NEWS AND NOTES

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 35, 9 August 1913, Page 12

NEWS AND NOTES

pile following items of intelligence have been selected from flips received by the latest mail.]

The estate of the late Colonel Astor, drowned last year in the Titanic disaster, has been officially appraised at £17,393,* 400 (86,967,000 dollars), of which Mr. Vincent Astor receives £13,972,800, Mrs. Madeline force Astor £1,535,800, Miss Muriel Astor £971,400, and John Jacob Astor, the eon by the second marriage, ,£584,680.

“Assisting Nature” 16 the view of the Kaiser presented by the Nation. It says: “Bismarck was the creation of the romantic, old-Worid Germany, though he destroyed it. His successors have been correct Public servants, and of the four Chancellors who have followed him, only one, von Bulow, was even clever. The void and desert of personality called out for some compensation, and the Kaiser, the one man in the Empire raised above •the deadening system of disc ip line, has spent his life in filling the vacuum which Nature abhorred.”

The appointment of Sir Louis Mallet to succeed Sir Gerard Lowther as Ambassador at Constantinople meets with the unqualified approval of the Spectator. “It is not too much to say,” remarks the paper, “that there is no more difficult and responsible post at the present moment than that held by the British representative at Constantinople. While Turkey is parsing through the tremendous crisis involved in her becoming a purely Asiatic Power, it is essential to our interests that the process should be watched by the best diplomatist available. Sir Edward Grey knows this, and we can ; therefore, read in the appointment his opinion of his ex-private secretary. Sir Louis Mallet's experience not only of Foreign Office work, but of posts abroad and in the East—he served in Egypt-—well qualifies him for the arduous duties before him. He comes, tot), from a family highly distinguished in public affairs. ... Sir Louis, in a word.

inherits the very beet official traditions/’

Kinematograph flirts of Sir J. ForibesRobertson and Miss Gertrude Elliott in “Hamlet” were taken lately by the Gaumont Film Hire Service. Most of the scenes were “staged” in the studios of the Hepworth Manufacturing Company in London, but the “garden” and “graveyards” ■ scenes were taken at Miss Maxine Elliott’s house, Hartsbourne Manor, Hertfordshire. The grave was Bug in the grounds and an old Normdn church erected in solid wood, The platform scene in front of the castle was done near Lutworth, in Dorset. The castle, which was made of fibrous plaster, was a copy of the original castle at Elsinore, and was erected on the cliffs at a cost of about £4OO. It is stated that tire film, when completed, will be about a mile long, and will cost about £IO,OOO. The whole of the cast at Drury Lane .was engaged to play for it.

Preaching a few Sundays ago to an overflowing audience in a LOndon church, Father Bernard Vaughan said that before the coming of Christ the world had known three measures of greatness—brute-force for the savage, mind-force for the Greek, and will-force for the Homan. Till Christ had set it up and exemplified it in the feet-wash-ing at the Last Supper no one had ever dreamed that the one and only true measure of greatness was love-force. It was because the world had in great measure forgotten the text: “Whosoever will be first among you let him be the servant of all,” that Socialism and its by-products had risen up in their midst. LoVe was wily a’ grand name for service, and ever since the dawn of Christianity civilised society had always recognised, in its saner mood, that true greatness could be expressed in terms of service only.

The completion of the purchase of Stafford House, formerly the residence of the Dukes of Sutherland, by Sir William Lever, was fixed for Ist July. In accordance with Sir W. Lever’s intention to present Stafford House to the nation as a home for the London Museum, he has directed the conveyance to be made to the First Commissioner of Works. The price Sir William paid for the property, with its unexpired lease of 28 years, was £60,000. At the expiration of the lease the property will revert to the Crown. Sir William is also negotiating for the purchase of some of the fixtures, and if the negotiations are successful the fixtures purchased will remain in the building.

