LONDON TOPICS

Evening Star, Issue 19002, 25 July 1925, Page 22

LONDON TOPICS

WHO ARMER THE RIFFS ?

[From Our Correspondent.!

June 11. The report that Toldo has offered to undertake the restoration of civil order in China lacks confirmation. But in Downing Street the possibility is not wholly ignored of a serious diplomatic situation arising from some such proposal by Japan. American opinion would at once be aroused, because Now York is heavily interested in China, and all sorts of concessions are at hazard. At present all the Powers with naval forces -in the Far East are cooperating in maintaining order at Shanghai, and any suggestion that Japan should proceed alone on a more ambitious scale would cause trouble at once. Behind the present Chinese troubles, stirred up by Bolshevik agents, lurks the shadow of tin Americo-Japancso conflict. THE FALLING FRANC.

I was told in the city to-day that the French Government is arranging for a new attack to be made by .the French newspapers on the “ foreign speculator.” It is hoped by this means to persuade the Paris housewife, who finds prices rising as the franc falls, that the blame lies outside the shores of France. In financial circles there are now serious apprehensions lost the dissensions within the Government result in a new Ministerial crisis and an immediate collapse of the exchange. This possibility is made more likely by the latest statement by the Bank of France, showing an increase of 1,350,000,000 francs under the heading of fresh advances to the Treasury. M. Caillaux has hastily explained this advance as “ tonyiorary,” hut both the Bourse and the London money market ate sceptical. POISON GAS. While Geneva is trying to formulate an international agreement prohibiting the use of poison gases in warfare, the world’s chemists are busy with their researches to find the most deadly of these frightful weapons and their antidotes. It is impossible to tell what progress they have made since the war, as all experiments are conducted in secret; but that the work is steadily proceeding is a recognised fact. Germany is alleged to be specially diligent in tins direction, even to seeking the assistance of commercial laboratories. As far as wc are concerned expenditure in this class of research is increasing annually. The work is carried on at the carefully-guarded experimental station at Porton. A couple of years ago it cost £BO,OOO. During the present financial year the bill will be £133,000, or £IB,OOO more than last year. THE DOLE SCANDAL. A great many people arc waiting to sec how Mr Churchill’s hint in his Budget speech of an overhauling of the dole system is carried into practical effect. Facts advanced hy Dr Arthur Shadwell, though familiar to many people, will strengthen public impatience. Dr Shadwell writes of families “ on the dole ” who take their children twice a week to the kinema, and of young men in “ the same financial position ” who ride their own motor' cycles. Jb will be a profound error in tactics if the Government hesitates in its duty because of Labor criticism. Any political party that supports the existing scandal will ruin itself completely. One suggestion is that relief should be in kind, not money, and rigorously restricted to honest workers out of a job and unable to get one. The professional “ dolateers ” should be knocked off the roster. MARSHAL FOCH. Marshal Foch was in an unusually vivacious mood when he left Victoria Station on his return to Paris. Our wonderful June weather evidently suited the illustrious veteran, and he made the remark—which might be subject to correction on another visit—that June was the time to see London at its best. Lots of French and English admirers came to the station to say adieu to the Marshal, who let down his saloon window to joke more frely with some of them. He declared that his visit had been most enjoyable, but that too much hospitality had almost killed him. The most cherished recollection, however, is neither of the splendors of the trooping of the colors nor of the thrills of Olympia and the tourney, but of signing his autograph on a Salvation Array banner that is to rest in the citadel of Joan of Arc’s birthplace. Foch is a deeply-religious soldier, and, like the Iron Duke, much prefers quiet mufti to brilliant uniforms. LORD CURZON’S BOOK.

Some who served under him in India may be rather staggered by Lord Curzon’s two posthumous volumes on ‘ British Government in India.’ His Lordship’s literary gifts, his strong theatrical flair, and some of his bitter personal prejudices find full expression. Magnificently though he filled the Viceregal role, and splendidly though ho played the pari? his subordinates do not recall his lordship as fitting in with his own picture of an aching heart crucified beneath au Imperial diadem. Ho was a terrible critic, satirical and despotic, and he hated soldiers. So, at. all events, we may gather from General Sraith-Dorrien’s recent hook. The clash of imperious personality never reached more direct conflict than when Lord Curzon and Lord Kitchener found, India a size too small to hold thorn both. CHICKENS COME HOME.

