In the Public Eye

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 67, 20 March 1937, Page 21

In the Public Eye

Mr. Justice Swift, who protested at the Birmingham Assizes against aspects of the divorce laws, has been a Judge of the King's Bench Division of the High Court of Justice since 1920. A stickler for decorum, Mr. Justice Swift is one of those Judges who will not havg his Court "turned into a Uheatre," even when he himself is responsible for the joke that has caused the laughter. He believes in helping the young advocate, but his manner of doing it often puts the unduly nervous some confusion until they have the gentle art of how to "answer 4 Judge back." But he is quick to pull Counsel up if they need it, and the control of the case he is trying never leaves his hands. No one can sum up a case better. Without referring to hie notes he is accustomed to marshal thle facts clearly and logically, explaining the law in the proper place, and he never "muddles" the jury. His diction is studied and deliberate, and the questions he puts, both to counsel and witnesbes, with a disarming -ignorance, have often more at the back of them thai? first strikes the ear. Mir.-Justice Swift was born in 1874, and iwas educated at Liverpool. He was called to the Bar in 1895, and was appointed X.C.. in 1912. From 1910 to 1918] he was M.P.- for St. Helens. Mr. W. H. Donald. Gc-ibetweens are honoured institutions (in- China, where, till the rise of the itnodern Republic, lawyers were unknown, wrote H- B. Elleston. financial editor of the "Christian Science Monitor" recently. But there can hardly have been a more extraordinary (go-between in % the long history of Cathay than the man'who was the intermediary between the imprisoned dictator, Chiang Kai-shek, and; his captor ancl former associate, Chang Hsiaoliang. j Thisi go-between was the unanimous choice jof all the parties in this extraordlbiary coup. Madame Chiang-Kai-shek, in her wifely anxiety, turned to himk the' Nankin- Government, in its helpless bewilderment, relied upon him; Marshal Chang, using his hostage to force a change in government policy which might plunge the entire world ibi war, trusted him; and General Clkiang stubbornly refusing to treat'-viith his captors, left his fate in this ! go-between's \ hands. The |gd-between upon whom this tremendous personal' and political responsibility was delegated was not even a\ Chinese. He cannot even speak th«» Chinese language. He was an Australian, by name William Henry Donald, j Chinese rarely ■ put their faith in foreigners; but upon Mr. Donald they Have been relying for over 30 years. Afe he once said to me, speaking of the hew Nationalist Government, set up in iNanking in 1927. "I brought many of tlbem up." It was bo wonder, therefore, that the man kvho'ha'd been friend and adviser of (successive Governments in old Peking—the hated Peking crowd' to the Nationalists—was soon in the same intiniate relation with Chiang Kai-shek's ifcovernment. The Nationalists could not forget that Mr. Doiiald was the confidant and aide of SunJ Vat-sen, the father of the Republic. |He came to China when Sun was stSEll a restless revolutionary against the Manchu regime, against traditional China. With his zest for gettihg to the inside of affairs, he quickly, \got to know Dr. Sun, though-he then only a "grifln"—a Chinese word for neophyte. He had come, from' a( journalistic post in Sydney, Australia, to take over an editorship in Hong (Kong. Dr.. Sun-mel in him his exact opposite—practical Sun was visionary, realistic, v^here Sun was idealistic, sagacious and jshrewd where Sun was temperamental Nand a dreamer. Close by Dr.! Sun's side during the reconstruction; following the 1911 revolution whichi\ turned monarchical China into a Ri^public was this young Australian newspaper man. Dr. Sun had been made'{ provisional President of the Republic^ Mr. Donald wrote his manifestoes, i. Sun, a child in such matters, interposed him between himself and the foreign Powers. On him Sun leaned in, evolving his schemes for the economjfc reconstruction of China. '. 1 . . By this time Urn Australian journalist had become editor of the "Far Eastern Review" in Shanghai, a journal devoted to economic^ and engineering development. He h;ad become convinced that the salvation |of China lay in .economic modernisation. "With transportation comes civilisation." he used i.o say to me, after I-jiipling. The Republic ii.tj a year or two Lett into the hands of,{the feudalists militarists. Dr. Sun again went into hiding. Mr. Donald was called to Peking. The militarists wanted his sage advice in keeping the lqiaky ship of State afloat. '] . They promised him any kind of job, as long as he wotild . stay in Peking. Still obsersed with jhis objective of the economic renovatiotii of China, he chose to set up, as a sprinigboard of economic development, a Government economic bureau, devoted to collecting the facts about economic Chitoa and disseminating them. ■'; When, in 1927, tlieri Nationalists overthrew the "old"-Peking crowd, and set up the Government ait Nanking, the old Economic Bureau bei^ame a propagandist organ for the neiiv administration. When I decided to qKiit from my post in that bureau, Mr. Dtonald in his parting said, "My life hi^s been spent in China. It is China's, and I shall stay." Mr. Donald's real strength with the Chinese is his scrupulous honesty. Advisers to Chinese Governments have a strain of the adventurer in them. The temptations to capitaliiste their position to their own advantage) are many, and some have succumbed and in the process have paid for it \vith their lives. But Mr. Donald's sincerity has always kept him above suspicion by China's factions. !

