LONDON TOPICS

Evening Star, Issue 21292, 22 December 1932, Page 14

LONDON TOPICS

COMMUNIST DISORDERS November 10. GOVERNMENT AND THE REDS. Sober citizens are complaining that our policy towards Communist agitation exceeds tho limits of safe toleration. There is overwhelming evidence that the police, on whom reposes the duty of maintaining law and order in this country, are confronted by an elaborately planned and abundantly financed revolutionary conspiracy. During the Whitehall disorders even casual onlookers were aware of sinister activities. The would-be rioters had, in accordance with the latest mob shock tactics recommended by Moscow experts, split up into groups, and during the trouble it was apparent that definite 1 orders were being passed round ’by figures ’that flitted from group .to group. The police handled what might have developed into a menacing situation with admirable address, and mounted officers, using their staves effectively, were carefully picking out ringleaders. FOREIGN PROPAGANDA. The question urgently arises whether we ought any longer to allow overt or covert Communist activities and propaganda in our midst. Whether the Soviet leaders , of the Third International really expect to provoke serious civil upheaval here may be a doubtful point. Rut there can be no manner of doubt that, failing that, they hope to do us incalculable harm by gravely shaking our financial stability. The most amazing reports must be freely circulating abroad, because London newspapers are getting frantic inquiries from the Continent which suggest that foreigners believe pitched battles are taking place in the streets of London, and that the Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace are more or less in ruins. Grotesque though such suggestions are, they cannot be healthy from the point of view of British currency quotations. BOLSHEVISM, IN BEING. It is a pity ' Living My Life,’ the frank autobiography of the well-known Russian Anarchist, Emma Goldman, costs two guineas. But the Communist organisers of our hunger marchers, the well-fed battalions with the brand new boots and rucksacks, have ample funds to buy a few copies of this book, and thus enable their followers to read what Communism actually means , to the workers who are duped into fighting for it. Emma Goldman describes it, as she found it in Russia, as “ An autocracy more cruel than the Inquisition,” and she is a witness quite without capitalist leanings.” What cured her was the slaughter of tens of thousands of factory hands, all loyal Communists, who dared to criticise their working conditions. This ghastly episode is referred to by Moscow commissars as “ the liquidation of Kronstadt.” THE FRENCH DISARMAMENT PLAN. Sentimental, as opposed to realistic, pacifists must be slightly dizzy. France, reputed by them the only obstacle to disarmament, tables the only bona fide plan to that end yet put forward; and now comes a well-accredited rumour of opposition to that scheme by a group of M.P.s, headed by Mr Amery, and supported in the Cabinet by the Prime Minister’s special protege, Lord Londonderry. If this is, indeed, the case, and though much may be allowed for a Minister m close touch with glittering air marshals, Mr MacDonald must feel like addressing Henry the Fifth’s words to his Air Minister: “ And whatsoever cunning fiend has wrought upon them so preposterously must have the

