LONDON TOPICS

Evening Star, Issue 20981, 21 December 1931, Page 12

LONDON TOPICS

[From Our Corresponrent.] November 5. A NICE POINT. With a loyalty worthy of his lineage, Sir Austen Chamberlain has notified Mr Baldwin of Ids desire to make way for younger men in the National Cabinet. His letter, and Mr Baldwin’s reply, are epistolary models fit to be included in Mr E. V. Lucas’s ‘ Gentlest Art.’ Yet Mr Baldwin makes a debatable excurision into the realm of political philosophy. “ I hope you are too good a student of history,” he writes, “to worry yourself about the judgment of your own generation.” Undoubtedly that has a fine Olympian ring about it —perhaps more patrician than democratic. It might be used as a fatal anodyne, and even as a disastrous anaesthetic. If democracy’s judgment on its contemporary statesmen is so contemptible, what must we think about its voting sense? As Coriolanus, Mr Baldwin is not at his best. PRIME MINISTER’S HEALTH. What surprises most people is Mr MacDonald’s amazing fitness after the prolonged strain of the political and electoral ordeal he has goite through. Before the Socialist Ministry crashed h© looked almost haggard. To-day he seems fresh and debonair. The secret of this is that, being a temperamental Celt, Mr MacDonald responds amazingly to the elation of success. That, and the absence of the constant worries he had to face when trying to lead a divided and back-biting Socialist following, have acted as a fine tonic on the Prime Minister. Mr MacDonald may have his embarrassments still, with all sorts of wires being pulled for Cabinet jobs, but these are nothing to what he experienced during the last phase of his former task. BREAKING THE TRAMMELS.

Not the least satisfactory feature of the elections is that so many trade unionists put the national interests first, realising the futility of the Socialist theoiy .th..t one class could prosper if the whole country foundered. Seaham illustrated this. The Prime Minister’s chances looked hopeless overtly. Odds of ten to one were offered against him. That was because the miners did not dar6 to flout their union officials openly. But it was not the women alone who gave Mr MacDonald his big majority. When it came to the ballot, lots of men voted steadily for “ Mac.” Moscow’s favourite policy of T.U.C. Red infiltration, which puts a few Communists in control, has put back the Labour movement twenty-five years. Lansbury’s flock is hardly higher than Keir Hardy’s was. NEW PERSONALITIES.

Amongst the new parliamentary recruits are some interesting people. One is Admiral Campbell, V.C., hero of the Q-boatA Another is Mr F. Hornby, a name honoured in Lancashire cricket, inventor of the famous Mechanno sets and Hornby toy engines, who has factories in France and America, as well as Liverpool, Lord Burghley, the Olympic hurdler and ex-Guardsraan, Brigadier Nation, Q.M.G, at Foch’s headquarters, Mr Richard Law, son of the former Premier, Mr D. B. Joel, son of the late S. 8., Mr Gluckstein, the Henley rowing n::.n, Mr Simmonds, the aeronautical engineer who helped us to get back the Schneider Cup, are other new M.P.s, together with a whole galaxy of famous old ’Varsity blues, golfers, and wartime soldiers and sailors. The new House of Commons, in fact, in a sense the last never was, is truly “ national.” ENGLAND’S ANLEMIC DOOM. The authorised ‘ Life of Don Alfonso X111.,’ which John Murray published this week, is an amazing book. Its authors are Princess Pilar of Bavaria, a cousin of the ex-king, and Major Chap-man-Huston. One forgives them for overdoing their panegyrics, even when they dogmatically claim Alfonso as “ the bravest man living,” and one can excuse their faith that Republican Spain wjll soon stage another restoration. But why do they go so far out of their way to attack and belittle this country? Since the war, which was Europe’s immoral flouting of spiritual leadership, the English people have become “ anaemic,” ruined by newspaper pap,” and lost their sense of violence as a nationally health-giving process. For fear of sharing Russia’s fate we invented the dole, which will be our final ruination. WHO ARE THEY? » I cannot help wondering how far exKing A-lfonso shares these views, or approves their authorised circulation by his relative and her collaborator. He must realise, in any event, that the recent General Election makes them look additionally foolish. We are told no Spaniard would accept a dole from the State, though he might, since all men are equal, beg from another man. I should not like to risk the experiment of trying a State gratuity on those Spanish beggars who infest so many Spanish towns. The authors of this life declare that to-day England is ruled “by pale pink gentlemen, with tight thin-soled boots, lavender gloves, and red ties.” I hardly recognise even the Maxton group in that sartorial description. And, anyhow, no naval tailors are yet cutting up the British Royal Ensign to make a republican flag. That happened on the warship which carried Don Alfonso XIII. to Franco nd safety. ENTER THE AMPHIBIANS.