Mrs. Amelia Earhart IPutnam, who left Oakland, California, on Wednesday, on the first stage of a world flight, is the most famous of American women aviators. She was the first woman to fly solo over the Atlantic, and the first person to make the crossing, by aeroplane twice; her flight by the' North Atlantic route to Ireland in 1932 set a new record. of 13J hours for the route. Mrs. Putnam', formerly Miss Amelia Earhart, was dubbed by the Americans "Miss Lindy." She was born at Boston in 1899. She took up social work and was eventually appointed head of Denison House, a Boston social settlement. As a recreation she went in for aviation, qualifying as a pilot. In 1920 she established an altitude record for women by attaining a height .of 14,000 feet. In June, 1928, there were two women on the Atlantic coast ot the American Continent who were ambitious to be the first to fly across the ocean, and each had an aeroplane ready for the attempt. One was Miss Mabel 8011, the "Queen of Diamonds," and the other Miss Earhart. On June 18 Miss Earhart started from Trepassey, Newfoundland, and gained the honour. Her aeroplane, the Friendship, was a Fokker. The pilot was Wilmer Stultz, an airman of much experience, and he had Lou Gordon as mechanic. The Friendship was the first seaplane to accomplish the Atlantic flight, and it was fortunate that it was of that type. By the time the machine was close to the British coast the petrol supply was nearly exhausted, and in spite of the throwing overboard of much of their equipment the aviators found it • necessary to descend in an estuary of the Welsh coast instead of at' Southampton. The flight was accomplished in a few minutes less than 22 hours. When in London Miss Earhart received many offers of cinema and stage engagements, but she, refined them all, preferring to return to her social work in America. She married Mr. Putnam on February 7, 1931. In 1935 Mrs. Putnam was the first person to make a solo flight across the Pacific from Honolulu to Oakland (2408 miles).. She . did this.*in■ 18 hours. 17 minutes. Dr. Francis E. Townsend. The cables announced this- week that Dr. Francis E. Townsend, founder of the 200 dollars-a-month old age pension scheme, had been sentenced to 30 days' imprisonment and fined 100 dollars for contempt of the American House of Kepresentatives. The Townsend Plan was announced at Long Beach, California, in the summer of 1934/ and is one of a series of inflationary and long-range projects of which the EPIC plan of Upton Sinclair and the "Share our Wealth" movement of the late Senator Huey Long are the others best known. The Townsend Plan, later supported by organisations in forty-seven States and urged on the President by the signatures of; 3,000,000 people, according" to the announcement of its originator, is "very .simple. It proposes a 2 per cent, tax on "all financial and business transactions," a proceeding which would1 raise, it is calculated, about 20,000,000,000 dollars (£4,000,000,000) a year. This money will be used to provide pensions to all wage and salary .earners, who will, be compulsorily retired from gainful pursuits at the age of, 60 and thus, make way for the absorption of the unemployed. Were this carried out today, Dr. Townsend asserts, there -would; be 4000,000 jobs' immediately available'for; those out,of work. The. retired.workers. would then receive, a'standard .'pension of 200 dollars' a month '(£4o)', 'which must be spent- in - the - same -month. Ultimately, the doctor calculates, the plan would remove 8,000,000 people from active work. In order to start the plan the Government would have to furnish the first month's pensions; after that the sales tax would provide the finance. In this way^ the doctor argues, there would be an enormous addition to the national spending power and all industries would be extended to the utmost in order to provide the necessary goods. The future, as Dr. Townsend sees it, would be a perpetual boom Latterly he has sometimes referred to the possibility of a 10 per cent, sales tax instead of a 2 per cent., arguing that the great expansion oi business would in- effect reduce this higher figure very greatly. Governor Merriam, of California, has been one of the supporters of the plan, and when a vote was taken-in the' House of .Representatives 54- members revealed themselves'■ in favour of the scheme. In the nation, Dr. Townsend has said, there are between 20,000,000 and 25,000,000 people who are behind his project Mr. Ernest Hemingway. Spaniards have praised "Death in the Afternoon," by Ernest Hemingway, as the most understanding picture ol the art and the spirit of the bull-fight. Fascinated by this national pastime, Mr. Hemingway spent a number of post-war years in Spain, studying the bull ring, "the only place where you could see life and death now that the wars were over." Recently, he disclosed I tnat he was planning to visit Spain again to observe and perhaps participate in the war as a member of an ambulance corps organised in New York to aid the Loyalists. Not only is the author at home in Spain, but he has served as an ambulance driver in the World War. First with the American Red Cross in i France, he was later transferred to the Italian front. One day, while he was distributing cigarettes in the trenches, an Austrian shell exploded over him: surgeons extracted thirty-two fragments from his body. In 1926 he won literary recognition with his boo*. "The Sun Also Rises"; later he wove some of his war experiences into "A Farewell to Arms." Recently he has been enthusiastic about lion hunting in Tanganyika.