LONDON TOPICS

Evening Star, Issue 21819, 7 September 1934, Page 13

LONDON TOPICS

[From Our Correspondent.] July 26. THIS FREEDOM. Maybe our existing order of society is doomed not to survive the Great War’s upheaval. Revolutionary changes in life are clearly germinating. How will the world solve the problem of mechanical displacement of human labour? The accepted idea is by drastic reduction in working hours. President Roosevelt’s young lieutenant, Mr H. L. Hopkins, who is now in London, adopts this view. Soon nobody, he says, will work more than thirty hours a week At once the problem arises how people will then employ their ampler leisure? Shall we have three bank holidays a week or a half one every day ? Mr Hopkins drops an ominous hint. One of the major tasks of the State, he tells us, will be to organise people’s leisure. Bureaucratic conscription, in other words, not merely for our work, but for our playtime also. The prospect does*not allure me. MORE AIR SQUADRONS. The Government, I understand, regards its programme of Air Force expansion. as announced by Mr Baldwin and Lord Londonderry, rather as a peace move than as the entry upon any new race in armaments. The level to which our national defence forces have been allowed to fall could only be justified on the assumption of some international agreement on limitations being reached. Hopes of some convention have not yet been abandoned by the Government, but it would be folly to go on pretending that the outlook is promising. It is also common knowledge in Europe that we have carried our disarmament gesture to such a point as leaves us hardly in a position to fulfil our commitments under the League Covenant and the Locarno Pact. To continue in that position is the most likely way of making other countries continue to pile up their military strength. With the Air Force now envisaged, and with the additions to our military and naval strength that will doubtless be forthcoming, the world will once more know that we are in a position not only to defend ourselves, but also to fufil such international obligations as we have entered upon by treaty. Such knowledge is more likely to act as a deterrent than as an incentive to others. RUSSIA’S PEACE GESTURE. M. Maisky, I learn, has intimated to the Foreign Office Russia’s readiness to enter upon the mutual security guarantees expected of her under the Eastern Locarno proposals. In other words, the Soviet will agree to support France against German aggression, or Germany against French aggression. It was, of course, confidently believed hero that M. Barthou was assured of Russia’s willingness to come into 'the scheme before he it wise to give publicity to.it; but this is the first official confirmation that has come from a Soviet representative. The acknowledgment carries the plan a long step in the direction of achievement. It entirely knocks any case that Germany could make for refusal from under her feet. On the one hand, Germany now has France’s offer to admit her equality of rights as a European Power, which is in itself tantamount to a revision of the Versailles Treaty, and on the other Russia’s guarantee of security. To stand out of the proposals in such circumstances must place Germany in the wrong to such an extent as she can never hope to right, for it would disclose to the world that it is neither security nor equality of right she is seeking, but dominance. WITH LOADED DICE. All through the Brighton trunk murder inquiries the police have been absurdly handicapped. As the sequel to a recent case a new code of. police regulations was drafted. This puts the police in such a position, so far as questioning suspects is concerned, that the dice are now loaded in favour of the criminal every time. Had the new code been in existence at that date it would have been utterlv impossible for the police to have secured any arrest in the case of the murder of P.C. Gutteridge, for which two men were subsequently hanged. The grotesque existing situation is that if a policeman wants to question a suspect he must first warn him that he need not answer, and also that, though his presence may be desired at the police station, ho need not go there unless he wants to. In no other country in the world do such regulations obtain. POLICE SNOWED UNDER. * In handling the trunk murder, moreover, Scotland Yard may have missed the services of those senior officers recently retired. This is no reflection on the energy or ability of the very able men who have had charge of the case. It is simply a question of experience in such investigations. Every murder produces, as any police expert knows only too well, a distracting crop of suggested dues, mistaken or imaginary, from all kinds of cranks and border-line cases. Early in the Brighton case the unusual course was adopted of appealing to the public to inform the police of any facts which might seem suspicious or helpful. The inevitable response was such that almost every police station in the kingdom was snowed under with distracting theories. I am told it would have needed a staff as ffiig as that at the General Post Office to cope with this baffling avalanche. HIRED PLANES. One enterprising aviation firm has realised that the number of qualified air pilots.is steadily increasing in this country, but increasing out of all proportion to the number of new planes that are being sold. In other words, there are many more people who could fly a plane than who can afford to buy_ one in order to do so. To meet this situation the firm in question now_ advertises planes for hire, just like.private cars, and I am told the tariff works out at a mere fraction of what it would cost to run your own machine. A charge ol £3 per day seems to me quite moderate in comparison with car-hiring terms, especially taking into consideration the much bigger range of travel in a plane as well as the risks of a crash, I trust the utmost stringency will be observed as to the plane hirer’s credentials and qualifications; otherwise we shall be having as many air as road casualties XJretty soon. MERSEY TUNNEL. The Mersey tunnel, opened so felicitously hy King George and called Quoensway in honour of Queen Mary, will have to attract tremendous traffic to justify its £8,000,000 cost. But it is a wonderful engineering feat, worthy to rank, as the King ranked it, with the most famous achievements in bridgebuilding. But a bridge may be a thing of beauty as well as utility, whereas the sesthetic merits of a tunnel are negli-