voice in hell for excellence.” Public opinion in this country, even outside the London Zeppelin area, will hardly stand for the attitude attributed to our Air Ministry. THREE-PER-CENT. RUSH. London newspapers are jubilant about the success of the new 3 per cent. Government Conversion Loan. There were big queues waiting when the Bank of England’s loan office opened its doors, and in little over three hours those doors closed again, the required £300,000,000 having been over-sub-scribed. This works out at a million and a-half per minute, and there are two ways of looking at the phenomerion. Whilst it ought to be a wholesome corrective to foreign alarmists who believe we are on the eve of a revolution, it also indicates how loan are the existing enticements of industrial investment. Imagine what would have happened it a 3 per cent, conversion loan had been on offer ten years ago. There would have been no queues. But taxpayers can at least congratulate themselves that, thanks to this and the earlier Government flotations, a Budget saving of about £38,000,000 a year has been effected. NEW CUNARDERS. The best news for a long time would be that the Cunard Company, pioneer of Atlantic transport, ..is not striking its ensign to foreign rivals. The Government, though spending £6OO a head on making artificial jobs for unemployed, felt unable to assist the Cunard’s venture, but, taking advantage of the cheap money market, the company is now trying, with the banks and the city, to raise a long-term £6,000,000 loan. This would enable work to be resumed on the partially built boat on the Clyde, and also the laying down, almost certainly on the Tyne, of a sister ship. When the Lusitania was given to Glasgow the Mauretania was placed at Newcastle, and incidentally proved much the better boat. Such are the ramifications of huge ocean liner requirements that a real fillip would be given to other industries besides shipbuilding, and these two new Cunarders might help appreciably to set things going again in our workshops. DUKE OF CIUDAD RODRIGO. Some of his own countrymen may not recognise, under the above title, our British Duke of Wellington. But when his famous soldier ancestor drove Napoleon’s armies from the Peninsula, the Spanish Government of that epoch conferred that title on our Iron Duke, together with an estate near Granada, in token of the 'gratiude of the Dons for services faithfully rendered. The Granada estates are now scheduled, by the new llepublican rulers of Spain, amongst those for possible confiscation. It is a fine illustration that Republicans, like mules, have no memory on the ancestral side. Spanish “ Bolshies ” forget the Iron Duke just as Russian ones do their national debts. I suppose there may be diplomatic remonstrances about the high-handed treatment of the Duke of Wellington’s heirs, but what do stalwart political extremists care for diplomacy? NEXT ARMY CHIEF. Field-marshal Sir George Milne’s retirement as chief of the Imperial General ' Staff will not he raucli longer delayed. He is a capable and commonsense Scot, and his term in his important office has admirably tempered progressive Army development to the economic necessities. It is almost certain his successor will he General Sir Charles Harington known to all the Army as “ Tim,’ and perhaps the ablest brains it has had since Lord .Kitchener. “ Tim ” Harington’s staff work during the war was exemplary, and, when in charge at Chanak, he .displayed a tact and diplomacy, qualities not often highly developed in Brass Hats, of the highest order. I welcome “Tim’s” promotion, as Chief of Staff; for a persona] reason. He belongs to the King’s Liverpools, the old, “ eighth of foot, the pride of the line,” and we wear the same regimental neckties. MUSSOLINI AND NAPOLEON. ■ French susceptibilities appear not to have been greatly outraged by Mussolini’s serene assumption that Napoleon was more an Italian than a Frenchman. It is true that Napoleon was not born on French soil, and that he never ceased to talk French with a Corsican accent, but nobody could challenge his realistically Gallic psychology and outlook. Napoleon himself would have been very wrath with Mussolini. He hated being called Bonaparte, with an accentuated final vowel, in the Italian fashion, and always insisted on calling himself Bonaparte, with a silent final vowel, in the French manner. In the same way the great Richelieu’s successor, Cardinal Mazzarin, emphasised the French, rather than the native, accentuatiqn of his Italian name. But Paris can produce, in its Prefect of Police, M. Cliiappe, another Corsican who, both in stature and face, looks more like Napoleon than Mussolini himself. F.E, The bust of tlie first Lord Birkenhead, unveiled by Sir John Simon, will stand beside those of Gladstone, Salisbury, Curzon, and Asquith in the union’s famous debating hall. This tribute would F.E. most of all have prized. For be loved the union, tire scene of his happiest triumphs, and. to the end would drop in unheralded, listen to young Oxford conscientiously “ F.E.-jug,” and presently smite them hip and thigh in the authentic manner. He joined their supper parties, drank the Oxford brew, and shared their interests. F.E. modelled himself on Dr Johnson. He knew his Boswell by heart. With a little more of the doctor’s Spartan personal habit, the brilliant disciple, who shared his solid intellectual infallibility, might still have been with ns to-clav, helping his country along a difficult road. That constitutes the real tragedy of F.E. MAKER OF EGYPT. Sir Murdoch Macdonald, M.P., as president of the Institute of Civil Engineers, naturally selected for the subject of his inaugural address the irrigation of the Nile, in the development of which he took a distinguished part. He went to Egypt in 1898 as assistant on the Assuan Dam to the late Sir Maurice Eitzmanrice, and was afterwards in full charge, acting as Minister of Public Works to the Government. He spent twenty of his best years in the country, and he still visits it regularly in his .capacity as a consultant. He holds that, given sufficient water, Egypt, which would otherwise he desert to the extent ,of 95 per cent, has almost unlimited productive capacity, even after allowing a large part of its surplus water for the use of the Soudan. Sir Murdoch learned the elements of his profession in the service of the Highland Railway—-where the trouble is generally too much water —but for many years be has specialised in irrigation. FOUND WANTING. London lias tried a brief experiment of traffic control by mounted policemen, and rejected the innovation. It was an official theory that the.higher perch of the mounted constable would not only give him hotter visual control, lint render his signs more easily visible. This has not proved the case. Motorists

