ENGLAND—OLD AND NEW

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 94, 22 April 1935, Page 6

ENGLAND—OLD AND NEW

Another New Zealander lias looked y on London, arid—notwithstanding Macaulay— cannot see any signs of ruin. He is Mr. M. Dennehy, recently retired from a high post in the New Zealand railway service, a traveller by choice, an observer by nature; and he observed one fact which is of particular interest because of. recent years it seems to have been entirely overlooked:

Thanks to the great, resources of British ' countries oversea, ' says Mr. Dennehy, there is a plentiful supply of good food at reasonable prices. ■,

■Until quite lately, one would not have needed ito be a mere narrow Freetrader in order to see in the cheap food of Britain's working population an element of basic strength in good times and of "recovery" in bad. But it has not been fashionable recently to sound this note in political circles—even the British Labour Party docs not seem to do so—and therefore Dominions

who pay for imports and interest by exporting food and raw materials arc glad to hear that the British people now are doing so well on cheap food and clothing that they presently may be able to pay cheerfully a little more for those necessaries. From bread Mr. Dennehy passes quite naturally to games—in the Soccer division of the Coliseum a fee of £6000 has been paid for the transfer of a gladiator from one club to another!—and then to pageants of history, showing what we owe to Magna Carta (which still, it must be conceded, stands for something more than the Coliseum), The Barons that bearded King John have descendants in the Magna Carta pageant. A world of thought can be'conjured up behind that remarkable fact.