LONDON TOPICS

Evening Star, Issue 21810, 28 August 1934, Page 8

LONDON TOPICS

[From Our Cobresposdest.] LONDON, July 19. MAKING WAR IMPOSSIBLE. The new orientation of European politics, ns revealed by Sir John Simon, sounds almost too good to be possible. The House of Commons was so startled by some of the more unexpected implications of M. Barthou’s “ Eastern Locarno ” as almost to forget its cheers. What is most astonishing is the apparently complete change of heart that has come over France in her regard towards Germany. That she is how ready to acknowledge Germany’s equality of rights in a security regime is a tremendous step in the right direction from the attitude presented by M. Barthou when he was last at Geneva. Further progress must now largely depend upon German reactions to the proposals; but the Hitler regime must be oven more pigheaded than its enemies declare it to be if the offer does not meet with acceptance in that quarter. Cynics may say that no security pact, will ever guarantee the preservation of peace; but such intertwining obligations as those envisaged by M. Barthou would materially delay any outbreak of war. In the event of an international dispute arising it would take the Powers a month or so to find out with whom they were to begin hostilities, and that, if anything, should save the situation. SUGAR AND SHIPS. Lord Glasgow, a retired captain, R.N., makes a strong plea for more generous treatment by the Government of bur sorely pressed mercantile marine. He mentioned the crucial service rendered by its ships and seamen during tho war, and suggests that a two million subsidy, with stiff conditions as to scrapping old vessels, compares badly with the Government’s £3,000,000 subsidy to the beet industry. It is a question of weighing, in terms of national utility or safety, 'ships against sugar, keels against refineries, common sense should tell us that the one is merely a commercial experiment, the other a national necessity. That is the _ worst of financial profligacy, whether in one form or another. It leaves us no margin, with taxation at its present level, • tor things that are vital. GERMANY TO-DAY. Dr Compton-Ricket, of London University, after a holiday in Germany, draws anything but a reassuring picture of the Hitlerised Fatherland. His basic impressions are, he tells us, fear ‘ and mass hysteria. The fear is a purely German concern. If Germans prefer • to scrap their new parliamentary system and dwell in constant dread of sublimated thuggism, that is their affair. But Dr Compton-Ricket, who is ho flippant observer, speaks of a\ general attitude tbwards war as being both desirable and inevitable. “ The gospel of Hitler,” he says, “is to the majority what the Bible is to the Protestant and the church to the Catholic.” If his reading of the situation is correct, as it is certainly Unbiased, and a warworshipping mass hysteria is loose in Germany, it may be just as well for us to have a hard and fast understanding with France as to action in certain eventualities. PRINCE RUPPRECHT. ”■ I am told that, among foreign diplomats in London, the feeling is growing that monarchy will be re-established in Germany and that the throne will he ■ offered to Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, Unlike the HohenZollCrns, he has strictly abstained from all political activities since the war, and in addition to his military prestige he enjoys great personal popularity. The fact that he is .a Roman Catholic might cause some headshakifag among the Protestants r.f , Germany and perhaps of other countries. Prince Rupprecht is regarded by enthusiastic Jacobites as the legitimate king of Great Britain, but 1 have never heard that he took a serious view of that claim, which is based on his descent from Mary of Modena. THE LATE EARL HAIG’S PRIVATE- DIARIES. ■A piquant situation arises as the result of Mr Lloyd George’s attacks in his latest memoirs, on Field-marshal Earl Haig and other distinguished army lead , ers. Mr Duff Cooper, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, is . writing the authorised life of her husband for Countess Haig, and it is suggested that the courts should be asked! to set • aside Earl Haig’s will to the extent of allowing his biographer to consult the earl’s private diaries kept carefully all through the war, which _ were left to the British Musewi with a proviso that they must not be pub- ‘ lished for a term of years. How the courts may regard this question is a moot point, but there is a strong feeling that the attacked Field-marshal should be allowed to give his own answer. REMOVING THE “ SHOP! ” There is talk in service circles of a possible decision’ by the War Office cx- • perts to remove Woolwich Arsenal to some other and probably distant part of the country. “ The Shop,” as they always call it in the army and navy, has been at Woolwich for centuries. Certainly it must have been well established in Armada days. The suggestion that it might close down to reopen elsewhere; is for Londoners, and especially for people in Woolwich, a sensational one. The reason why such action is now being discussed by the military experts in Whitehall, is in order to remove a vital military factory as far as possible from enemy bombing raids. During the war German Zepps and planes tried persistently to “get” Woolwich Arsenal, and once or twice came near enough to doing it. The London suburbs adjoining the Arsenal had anything bur, a happy time on raid nights, “WHITE MAN’S GRAVE.” , _ In former days West Africa had a sinister reputation as “ the white man’s grave,” It is no longer deserved. Statistics at the Colonial Office show that the death-rate among civil servants, which formerly was as high as twenty-eight per thousand, has fallen, to 3.6. There is no mystery about the improvement; it is entirely the result of better drainage, abundant quinine, and the adoption of precautions which Sir Patrick Manson andother pioneers of tropical medicine have devised. A friend of mine, who lived there for many years, predicts that for those who like heat, the West Coast of Africa will one day become a holiday resort. Every year malaria is having its frontiers driven ■ further inland. WORSE THAN WAR. In the first week of tho new Minister of Transport’s stewardship our average of road fatalities has gone up from just.over seven to Well over nine thousand .deaths ,a year. At tho same time minor injuries, which may often be . worse than death, have mounted from just over two to nearly three hundred thousand a year. Little wonder if Mr Hore t ' ’ i, enthusiastic motorist though ho. be, gets a

