LIGHT CONGRESS

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 123, 20 November 1931, Page 16

LIGHT CONGRESS

GOLDEN AGE AHEAD

LIFE IN ITS FULLNESS

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

LONDON, 30th' September

Some 400 delegates have assembled in London to attend the International Illumination Congress. French delega,tes predominate among the foreign ■visitors. Germany and Italy are well represented. Various other nations have sent smaller contingents. Russia has one representative. There are over thirty from the United States of America, and several from Canada and South. Africa. Mr. B. Hitchcock is representing New Zealand. On the first day of the conference the Gas Light .and Coke Company and the London Electric Supply undertakings joined in entertaining the delegates at luncheon. The polyglot character of the gathering was happily illustrated in the address of welcome delivered by Lieut.-Colonel Eenelm Edgcumbe, chairman of the general council of the congress. Colonel Edgcumbe greeted the delegates first in English, then in French, next in German; then, Teverting to his own idiom, he exclaimed: "Cheerio everybody."

Mr. George. Lausbury, M.P., late First Commissioner of Works, said that ono of the objects of the congress was to make better known the uses of gas and electricity in a thousand and one ways, and thereby increase both expenditure and consumption. (Laughter and cheers.) He trusted that in the great task of serving the nations of the world both gas and electricity would "become more and more the servants of us all in every department of human affairs.

"I am not one who believes that the Golden Age ie behind-us," said Mr. Lansbury. "I believe it is ahead, and this is the faith which sustains ms in

days dark or 'bright." He believed that Watt, Faraday, Edison, and Marconi were in the forefront of the true revolutionaries; they and their fellow-sav-ants in many lands had broken down international barriers, had shown that there was no wealth but commonwealth, and demonstrated that eternal truth that the law of life was co-operation and service. "Let there be light," was the cry when mankind was born, and he repeated that cry to-day. Let there be a full flood-light in every corner of the streets and villages—in slums as well as in palaces. "Let there be light" in Parliament —(laughter)— the sort of light that illumines men's minds so that they may see in all its fullness that tho end of life is not living to work, but -working to live, and that the object of all living is to secure life and light more abundantly. (Cheers.)

At a banquet at Dorchester House on the following night, Sir Hugo Hirst, chairman of the General Electric Company, Ltd., in giving the toast of the congress, said he thought- the foreigu delegates would agree that the present illumination of London proved that, despite the vagaries of this climate, the British electricity and gas industries were aiming at the very highest standard in their lighting systems. The great fact emerging from the present flood-lighting would be a public appreciation of what complete lighting comprehended.' Ho traced the development, step by step, of the science of lighting in recent years. One of its triumphs, he emphasised, was what it had done for the safety of aviation.

The London section of the congress programme consisted .of sightseeing. Yesterday the delegates moved on to Glasgow, and afterwards Edinburgh, Buxton,' Sheffield, Birmingham, and Cambridge are to be visited.

We live to cat, we eat to live. We toil amain for food; And if we don't enjoy our food, - Well, life is not too good. Colds, .coughs, and 'flu kill appetite, . And we our food abjure; Kill -ooiifrhs, bring- appetite- again.- •"- • With. Woods' Great Peppermint Cure Aclvt.