A London man, who has served in more than one army and knows something about gun-running off more than one coast, laughs cynically at the French outcry about equipping the Riffs. That Abdel Krim’s seasoned Arab irregulars are well supplied with arms, including quick-firing field guns and machine guns, not to mention vanout types of bombing aeroplanes, is true enough, but most of tho Riflian artillery bears tho name of a famous French firm. So long as the Riffs wore engaged only against the Spaniards, France’s benevolent neutrality had a shrewd commercial side to it. It is, of course, a different story now that some of these profitable chickens are coming home to roost. My informant declares that about the only military assets missing in the Riff outfit are tanks. DICKENS IN DOUGHTY STREET. No. 48 Doughty street, one of the places in London whore Charles Dickens lived, became public property this week, Lord Birkenhead delivering the necessary ceremonial speech. The house, which is a plain enough building, ■is interesting chiefly because, though the great writer lived only a couple of years in it, his move to Doughty street indicated a decided improvement in his circumstances, and in the two years in question—lß37-1839 were written some of his best and freshest work. ‘Pickwick’ which he had begun in 1836, he finished in 1837. f Oliver Twist,’ which overlapped it, ran from January, 1837, to March, 1839, and in the same two years he planned and began ‘ Barnaby Rudge’ and the ‘ Old Curiosity Shop ’ and part of ‘Nicholas Nickleby.’ Doughty street must have been a useful centre for the novelist when he was sallying out into the streets, as was his habit, to gather materials about the neighborhoods in which he was laying the scenes of his stories. From Doughty street, the rise in his fortune being now permanent, i Dickens moved to a much superior house in Devonshire terrace—“ a handsome house with a considerable garden.” After tHat he lived in Tavistock House, Tavistock square, whence his final move was to Gadshill, where he died. SPOILING THE SEA.

Though perhaps a little less flagrant than formerly, sea and coast pollution by oil refuse still goes on steadily. Lord Bearsted’s contention that it is due to sunken German submarines will

not bear examination, and is disproved I by similar unpleasant experiences off; the American coast. Not only are sea birds being destroyed in wholesale fashion, but sea bathing in many parts of this island is being ruined. (Swimmers emerge filmed in loathsome oil,, instead of rosy from the dip, A committee was appointed by the International Shipowners’ Conference to investigate, the outcry having become rather persistent, but its whitewashing report, congratulating shipowners, on having overcome the “nuisance,” is accepted neither by the public nor the Bird Protection Society. Stringent regulations by all sea-going nations are urgently demanded. With the rapid dcveloptmont of modern oil-driven vessels, notably under foreign flags, this question assumes real importance. It goes far beyond the mere discomfort of seaside bathers, or even the killing off of innumerable sea birds, though the potentialities of the latter might be considerable. The sea yields far more per acre than the land—besides being far more extensive —-in human food. And there are scientists of repute who envisage the day when practically the entire oceans may bo coated over with a thin film of poisonous oil. The effects on the world’s fishing industry would bo too grave to bear thinking of. Clearly oil pollution of the sea is as serious as smoko pollution of the air, and industrial science, which gives us the oil engine, must devise its own safeguards. DEVONSHIRE HOUSE SITE. Not more than a month ago I recorded the passing of Devonshire House. The last brick bad vanished, and, mopping his brow in the centre of trie vacant site, a big navvy leant dramatically oil his pick. To-day, the gaunt steel skeleton of the new shops and flats to take the place of the ducal mansion is well advanced. It is one of the finest sites in the West End, right opposite the Green Park, halfway down Piccadilly, with the Ritz Hotel half-left in front. Millionaires will presumably inhabit the flats, which will bo sold separately at £25,000, or 990 years’ lease. The shopkeepers below may bo millionaires, too, because their rental will run from twelve and ! fifteen hundred a year for back premises to £5,000 for the best front I shops. Rent round about are all being put up. One firm of wine merchants now has to pay £2,000 ground rent instead of £27 10s. THE OXFORD MOVEMENT.

Nothing is more significant than the note of genuine anger that now obtrudes in ordinary masculine comments on the new Oxford trousers. At first the absurd things were genially smiled at, or received with ribald cat-calls quite good-humoredly. The change of tone means that, for the first time for generations, the normal uniform man finds himself in a fashion dilemma. Hitherto only the ultra smart man worried Iris "head about the trifling little tailoring changes. They did not really matter. But it is different now. Even Cambridge, with humiliation, succumbed to fashion’s force majeur. And every man must now decide for himself, with such assistance as his tailor may offer, whether he will be “ in the movement,” and dress himself up like a civilian bluejacket, or risk looking like Rip Van Winkle. The ladies are veterans at this sort of thing; but men are novices. And it’s a darned nuisance! BOOTLE.

It is symptomatic of the post-war times that even such a wealthy territorial magnate as Lord Derby should be selling off his estates. The Derby earldom is the oldest in Debrett, and for that reason the Stanleys have refused all suggestions of a dukedom. Lord Derby’s income used to bo estimated before the war by shrewd Liverpool valuers at about £400,000 per annum, and as ho owned the whole of Bootle, except the docks but including the Town Hall (and the leases fell in about the time of his heir’s majority), he does not lack means to maintain even such expensive places as Knowsley Hall and his fine West End mansion. These big estates date back to the Lord Stanley who kept his Lancashire levies out of the conflict between Richard 111. and Henry VII., thereby turning the balance m favor of the latter. His reward was the confiscated property of neighbors who backed the wrong Derby horse!