little rattled, and pains the motoring interests by talking of “ mass murder on the roads.” Such conditions a generation ago would have staggered our humanity, and brought down the strongest Ministry ever formed. Our roads are now in sober fact more dangerous thn main-line railway tracks, and nearly as deadly as front-line trenches. With our motoring statistics, our delegates at the Geneva disarmament talks must begin to feel a bit silly. SLOWER. Aviation enthusiasts distinctly critical of the race for the King’s Cup. The contention is that the event, dignified by the royal prize, does not produce the results it ought to. If the records of the Schneider Cup' race arc studied, it will be found that each year showed a marked increase in the winning speed, and that the contrast over any period of years was positively startling. The first race was won, if f. (remember rightly, at under 100 miles per hour, and the last at over 400 miles per hour. But the winner of this year’s King’s Cup showed a speed or only 138 miles per hour, whereas the winner of eleven years ago put up 149 miles per hour. This is not progression, but retrogression, and the suggestion is that the system of handicapping ought to be revised. At present it puts a premium bn slow and antiquated machines. An aerial derby ought not to be won by selling platers. WHISTLER. If he were still alive in the flesh as well as on canvas, James Mac Neill Whistler, perhaps the only great painter America has ever produced, would be a hundred years old this week._ Professor Tonka, or the Slade School, in the days before he abandoned medicine for art, actually knew him. To me Whistler always seems the G.B.S. of art. They have much in common besides that fiercely controversial spirit, more mellowed in the writer and more enevenomed in the painter, which exemplifies Mr Shaw’s axiom: “ Who says artist says duellist.” Whistler is probably remembered, except among real art connoisseurs, more for his acid wit than for his incomparable paintings. But every time I look at his picture of Waterloo Bridge 1 recall with exultation Whistler’s retort to the lady who said she had never seen it look like that. “ No, madame, but don’t you wish you, could 1” ; LORD RUNCIMAN. We have no sturdier veteran in all England than Lord Runciman, now in his eighty-eighth year, and still well able to enjoy life or lead in the singing of an old sea shanty. Lord Runciman, who was a sailor, before he became a ship owner, •is still a devoted, yachtsman, and the salt sea is in his blood. His was the distinction, when he was elected an M.P. for the Hartlepools in 1914, of being piloted up the floor at Westminster by bis own son, then President of the Board of Agriculture, but now head of the Board of Trade, and one of the ablest members of the present Cabinet. To show the sort of gay adventurer the octogenarian peer is, one need but mention that, at the age of eighty-three, he made his first aeroplane flight. On this memorable occasion he was again piloted by a relative, Mr Leslie Runciman, his oldest grandson, and a North Country airman. A.D.D.G. I have often wondered what happens to all the war-time A.D.D.G.s in peace. Now I have traced one distinguished example, Mr Ashley Cooper, who at the age of forty-six is governor of the Hudson Bay Company, and was an A.D.D.G. in France during the war. He was wounded whilst serving with the gunners, and subsequently became assist ant-deputy director-general of the Trench Warfare Department. He is now engaged on the peacetime equivalent of a froht-line inspection, visiting all the company’s fur stores and other manifold possessions in the Canadian North-west. This is the first time a Hudson Bay governor has done such an itinerary as this, and it shows that an army training has its practical uses even for