Mr, Kingsley Wood, speaking at East Ham, London, recently, on “The Churches and the Divorce Problem,” said the recommendation limiting the publication of divorce reports was no doubt correctly interpreting public opinion in England. The method by which it would be effected needed careful scrutiny. The dictum of a London Police Magistrate, that the Press were present at a certain case only “as a privilege,” Was perhaps technically correct. It pointed, however, to the conclusion that secret enquiries might be much worse than undesirable publication of the details of certain cases. Public opinion, moral suasion, and the discretion of the editor were often more important factors for good than legislative restriction. The freedom of the Press generally meant free play for public opinion, and was certainly in the publication of divorce cases often a deterrent to the commission of acts of immorality.

“Most of Mr. Asquith’s speeches nowadays are the result of careful preparation, and very frequently they are read from manuscript. In the Welsh Church debate we had the preparation, but not the manuscript—an ideal arrangement in Mr. Asquith’s case. Although the subject was stale, the House half empty, and the emergency by no means -pressing, yet, in a curiously spontaneous and ) wilful fashion that seemed to surprise even its author, the speech soared into a Gladstonian amplitude of thought, phrase, and vision which would have been impossible if the orator had clung to his notes. Not for a long time have I seen the House so visibly under the spell of an attractive intellectual domination,” says “A Wayfarer,” in the Nation.

The Universe calls attention to the "enormities, abnormalities, and atrocities of taste’* which obtrude themselves on the public' eye and fill the air with the sights and sounds of hideous ugliness, and denies that they represent the constructiye forces that are at work in the world, and by which the world lives : "The work that will live is being wrought in silence to-day, as it has ever been, until the appointed time for its appearance. The vanities of the day pass, and each day reveals its own folly, but the work remains, and work emerges out of the serenity of thought. The man of action, the world’s builder, finds the secret of his power in the solitude. Moses retired into the mountain to receive the law. Christ was hidden thirty years, and retired into the desert forty days before ,he consummated his Ministry. Great thoughts are revealed to men in the solitudes. In the quietness of the cloister, and the laboratory, and the fields are the liidden powers of Nature and of man unfolded. To him alone who can control himself in patience it is given to control the destinies of the world.’*

Violent language may be employed in the House of Commons by one member to another, but the tradition enacts that BUch language should be taken (outside the House) ip the Pickwickian sense. Thus, Mr. Hughes Hughes, member for Oxford, told the House how Daniel O’Connell had ordered death’s heads and cross-bones to be painted over the doors of Cork electors who had declared their intention of not voting for him. Mr. O’Connell retorted that Mr. Hughes’s head was a calf’s, head. The following day these deadly enemies were seen walking arm in arm up Parliament-street on their way to exchange more pleasantries in the House.

Last year’s returns show that if the London omnibus passengers had travelled by tramways they would have saved in fares £983,000, while tramway travellers, if they had used omnibuses, would have paid £1,200,000 more than they actually did pay. This statement was made at the motor traffic enquiry by Mr. H. H. Gordon, a member of the London County Council.

The first foreign ruler who visited Windsor (says a Chronicle writer, in a causerie on the visit of President Poincare) wae by no means a willing guest. In 1506 Prince Philip of Castile and his wife Juana were sailing from Flanders to Spain, when a violent storm cast them ashore near Poole. Philip was prevailed upon to accept the hospitality of a local magnate, Sir Thomas Trenchafd. But as soon as Henry VII. heard of the mishap be invited the Prince to Windsor, adding that he would take no refusal. The Earl of Arundel, with a troop of 300 horse, escorted Philip to the Castle, where he was entertained for about a fortnight. Henry took advantage of the enforced visit to extort some concessions from the Prince on matters at issue between them, and then sent him and his wife to Spain by way of Falmouth.

For betraying secrets affecting national defence, a policeman named Jaenicke was, on 26th June, sentenced to six years’ penal servitude and ten years’ loss of civil rights and police supervision, says Reuter’s Leipzig correspondent. This sentence was to run consecutively with one the prisoner is already undergoing for theft, so that the total term will be nine years. The Court declared that Jaenicke, at the instance of the man Glauss, who was extradited from England and sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude, had induced a chief signal boatswain named Ehlers to give him portions of a secret signal book used in the German navy. This Glauss subsequently betrayed to the British and French Governments.

