now being “shot” in London. His appearance is limited to a few moments in only one scene, and he has only a few sentences to utter. To Ids astonishment and consternation Sir lan discovered that rehearsals were necessary, and that these are far from the simple process he imagined. Altogether he was seven hours over that trifling screen interlude, and had to repeat his “lines” until he felt the premonitory svmptoins of clergyman’s sore throat. But the intimate “ behind the scenes ’’ business interested the famous soldier. THE LOST CHORD. 1 met to-day one of the five strong silent men who acted as judges of canary prima donnas at the Crystal Palace Show. He scouted the notion that he deserved a ribbon with bar, or needed six weeks in a nursing home. Listening-in to canary songsters, he told me, was a labour of love, though he admitted one depressing fact. Canaries have a range of fourteen notes, including such effects as the hollow roll, bass, water glucke, glucke roll, water roll, deep bubble, and hell glucke. But not since 1913 has any canary in these isles produced the most admired note of all—the elusive “ roller ” —and my friend listened vainly for it at the Crystal Palace for twelve solid hours. That note has been dropped from the canary repertory. He did not rise to my eager suggestion, however, that the lost chord connotes a 4s 6d income tax. “ And no birds sing!” EHEU FUG ACES. It is curious how ex-service men cannot as a rule adjust their mental perspectives to the reality of the years. They quite unconsciously omit the 191 i-1.8 period from time’s onward remorseless flight, as though Joshua had achieved his miracle again, and stopped the sun's progress during the Great War. They can realise that it is now over twelve years since the ' armistice, but not that it is actually nearly seventeen years since August, 1914. This strange illusion ol immobilisation of Father Time whilst they were living their life’s epic in tbo trenches was brought vividly home to mo at a recent parade of 1914 veterans in London. My companion, a middleaged journalist who served in the British Expeditionary Force, turned to me. as the Old Swets hobbled past, with a horrified countenance. “ Good heavens,” he exclaimed. “ Why. they’re old men!” GREAT COCKNEY. Next April London will celebrate Daniel Defoe’s bi-centenary. Born in Cripplegate in 16G1. the famous auI thor of ‘ Robinson Crusoe ’ died in I Ropemaker Alley in 1751, alter a I strange career that included royal l patronage, prison and pillory, prosper- ( ity as a wholesale hosiery merchant, j bankruptcy, service with Monmouth in the ill-I'atecl rising, pamphleteering. 1 aud riding “ gallantly mounted and i richly accoutred,” in the escort oi j William and Mary as a volunteer I trooper. 1 Crusoe ’ was lirst published

in 1719, when Defoe was living; at Tooting, and in four months ran through as many editions. Jt remains a world’s classic. At one time Defoe boilt himself a country mansion. He failed for £17,000. His father was a London butcher, hut his grandfather, a country squire, kept his pack ot hounds. ' Defoe wrote his name sometimes as usually printed, but also as lie Foe, which may trace hack to Devereux. NEW EPSTEIN SENSATION. It was at the Press view ol Epstein’s show at the Leicester Galleries. It is quite certain, though there arcmany other delightful pieces of modelling in the exhibition, the public will concentrate on the sculptor’s ‘Genesis.’ This will infuriate, oven more than Epstein's Christ of his Rima, those critics who cannot discard the Greek conception of sculpture, or admit realistic imagery in marble. Personally I prefer the beauty of Mich I An gelo, whoso works were also assaulted by hot-headed critics ol his own day, to the Byzantine realism of Epstein, but it is idle to assert either that his ‘ Genesis lacks no-