In the Public Eye

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 26, 30 July 1938, Page 21

In the Public Eye

The Speaker of the British House of Commons, Captain E. A. Fitzßoy, recently issued a statement concerning a threat by the Labour Party to oppose his re-election as member of Parliament for Daventry.

At the 1935 General Election a Labourite, Mr. T. E. Barnes, contested the seat contrary to recent precedent.

Captain Fitzßoy, who made no speeches and did no canvassing, was re-elected by a majority of 8167, polling 18,934 votes to his opponent's 10,767.

In his statement, addressed to his constituents, Captain Fitzßoy says:

"I notice that at a meeting of the Labour Party of the Daventry Division at Northampton, at which tne selection of a candidate to oppose me at the next General Election was discussed, it was declared that 'the Labour Party would not oppose me as Speaker of the House of Commons but as the Conservative candidate.' "I feel bound to point put, so that there should not be any misunderstanding now or hereafter, that such a declaration is quite easy to make ; but in itself is merely delusive. The fact remains that if I am opposed it must be as Speaker, which I am, and cannot be as the Conservative candidate. "I. quote Erskine May* page 193: 'By the House of Commons (Speaker) Act. 1832, and by the House of Commons. Offices Act, 1846, it is provided that in case of dissolution the then Speaker shall be deemed to be the Speaker for the purposes of those Acts until a Speaker shall be chosen by the new Parliament.' It follows that to oppose a Speaker at a General Election is to oppose him as such and as nothing else." Mr. T. Mitsui. For the next seven years Mr. N Takanaru Mitsui, head of one of the branches of Japan's wealthiest family, must pay the State £300 a day. This is the inheritance tax assessment which has been made on the fortune left by his father, according to the "Daily Telegraph and Morning Post." . He will not necessarily have to send a cheque daily to* the tax office, however. He may pay weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually—or a single lump sum of £720,000. In arriving at this total the tax experts had to value the art collection left to Mr. Mitsui, as .well.as his shares in' the gigantic family holding company, which has more than1 100 subsidiary companies paying dividends. Mr. Takanaru* Mitsui is the head of only one of the eleven branches of the family. Its total wealth is really held as a family trust, although for legal purposes it is apportioned to the heads of the eleven branches. Fortunately for the present heir, his father died just before inheritance taxes were raised. Had the late Mr. Mitsui lived four months longer his heir would now be paying a tax of £1,500,000. . Estimates of the Mitsui family's total wealth have varied between £50,000,000 and £200,000,000. • " Rear-Admiral R. E. Ingersoll. Captain Royal E. Ingersoll, chief of the United States Navy's War Plans Division, who worked with British naval authorities in evolving a programme for bigger battleships, was promoted recently to the rank of rearadmiral. President Roosevelt sent his name to the Senate for confirmation, and when the Senate approves the new rank he will be sent to San Pedro, California, to command the Sixth Cruiser. Division, consisting of four heavy cruisers. Captain Ingersoll went to London during the winter to confer with British Navy officials on Britain's battleship programme, and the projected expansion by the United States. • * * He was in England when the Congressional hearings on the "Big Navy" Bill opened, and some members of Congress sought to bring out that Captain Ingersoll's conversations leaned towards a naval entente between the two countries. The Administration said that his talks were solely exploratory. As director of the War Plans Division, Captain Ingersoll has had tha duty of drawing up plans of battle for any prospective war, even the most remote. He was bom in Washington fifty-four years ago, the son of the late Rear-Admiral Royal Rodney Ingersoll. He was educated at the Naval Academy, and during the World War received the Navy Cross for his work in organising the communications office of the Navy Department. In 1935 he accompanied Admiral Standley to the London Naval Conference, which resulted in the London Naval Treaty of 1936. Captain Ingersoll's present home is at La Porte, Indiana. Mr. E. E. Bridges. Edward E. Bridges, son of the late poet laureate, .Robert Bridges, has been appointed to succeed Sir Maurice Hankey as Secretary of the Cabinet. Mr. Neville Chamberlain, however, took the opportunity to split up Sir Maurice's three most important positions. He has selected Sir Rupert Howorth as Clerk of the Privy Council and Deputy Secretary of the Cabinet, and Colonel Hastings L. Ismay as Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence. The three new offices are to be "unified" under the heading "offices of the Cabinet." Mr. Bridges, as head of the new group, will be a member of the Committee on Imperial Defence and will hold the title of Permanent Secretary and Secretary of the Cabinet. Mr. Bridges has had a distinguished career as a civil servant. Entering the Treasury Department in 1919, he rose to the rank of Principal Assistant Secretary in 1937. For the past four years he has been in charf i of the Treasury Division responsible for defence matters and has served on several special commissions. Sir Rupert Howorth, who has been in the Treasury Department since 1915, has been Deputy Secretary since 1930. Colonel Ismay during a career in the Army was stationed in India as military secretary to the Viceroy, the Earl of Willingdon, in 1931. Later he was a general staff officer attached to the War Office. |

