LONDON TOPICS

Dunstan Times, 13 March 1933, Page 3

LONDON TOPICS

ECONOMIC BLIZZARD AND WAR DEBTS (From Oub Correspondent.] January 12. This is the season when earnest politicians indulge in a little stock-taking. .Most supporters of the National Ministry feel that the Government’s success has fallen somewhat below their hopes, but that the failure to achieve expectations is due more to blind circumstance than to human error. The adverse conditions of the period demand greater prodigies of statesmanship than mortal man is capable of. Some people ask whether a William Pitt or a William Gladstone might have grappled with fate, but that is a conundrum to which biography can afford no sort of answer. The economic blizzard that blows to-day exceeds anything that British statesmen had to face in former times. It may even bo the overwhelming weight of adverse odds now that gives us the illusion of a more gigantic political stature in our ancestors. Air Mac Donald and his Cabinet colleagues are more than a little chagrined by the American attitude to war debts. Their confident hope was, when the last instalment was duly paid after a vigorous protest, that nothing would be permitted to stand in the way of prompt action by Washington to reconsider the whole question. But the mere technical difficulty of the hiatus between Presidencies is being allowed, if not encouraged, to delay any action at all so far as America is concerned, and presumably we may bo faced by just the same attitude when the next instalment falls due. Air Atellon, America’s Ambassador in Loudon, returns this week from his Christmas leave, and I gather that the urgency of this question will at once be brought to his attention. A widely circulated Christmas card had an illustration of “ John Bull’s pants,’ and arrow pointing to the scat, and the slogan “ Kick me here.” COOLIDGE. They tell more stories in America about* the late ex-President Coolidge than thev do even about Theodore Roosevelt! In some respects he was unique in the Presidential gallery. Though a genuine hundred-per-ccnt. New Englander, dry, cautious, canny, and abruptly monosyllabic, Air Coolidge lacked all the attributes that usually go towards the make-up of front-rank American politicians. A small man physically, ho was intellectually no giant, but he escaped the common weakness of most small men in big positions. He never cultivated any illusions about his own calibre. A backblocks lawyer with a slender income, ho succeeded to the M bite House on President Harding’s death, and his latssez faire personality just exactly suited America’s mood of that moment. Americans were sick of weltpolitik, and Coolidge sedulously kept aloof from everything but parish pump affairs. He would sustain a dinner table conversation, with the astutest raconteurs in diplomacy, entirely on “ Yeps ” and “ Nopcs.” POLAND’S TOUCHINESS. Those who know the pride of the Polish people will not be surprised at their protest against the New Year 8.8.C. broadcast. They regard their army as a sign of their recovery of nationhood after a century and a-hali of partition, as well as a necessity, in view of the danger on both their Russian and their German frontiers. The Poles arc a charming people, but economy is not their strong point. I remember once, in the State theatre at Warsaw, expressing surprise that what 1 understood to be a poor country could afford to subsidise so expensive an establishment. “ Yes,” replied my host, “ wc cannot afford necessities, and therefore we must have luxuries.” FRENCH IRONY. Perhaps the newspaper reviewers miss a lot by insisting on dashing off their book notices at the earliest date of publication. I have been quietly browsing in Marshal Joffre’s fascinating reminiscences, and I find several good good things that the reviewers have overlooked. What most impresses me is the incredible lack of personal liaison between the French and British Army commanders during the earliest period of the fierce lighting in France. It was not until August 16 that J off re and French met each other. They did not always hit it off very well. Joffre expends some truly Gallic irony on the British commander’s attitude during tense days of the Alons retreat. Ho writes: “ To my great surprise the British Commander-in-Chiof started out immediately in a rather excited tone to explain that his army had been violently attacked!” That is only one | example of J off re’s caustic style. FIGHTING FIFTH. It was a sound Latin proverb that bid us hear the other side. M hen all the facts are known about the recent military fracas in Jamaica they may not condone, but yet may largely excuse the action of the Northumberland Fusiliers. To men wearing Army uniform and m such a famous regiment as the old Fighting Fifth, it must be very galling to have black taxi drivers, as they walk abroad, shout insults at them. A civilian can well afford to turn a deaf car where a soldier cannot do so without great loss of prestige. Early in the war at Ypres 1 saw the remnants of a Northumberland Fusilier battalion inarching down from tiie Iront-lmo trendies. They were about 120 men under a major, and their appearance told a tale of hard fighting. “ What mob are you?” rang Hie familiar challenge of a sentry. “ We are not a mob,” replied the major; “ we are the Fighting Fifth.” ’FLU MANIFESTATIONS. The present influenza epidemic is certainly lending romance to city life. It is the most prevalent, though happily not the most virulent, London has known since* the dreaded blue just after the war. Office stall's are depleted seriously. One big popular icstaurant has over IUO employees awa\, and some hospitals have to reorganise staff duties with over 50 per cent, on the sick list. Actually, one can detect a thinning in the daily throng that crowds Fleet street's pavements at midday- If you cull on a city man, you have to submit to being sprinkled with disinfectant, and will find your man,

