A LONDON LETTER

Evening Star, Issue 15537, 6 July 1914, Page 7

A LONDON LETTER

* Written for the ' Evening Star.*, A Plague Of Insects. —The Drought. —The 300-Mile-an-houT Railway.—-Breaking Up the Welsh Church. It is hot enough now that " Miss May has developed a temperature" (as one of the halfpenny newspapers expresses the fact of » beginning of hot weather half through May) to bring out anything, including, strawberries and straw hats and river girls. If there are any mosquitoes in England, they also are surely hatched by now. But most English people will tell you that there are not. I am quite ready to believe thorn, for after a close acquaintance with their midges, I hardly see how there can be any room for mosquitoes. Certainly they are not required in addition to what alrtjady haunts one here. The midges are very small, as their name suggests*- but their bite is. quite as bad as the mosquito's, which makes the newchum in Australia wonder what he has struck. Presently there will be the -wasps. In a previous summer I ha.ve known half a dozen of these tuneful insects hovering round the dinner table all at once. One grows accustomed to them, and there is always a sporting interest as to whom they will sting first. But there is no race where the midges ate. concerned —or, rather, there is a dead heat every time, which is just as unsatisfactory from a sportsman's point of view. Keep your mosquitoes, you Australians, and be thankful you can't swap them for the English midges. When we get some rain again perhaps a few billions of them will be drowned, but I am afraid that won't make much difference to their fighting strength. ******* "The present drought is," according to the weather prophets, who are extraordinarily correct in their predictions over here, " not likely to be broken for some days to come."" This is the tenth rainless day ! But really it doesn't take long for England to get to look dry and dusty, even in a 10-days' drought. Where one notices it most is along the country roads, whe,t« the motor traffic plays havoc with the hedges and the outer strips of nelda. One doesn't wonder at the farmer hating the motorist, nor at his tardiness in moving his waggon out of the way at the blast of the demanding horn. For there is no "If you please" or ''By your leave" about the touring motorist. It is " Out of rny way, and be hanged to you" every time. The motor cyclist is almost worst, for he doesn't trouble about getting you out of his way. He rides past you" by the nearest shave more often than 'not, sometimes at the rate of 30 or 40 miles an hour. Now and then he runs over you—there have been accidents every day or so for weeks past of this kind. But when one is nm over in England one has the chance of getting damages, or one's relatives have. It is evidently not so in France, however, for only a week ago the Civil Tribunal .at Seine pronounced a judgment against a pedestrian who was knocked down by a taxicab in the Champs Elysees in Paris. The taxi, driver, in trying to avoid smashing tip the nnuv entirely, ran into a motor car. The damage to' the <-ar was assessed at £SO, of which the pedestrian was ordered to pay three-fourths for being in the wa> the tkxicab company paying the remaining 'one-fourth. |##* * * * * ; The model of tße 300 mile per hour rail ! way, of which I wrote last week, has been seen by thousands in London, being open now to the public at half a crown aftci having been seen on private view to no end of experts and members of Parliament Amongst the experts to whom it was e\ plained were certain representatives of the Japanese Navy, who are said to have I taken as keen an interest in it as an> body. As the invention is said to be adapted for warships as well as for rail ways, it is creating a good deal of attention. Some thousands of pounds are re quired for taking the invention _ a staff further, and provide for a trial trip of the real thing. The sum required was road\ to be subscribed in London five times ovei so we mav expect to hear before long the [practical value of this newest wonder of 'the ago. Tho inventor, a Frenchman, wa i the other day nearly, garotted by_ a man who had got into conversation with him on a quiet road, and who demanded from him his secret. The Frenchman, how ever, had had lessons,: and' turned the tables on his assailant. It isn't always safe to hit a stranger, even though he 'be a scientist. ******* The division in the House of Common | last night on the third reading of I the Welsh Church Disestablishment i Bill resulted as follows:—For the third reading, 328; against, 251; majority forthe Government, 77. Enormous pubhi protests, even from the Welsh Xonconfor mists, have been made against this Bill for the disestablishment and disondowment of the Church in Wales. The Chancellui t>f the Exchequer (Mr Lloyd George) had a final thrust levelled at him by an Opposition member after the declaration of the. result, who cried out in derision : " Take your money, Judas." What the Church in Wales, working in such a poor country, will do without the income that has been derived by the great gifts of her devoted members now dead and gone goodness only knows. Put simply, tho position is this : You and some others, being wealthy members of a society, feel that your society is doing such good work that you would like to endow it by a large gift of money, the income from which for ever shall go towards its expenses. When you are dead the society does not cease to exist, but some of its members resign from it, and form other societies of a like nature. Then, after a long time, a Parliamentarian says that you never intended your gift for the benefit of the society to which you belonged, but for everyone, whether they belonged to your society or not. It will make people careful how they endow institutions for the future if any particular Government for the time being in power can take away their gift> and devote it to quite other purposes. May 20.