The province of Quebec fvas reported in June to be suffering from a plague of caterpillars. “Entire orchards have in many cases been ruined,” says a Montreal message, and the loss to fruitgrowers will be very serious. Foliage has been destroyed to such an extent that mapde groves—the collection of maple syrup is an important industry in Quebec—look as though they have been swept by fire. In the neighbourhood of Montreal the trees in the public parks are covered with a cotton-like substance black with caterpillars. The City CorSation has had gangs of men at work ting the plague, and the assistance even of boy scouts has been requisitioned. It is no uncommon sight to see men up the trees with lighted torches burning Cut the cotton-like nests.”

The King has approved the appointment of Lieutenant-General Sir Herbert Scott Gould Miles, late QuartermasterGeneral, to be Governor of Gibraltar in the place of General Sir Archibald Hunter, resigned. The new Governor, who is 63 years of age, upon his return in 1900 from South Africa, where he served with great distinction, was' given the post of commander of the Staff College, Camberley, and in 1904 was appointed a director of recruiting and organisation at headquarters.

After viewing the sketch models, the executive committee of the W, S. Gilbert memorial have formally approved the designs prepared by Sir Geosge Frampton, R.A. The memorial, which may be placed on the Victoria Embankment, London, consists of a medallion in bronze, with figures illustrative of the genius of the deceased dramatist.

The Terra Nova, Captain Scott’s Antarctic Expedition ship, has beeri sold to Messrs. C. T. Bowring and Co., of London, Liverpool, and Cardiff. The vessel was overhauled in dry dock at Cardiff, and her condition being satisfactory, the purchase was completed, though the price was not disclosed. Messrs. Bowring formerly owned the Terra Nova, and when she was sold for the' purposes of the Antarctic Expedition it was with the option of repurchase. The vessel will leave shortly for Newfoundland, where she will again be employed in the sealing industry.

There were few things of which Mr. Gladstone was prouder than the share he took, in 1860, in securing the famous commercial treaty with France which in a year or two doubled our trade with that Twenty-one years later he reviewed its effects, declaring that it had. done more than merely increase trade. “It effectually chewed and traversed, in the year 1860, tendencies of a very different kind towards needless alarms and panics, and tendencies towards convulsions and -confusion in Europe. There was no more powerful instrument for confining and controlling those wayward and angry spirits at that particular crisis than the commercial treaty with France.”

The Paris correspondent of a London paper states that an application for a summons against the Duke of Marlborough has been granted to the heirs-at-law of M. Alexandre Becart, who claimed £2400 from the present duke. According to the applicant, Duke George of Marlborough assigned his estate in 1818 to trustees,; and in the assignment admitted owing a. debt of £420 to M. Alexandre Becart, described as “a countryman of the City of Paris, in the Kingdom of France.” The trustees of Duke George’s estate did not satisfy the claim and the alleged debt, with compound interest-, is now to be sued for. The judge who granted the summons against the present duke was influenced by a provision of the French law which declares that “a foreigner, even a nonresident of France, may be summoned before the French Courts in respect of obligations contracted in foreign countries towards French persons.”

A sensation was caused on *24th June at a meeting of creditors of Messrs. James Watson and Co., the well-known ironmasters, of Glasgow, by the announcement that the body of Mr. Peter Donaldson, one of the leading partners, had just been recovered from the Firth of Clyde. Mr. Donaldson was missin'g from his home on the previous day, and a yachtsman,, in dragging, recovered the body, partially dressed, several yards from Kilcreggan Pier. The hands were clasped overhead, while a dumb-bell was tied round the neck and another to the feet. Mr. Donaldson was a famous Clyde yachtsman. At the creditors’ meeting it Was stated that the firm’s liabilities amounted to £398,300 and the assets to £120,607,. an apparent deficiency |of £277,693. The assets represent a dividend of about 6s in the £. A further 2s is expected if certain contracts are well realised, while 10s riiay be reached in certain contingencies.