Tho latest typo of amphibian tank tried out by the British Amy comes precious near to the late Admiral Lord Fisher’s dream of a flying submarine battleship. This military vehicle has crossed the Hirer Thames at Chertscy, climbed up and down its banks, and cavorted across country without turning a hair or loosening a nut. All that remains to do is to give it wings and an engine that will enable it to Spread them in flight, and we shall have achieved the Wellsian apotheosis of modern warfare. It is almost a safe bet that, before the world is half a century older, there will be monster tanks that can swim, dive, and fly, and no doubt they will carry, as well as guns and torpedoes, chemical projectors. Then, unless Geneva proves a real bulwark, life will be Dantesque.

GIANT AND MIDGET. There arei now under construction in our aircraft factories two remarkably contrasted aircraft, one the biggest and the other the smallest heavier-than-air flying machines in the world. The latter is a mystery midget, with a smaller engine than has yet been fitted to any light aeroplane, and is expected to revolutionise flying on the economic side. It will bring flying, so far as costs of running go, within the easy reach of the sort of people who can afford a push-bike. The big machine, a veritable mammoth challenge to the great German plane DO-X, is designed by the same brains that mad© tho Air Ministry’s recordbreaking seaplane. It is a stainless steel craft, and is expected to nip across to New York in about twentyfour hours non-stop.

HIDDEN TREASURE. The treasure-hunting instinct is as. old as woad. And all the world has followed with fascination the drama of Italian divers’ search for the £1,000,000 stored in the bullion room of the P. and 0. liner Egypt sunk in the blue water off Brest. After three years’ hard and perilous work, beginning with the puzzling task of locating the halfburied wreck itself, they have won through to the treasure, but only a wonderful St. Luke’s summer enabled them to achieve even this success, which comes too la to in the year for any hope of recovering the bulk of it before next summer. The scientific methods by which the pertinacious Italians have blasted a way into the bowels of the wreck have revolutionised deep-sea diving. PROBLEM OF THE RAT. It is a daunting fact that our national rat week, which started last Monday, may bo an utter futility. Rats number about five to one of the human population in this country, and their annual depredations are estimated at £70,000,000, which would go a long way to keeping our unemployed. Dustbins and refuse destructors have intensified tips rat problem. No longer able to live on offal, and fulfil their function as scavengers, rats now attack human food supplies, and their migration is immensely facilitated by the network of sewers that are their urban speedways. But Japan tackled the rat on a huge national scale, and failed to make any impression. Rat fecundity is such that the only limit to the rat population is food supply. Scientists say we are simply wasting our efforts.