like every member of his staff from the office girl upwards, wearing antiseptic muzzles. Interviewing a magnate who wears a muzzle is great fun. I must look out my old gas mask and so keep in the movement. EMDEN, It was in November, 1914, oil the Cocos Islands, that H.M.A.S. Sydney put paid to the long account of the German raider Emden. I* or more than two mouths the British and Japanese Navies had I m taking part in an exciting sea, hue and cry after that daring enemy cruiser, and one can imagine the thrill of combat with which the Sydney’s gallant Aussie Jack Tars handled the guns that battered her into a blazing ruin. Whatever their thoughts that day, 1 wager none of them visualise that, eighteen years later, the raider’s nameplate, bearing the historic legend Emden. would bo gracefully restored to its friends and its relations. That has happened, however, and curious sightseers have recently inspected the discarded war souvenir at Australia House, where it reposed eu route for GermanyMr Bruce, of rowing fame, will make “the presentation” I suppose the Germans will accept it in the right spirit? DEAD MEN’S WORK. There is nothing funereal about the Royal Academy’s Winter Exhibition of works by its late members, the private view of which attracted the usual crowd of chic personality. Though pictures by fourteen dead artists are shown, including famous works by Dicksee, Tukc, Sims, Ricketts, La Thangue, Grictfenhagen, Wyllie, and Alackennal, it is Sir William Orpcn who dominates the whole exhibition. Others have barely one room for each, but Orpou’s Hibernian genius fills three, and I never paced three salons that enthralled me more. Orpeu, unhappily, is dead; hut how vitally his pictures live. The impish, subtle dexterous magic of his brush recalls to glowing .life again such people as Lord Pluiner, Sir Henry Wilson, and that sixth Earl Spencer who once rose to assure the House of Commons that he was “ not an agricultural labourer.” What the prosaic verdict of the auction room may be, 1 canot guess, but to me these Orpcn canvasses wear the authentic aura of immortality. His portraits are inspired character studies as well as line artistry. You know, looking at them now, just what the dead painter thought of the celebrities and nobodies who" sat for hint. No less fascinating are,' his other paintings—instinct with ..drama, compact with personality, and tinctured always with whisical romance; His picture of the old Cafe Royal, with portraits of himself, Nicholson, and Augustus John, not to mention a speaking caricature of their favourite waiter, brings back memories of long ago. His war studies are the best and truest history of 1911-18. He painted the men in khaki, the statesmen, the generals, and the trenches from the inside. You hear him laugh at the peace-makers. You feel his grief for the wounded in the C.C.S. You can smell that trench with the dead Germans. CHINA IN LONDON. A new club for Chinese students in London is shortly to open in Gower street. Apart from a numerous Chinese colony of permanent residents, we now have large numbers of students from the Far East, a considerable proportion of them women, who are coming here to westernise their legal, medical, engineering, and other scientific studies. It is rather strange, Chinese being exceptionally gregarious folk and very dutiable, that no such institution as the new Gower street one has existed before. In the.past the Celestial visitors have made one or other of our Chinese restaurants their social rendezvous. This has lent vraisemblauce to the menu of shark steaks and chop suoys, and drawn a casual patronage of inquisitive Cockneys, who imagined they were sampling the immemorial East in the raw. The new club may hit the Chinese restaurateurs rather hard. BAGPIPES IN CHURCH. Perhaps even 100 per cent. Scots do not realise that their much-abused national music actually figures in the Christmas ritual of the Catholic churches in Sicily. A relative, writing from Palermo, tells me the bagpipes, called by Sicilians cornamusa, arc the proper instruments to play before the shrine of the Madonna at Christmas services. In the most important church iu Palermo, at the midnight mass on Christmas Eve, gay pastoral airs were played by cornamusa, and, perhaps remembering that I once marched to the pipes myself in the Great War, my correspondent tactfully adds that the‘effect was “perfectly in keeping and most charming.” I can well believe it. What really puzzled my correspondent, however, was that, at the same service, the Bambino, or little Christ, was black. The Sicilians claim some traditional authority for this. | SAVILLE ROW. ! [t is curious how Harley street and • Savillc row still continue to servo as literary synonyms, though all the synonymous social aura long since laded away from Park lane. The latter has been used in innumerable books and articles as a synonym for rank and wen Kb. When it began to burgeon forth in motor shops and hotels, of course, its reign was over. It is, in fact, no longer the residence of patricians. But both Harley street and Savillc row have shed some of their erstwhile professional glory, and recruited plebeian outsiders." without sharing Park lane J synonymous eclipse. The one still stands for medical specialism and the other for expensive raiment. 1 wonder will Seville row be able to withstand the blow sustained through the new French ban on imported Loudon suits and the rather dowdy tailoring that lias distinguished London since the war? The smartest sailoml men now, I am fold, get their clothes in Vienna. GARGOYLES ARE CHEAP. The Office of Works, thanks to restoration work on the Houses of Parlia- ■ merit, is becoming partly a revenueearning concern. It, is making a steady income of about CSOO a year Irom (he ; sale of discarded parliamentary >' masonry, including statuettes o) past • l English royalty and a vast assortment - of variegated gargoyles. Collectors of , | quaint statuary, suburban amateur gar- ■ | doners, and souvenir hunters can now i i depend on real bargains. The royal t 1 effigies are “going” at round about t j nine guineas each, which is cheap - I enough in all conscience, and gargoyles i j can be picked up almost dirt cheap, i | But for the depressed state of America s , millionaire market, these prices would

cortninly bo much stifl’er. But there is, I nin told, a brisk dominion trade as well as a fair demand by country houses. I am thinking seriously of bidding for a nice grotesque gargoyle, an 1 calling it after somebody I. dislike.