s Dr. Alexis Carrel, Nobel Prize winner and co-inventor with Colonel \ Charles A. Lindbergh of the "artificial 1 heart," revealed recently at his office " at the Rockefeller Institute that his re- ■ search work there would be halted, his division closed, and his staff disbanded on July 1, 1939, when he reaches the automatic retirement age of 65. An account of the work that Dr. Carrel and Colonel Lindbergh and their as- , sociates have been carrying on through , their "life chamber" is contained in "The Culture of Organs," of which Dr. Carrel and Colonel Lindbergh are joint authors. It has been published by Paul B. Hoeber, Inc., the medical book department of Harper and Brothers. The apparatus, which performs the functions of heart and lung, keeping whole organs alive in nutritive fluid for an indefinite period, has been in operation for more than 100,000 hours, the book reports. Thyroid glands, spleens, kidneys, and many other organs have been cultivated, and life and functioning maintained for several weeks with its aid. ? Colonel Charles Lindbergh. Special police precautions were taken about Illiec Island recently to guard Colonel' Charles A. Lindbergh and his family from possible harm. The French coast, under these precautions, was patrolled from Paimpol to ,Per-ros-Guirec to prevent unauthorised persons from embarking for Colonel Lindbergh's refuge on Illiec Island. The reason given by the police for the precautions was that the American flyer had been receiving what they described as threatening letters. Colonel Lindbergh. his wife, and their two sons at present were guests in "the home of Dr. Alexis Carrel, the American scientist and Lindbergh's collaborator in scientific research, on St. Gildas Island. They planned to stay .there until work has been completed on their, newly-purchased home on 'nearby Illiec. . No real danger was considered to be present, for the letters came from the United States and were sent by persons who believe Richard Bruno Hauptmann innocent of the murder of Lindbergh's first baby son in 1932. The letters held Lindbergh partly responsible for Hauptmann's execution in 1936. Apparently the writers of the letters were not of the sort purposeful enough to undertake vengeance themselves. One writer called down a solemn curse on Lindbergh and his family. But the French authorities took no chances. An inspector with gendarmes from Treguier 'and Lannioh was detailed to assure the safety of the Lindbergh and Carrel families. The Lindberghs arrived in France from the home they occupied for two and a half years in England. Sir Percy Bates. In New York there arrived recently an Englishman who claimed to be able to smell the approach or non-approach of war. He^was Sir Percy Bates, 59----year-old chairman of Cunard White Star, Ltd. Sir Percy recalled that in August, 1914, he planned to buy a grouse moor. "My nose," he said, "told me there would be a War, so I never bought the grouse moor. But ithis year I've bought a place where I can fish for salmon. My nose tells me that there won't be any war." Sir Percy and his family have been connected with Curiard for many years, and he has been a steady advocate of the great liner of the Queen Mary type. He does not, however, put much stock in speedy Atlantic crossings, and when the Queen Mary a couple of years ago broke the crossing record Sir Percy expressed regret that such a thing as a blue ribbon existed. His business, he remarked, was business, not racing. On his latest trip Sir Percy did not travel on the Queen Mary. He came over on her rival, the Normandie, a ship he described as "an example of the genius of the French." J. T. MacGregor-Morris. Professor J. T. MacGregor-Morris, inventor of the directional hydrophone for detecting submarines, which played such an important part in defeating the U-boat menace during the war, is about to retire from his position as head of the Department, of Electrical Engineering at Queen Mary College, Mile End Road, London. Experiments which he conducted in 1915 in conjunction with Mr. A. F. Sykes, then a research student, and which led to the invention, were described by the professor. "We used two head-phones and a pail of water in my room at this college," he said. "After initial tests we moved^ to a sink in the laboratory, then to a large tank, and, after a few months' further research, we were granted the use during the winter of a swimming-bath next door. "We placed little buzzers in tin cans into the water, and we ascertained at what distance the sound could be heard and its direction indicated. "So successful were these experiments that we decided to extend them. On a cold day in April, .1916, we set out by taxi for the Elstree reservoir, where, using two boats 100 yards apart, I, with my eyes closed, was able to detect the direction of the sound with remarkable exactness." .Subsequently, in conjunction with the Admiralty, trials were made in the open sea in a drifter. There was evolved a directional finder three times as sensitive as anything hitherto known. Before the war ended thousands, of them were in use, and .' special training schools were established for instructing men in their use. j i This was Professor MacGregorMbrris's great contribution to the defence of his country, but he regards it as no more than an incident ins his, career. He has played an important part in the development of the cathode ray oscillograph, which is employed in television and acoustics, and is used for recording heart beats, the performance of internal combustion engines, the steering of ships, and in technological problems, such as the measurement of lightning flashes, the study of high voltage corona and surges in transmission lines. Professor MacGregor-Morris was assistant to Professor Ambrose Fleming at University College, London, when forty years ago, he took over the department of electrical engineering in what was then a technical school in Mile End Road.' He has seen the school develop until it has become an important part of the University of I London. }