complain that thejr find it more difficult to follow tne mounted man’s signals than those of his dismounted confrere - of the white sleevelets. This is another reason for discontinuing mounted traffic control, and perhaps this one cuts most ice. It is expensive. But 1 regret that we are not to have any more mounted police regulating London traffic in the West End. It would have been fine, when horse traffic is taboo, to have horsed traffic controls. And I like the way, when in any emergency the mounted bobby gets out of Ids saddle to talk tq an erring motorist, his horse invariably strolls up. too, and peers over his master’s slionldcr with keen professional .interest. TWO KINDS. High Court judges have recently been outspoken on the subject of the law’s delays—a very ancient grievance and one mentioned even by the Prince of Denmark in his most hackneyed soliloquy. It is undoubtedly true that, such is the settled tradition of legal people, business often proceeds very tardily once the solicitors take over from the laity. But there is another sort of legal delay of which the most bitter complainants are lawyers themselves. These are hard times with most barristers. Only a few favourite names are being put on briefs worth having. And I hear, from several of my legal friends, not loud but deep complaints of fees held up by solicitors for a most unconscionable time. The victim is quite helpless, even though he may be metaphorically “on his uppers.” If the barrister hints at pressing for payment he knows he has seen his last brief from that firm. EASY PAINTING. London is full of ambitious mediocrities who would give their bank overdrafts to get-Sir John Lavery to paint them. Such a distinction carries with it not only - the bright hope of their portrait on the line at the Royal Academy, but a real social cachet. It settles the status of a man or a woman to be able casually to mention that he or she is sitting for Lavery. But there are exceptions to every rule, and Sir John Lavery has failed to coax Mr James Maxton to give him a sitting. Sir John’s artistic eye has not deceived him. Mr Maxton. glooming with rounded shoulders under his tangled skein of long jet black locks, is the most gicturesque personality in the present louse of Commons. And how easv to get a first-rate impressionist sketch of the Socialist leader! All that is necessary is to achieve a realistic mass effect of the Dantesque hair, and label it 1 “ James Maxton.” LONDON STADIUM. I hear that the L.C.C. has now passed the plans for the huge London sporting stadium which has been projected for some time. This structure, which is long overdue and is to be somewhat on the same lines as New York’s famous Madison Square Garden, will be located in Central London, on a site at present occupied by a big building, which is coming down. On its foundations will be built a structure with huge floor spacing, where all manner of indoor and outdoor sports can take place, and boxing. cycle racing, tennis, dancing, hockey," and skating be held under comfortalile and accessible conditions. The cost of the whole scheme is put at just about £1,000,000. Great secrecy is at present being observed about the proposal and those backing it, but it seems a really serious enterprise to equip London, at last, on the entertainment side of big sport. ' TALE OF TWO BEARS. Various writers have made the most of Sam and Barbara. These two Polar boars lived their lives at the London Zoo, and are now stuffed. In death and taxidermy they are not divided. Barbara succumbed first, and Sam, who turned down a new mate that the obliging Zoo authorities found for him. and turned her down with brutal emE basis, later died, too. These things appen even to Polar bears. And now, as the occasion of a recent sale of the stuffed remains at auction has demonstrated, Sam and' Barbara are being cracked up as the perfect example of Polar matrimonial felicity, Barbara as a devoted mother, and Sam as ' a ■widower who died romantically of a broken heart. I suppose it would be wrong of me to hint that Barbara had an incurable penchant for devouring her own babies, and Sam fell little short of being ah ursian Bluebeard. But the London gossip writers have made the pair of them out to have been Sunday school superintendents. LORD MAYOR’S SHOW. Judging by the crowded state of the streets and the joys of the thousands of youngsters who must hand on the tradition, the Lord Mavor’s Show, London’s oldest pageant, will survive a few more centuries. In deference to economy, it was a little shorter and less ornate than usual, but, over and above the gorgeous presence of the Lord Mayor in his Cinderella coach, we had military bands and uniforms and old-time industrial pageants, just nicely blended to please the populace without offending the pacifists. Nothing in the procession aroused more enthusiasm than a smart band of girl pipers, in tartan kilts, sonsie little glengarry bonnets with feathers, and chic hose-tops. They inarched like veterans, piped like Alan Break’s rival, and might have been passed bv the most hawkeyed R.S.M. of the Black Watch. Old Bill, the historic war bus, was there again, with a contingent of British legionaries, the latter much older nowadays, but still swinging along. Fleet street awarded the palm, however, to the Life Guards’ charger that conscientiously marked time with one upraised hoof to the trumpet fanfare.