commercial life. It must also, incidentally, be a most fascinating tour to make. DUST, I should say that the First* Commissioner of Works has only two feasible policies in the matter of Rotten Row. Either he must permit that famous Hyde Park riding rendezvous to be well watered as usual, or prohibit its further use by horse riders for the time being. I was walking along the footpath beside the Row to-day. and every time a rider cantered past nis horsed hoofs threw up clouds of dust that covered pedestrians and other, riders like a tancolour snowstorm. Never before, has Hyde Park’s recognised society riding ground been jeopardised in this way. Lord Charles Beresford, the famous old admiral, once won a smart bet over Rotten Row. No vehicle whatever is permitted to drive, in the Row, which is exclusively for riders. Admiral Lord Charles bet a club friend he would drive a horse and cart from end to end at midday without being pulled up. He won his bet. But the vehicle he drove was the park watering cart! DEMOCRACY AND ART Whatever may be the case in politics, democracy is emphatically the worst possible dictator in art questions. Innumerable instances might be cited. Epstein’s masterpieces, acclaimed by artists of all countries, have been tarred and feathered by popular opinion. A recent example is St. Saviour’s Church at Eltham. This arresting piece of futurist architecture aroused almost ferocity of abuse locally. It has even extended to the length of disfiguring the walls and smashing the windows of the church. Now, however, an expert jury manned by the Royal Institute of British Architects has declared St. Saviour’s, Eltham, to be the most meritorious building recently erected within eight miles of Charing Cross—-the exact period of comparison is three years—and has awarded its architect a muchcoveted professional distinction. So much for the vox popiili in matters of pure esthetics. QUEER STRIKE. The strike by the crew of Mr Sopwith’s £30,000 yacht Endeavour, the challenger for the America’s Cup, must have startled and dismayed all the old and young yachting enthusiasts who haunt our island ports. It will be a tragedy if it loses Endeavour the big prize for which she has been built and launched. Though plenty of amateur hands may bo available, the point is whether these will be quite so efficient and seaworthy as the professional yachtsmen. Tho queer thing is that, ‘in any yachting town you could mention there must be scores of sturdy professional yachtsmen who would jump at the job at less than the pay rejected by the strikers. That, by the way,. seems to have been handsome. The yachting season is nearly over,, yachts will.soon be laid up again, and hero is a chance to mako a few months’ extra pay, whilst also racing for the famous America’s Cup. The thing is almost incredible. ETON AND HARROW.

The Eton and Harrow cricket match for any sporting interest has become ns monotonous as the ’Varsity boat race. Yet the crowds each year arc just us big and fashionable as over. At Lord’s on these festivals one may

view the finest display of society’s flappers ever assembled anywhere—- “ Rosebuds set with little wilful lipsticks and sweet as soir de Paris can make them!” On the present occasion tho weather conditions were distinctly unfavourable, both for the rosebuds and their papas. A thunderstorm does not improve expensive summery gowns, nor does its hothouse temperature assist the wearers of sweltering top hats and frock coats. Wellington never said that the battles of England were won on the playing fields of Eton, though Fleet street will believe lie did to the crack of doom. As 1 gazed on tho hot and perspiring public schools papas at Lord’s, however, I realised how our English knights stood the Palestine temperature in suits of -'ail armour, ft must be hereditary.