SUPER-CATS TO THE RESCUE? A French health official has embarked on a strange adventure. He is breeding a special kind of cat for ratting purposes. His notion is that the super-cat, whose life hobby is ratting, will soon settle the rat problem. This super-cat will be to the ordinary domestic pot as shire horses are to Shetland ponies. But, apart from any question whether such felines may not develop into a. separate plague of their own, and add big gam© hunting to the perils of modern urban life, this enterprise seems redundant. One Indian mongoose would kill more rats in a day than even the super-cat, if it is all Dr Adrien Loir expects, could account for in a month. _ Surely, if there is any hope of reducing rats by mere killing, the sensible thing would be to import mongoose ratters. THAT SECRET. The recent exhibition of glass manufacture in London gave ample proof that in this particular industry we still lead the world, including even scientific and progressive Germany. Our supremacy remains practically unchallenged, whether in utilitarian or ornamental ware. ' We make the best decanters and also the • best stained windows. Glass-making is a venerable calling, associated on its crystalline side with wizardry, and many developments have taken place in its processes through the ages. Glass manufacturers are still, however, seeking the absolutely unbreakable glass. They have found a variety that is unsplinterable, but not yet one that is not to be broken at all. Strange to think that secret may defy the wit of the generations, and yet perhaps was discovered centuries ago. An unbreakable cup was presented to one of the Roman Csesars, who, incontinently had the inventor decapitated.

REMARKABLE FEMININE VOCATION. For a woman to be able to go the rounds of the vast Canadian wheatfields, and then return home and accurately forecast the Canadian wheat crop, sounds like a miracle beyond human compass or credulity. But hard-headed bankers and grain companies know better. They know that the miracle can be duly performed. It is not just a lucky guess that comes off by a fluke, as it were, once in a long lifetime. It is the amazing vocation of Miss Cora Hind, of the staff of a Winnipeg newspaper, who gives an estimate wdiich the financiers and merchants can take as gospel. “ Luck ” is outside the question. There is nothing for it but to accept tho irrefutable fact, as do th§ big Canadian magnates, that in this one feminine brain is centred some extraordinary mental quality that is denied the bulk of humankind. CHANG. The little difference of opinion between an elephant at tho Bristol Zoo and his keeper over rations, resulting in some rough play by the elephant and a broken collar-bone on tho part of the keeper, is not unusual. I am told by an Anglo-Indian officer that elephants are notoriously resentful of any “ diddling ” with their food quotas. Mountain battery elephants are, indeed, very practical trade unionists. If anyone, even for a joke, clips a bit off an elephant’s chupatty or cake, there is the devil to pay. The offended elephant throws down the short ration, trumpets his grievances, and is promptly supported by his fellow elephants, all ,of whom decline to eat their ration until the “ victim’s ” quota is restored. But not so if an elephant gets punished deservedly for shortcomings. He has then to bear itj and without a note of sympathy from the others. One punishment meted out is the loss of arrack, a strong spirit equivalent to whisky, which all elephants love. The offender who loses his portion can only wee]) at the loss of his tot—maybe for three nights or longer—and invariably does so. Big tears course down his face when ho realises that the others are drinking, and ho is deprived by sentence of his superior “ human ” officer. ARMISTICE DAY PROBLEM.

A very old friend, a Fleet street man who was through the war, has to lose all but one of his top teeth. This is, incidentally, one direct result of phosgene poison gas, which some military experts are now cracking up as a really humanitarian form of chivalrous warfare. He went the other day to interview his dentist, also pukka ex-service, and fixed what the flappers call “ a date.” The dentist consulted his engagement book, and decided on “ Wednesday week at 11 a.m. prompt.” _ My friend afterwards realised what neither he nor the dentist remembered at the time, that this was Armistice Day. So ho had prospects of being in a dental chair, and under gas again, at the solemn moment of the Silence. The haggard question was would the dentist pause, even amidst the extractions, and stand to attention, forceps in hand? Truly an awkward point. VERY SPECIAL.

I had lunch to-day with a Liverpool broker in the oil and tallow trades, and found him much amused at a trick played on him for over six years. He comes to town every week, and usually sees an old business friend from whom he buys certain oils. They have made a habit of adjourning to a certain wellknown city hotel, and discussing their business over short drinks. Tho Liverpool broker always orders a “ Martini,” and his old friend a “ special pink gin.” To-day, finding himself alone, he thought ho would try one of these “ special pink gins,” and gave his order, noticing' as he did so that the

waiter seemed a little surprised. When the drink arrived, he discovered why. Tho glass contained nothing but water and a little bitters. His friend, it seems, never drinks alcohol before sundown, and had invented this innocuous drink to avoid embarrassing his friend*