gible. The Mersey tunnel links for ordinary wheeled traffic Lancashire and Cheshire beneath the mile-wide estuary of Liverpool’s river. It may have farreaching and unexpected effects on local life. It might even go some way towards restoring to Cheshire the prestige it enjoyed in days when Liverpool was a few fishing huts, and the main port for Ireland was what is now a tiny village on the Dee. In fine weather, however, most people will prefer to cross the Mersey on one of the admirable ferry boats that had their place in the Zeebrugge epic. THAT NEW UNIFORM. Having dithered over it for two years the War Office is about to settle the questiou of the proposed new Army uniform. This task will be undertaken by a conclave of very select brass hats, but whether they will be a law unto themselves, as is the brass hat wont, or will pay any attention to what other ranks think, are doubtful points. All the soldiers I know, past and present, unanimously loathe the new sartorial effects, which rather suggest tailoring ideas by Mr Epstein. No regiment on earth could even pretend to look smart, let alone be smart, attired in such a guise. It makes them look not like soldiers, but like a mob of amateur hikers with strong pacifist leanings. I should imagine it would kill recruiting dead. Our convict dress is smarter. Personally I would rather be seen in the uniform of the Ancient Order of Buffaloes. STRANGEST STRIKE. I hear that the professional yachtsmen who refused Mr Sopwith’s generous terms to sail Endeavour in her America’s Cup races are now very sorry for themselves. It would be interesting to know the inner history of this trouble, for this strike looks the strangest ever recorded. The pay was well above the usual scale, the chance was one for which most sailors would pawn their earrings, and it was certain that for every man who refused to 'go hundreds would eagerly volunteer. Endeavour will now sail with an amateur crew, except the captain and mates, but they are all first-class amateurs, who will jump to it with alacrity. I am told that apart from their realisation that they have thrown away a fine job and a gay adventure the strikers are finding themselves distinctly not popular in longshore circles. Mr Sopwith wins hands down * A BIG SCREW. Some few years ago, when one of the big liners wanted a new propeller blade the latter was despatched by road on motor lorries. There was no possibility of handling in this way the propeller blades for the giant new Cunarder now building at Glasgow, but still known only by its Army number as “ 534.” This leviathan’s propeller is the biggest in existence, and measures 16ft from tip to tip of its blades. Its weight is thirty-five tons. The only practicable means of carting it round to the Clyde from London was by water, and by water it has gone. A crowd of Press photographers immortalised the swinging of the huge blade from quay to ship, and a friend who witnessed the Homeric operation said it looked, when in the air with the sun on its new bronze, exactly like a giant butterfly. SEA CHANGE, A letter has just reached me from a youngster in Nairobi. I knew him in London, a good Rugger player and smart H.A.C. man, whose orbit moved from an : office desk in Lombard street to a boarding house in Lee Green. In his letter he reports, during his first fortnight in Nairobi, spotting giraffe, buffalo, buck, wildebeeste, zebra, wild pig, hyena, jackal, and one lioness. Most of them were within four miles of Nairobi, and “ tho lioness we probably wouldn’t have seen if we hadn’t almost run into it at night in a car. Ho looks forward to moving 130 miles further up country to Nakuru, where there is a 26-mile lake “ absolutely pink with flamingoes.” He has joined the local defence force, but his admiration goes out to the native King’s African Rifles. “ The smartest lot I have ever seen. Quito seriously, the Guards could show them nothing.” OFFICIAL JAMBOREES. Discussing these smartly-drilled and well-disciplined K.A.R. warriors, my young friend mentions that they have one “ wonderful idea ” which _he thinks might with advantage bo copied in the British Army. “ Ever so often the native soldiers are allowed to have an ‘ ngoma,’ which is only another name for an organised beano. They light huge bonfires, take off all their clothes, dance like fiends, and get blotto-de-luxe. They are then carried off to bed where possible, and wake up as fit as fiddles next morning.” I am not sure our own Guards have not a somewhat similar institution on more restrained lines. Woebetide the Guardsman who gets drunk out of barracks. But the man in barracks and off duty who gets busy with tho beer, so long as he does not make himself conspicuously a nuisance, is given the Nelsonic eye. G.B.S. AGAIN. What dull pretentious dogs these London dramatic critics are! In vain Mr Shaw casts before them the rippling pearls of fun in his. The Six of Calais,’ written in holiday mood from a liner’s deckchair and hugely enjoyed by a Regent’s Park open-air audience. The critics go on napping all the losers and missing all the winners, and when not pointing out how much better they could have done Shakespeare’s stuff, patronise G.B.S. as a “flippant” jester. Mr Shaw’s version of the Calais episode is an Olympian joke, clean over the heads of the London critics, but probably as true to history as it certainly is to psychology. Not since Mrs Pat Campbell fluttered the dovecotes with her “ not bloody likely ” have we had a more uproarious theatre moment than when Miss Neilson-Terry, as the queen, suavely asks Mr Charles Carson, as the king: “ Have you put your flannel belly belt on, dearest?” BRIGHTER CRICKET. Even the M.0.0.’s Olympian dignity can hardly ignore demands for brighter cricket from people like Lord Midleton and Lord Ullswatcr. The desire is. that Bitting on the splice shall be < penalised, and the batsman made to hit the ball. I agree that safety first has ruined what is ironically called < first-class cricket, but that does not distress me, because I never watch it, being quite content with club and village cricket, which is still the same old joyously adventurous and thrilling summer game. I would never hesitate between the chance to see, England v. Australia or Oxted v, Merston. The village dog fight for me every time, and I find that most of my friends, oven Fleet street cricket experts who have to attend at Lord’s on business, emphatically share this view. But any cricketer can tell the M.C.C. how to euro the ills from which county cricket suffers. PADDED OAFS. The troubles of so-called first-class cricket, oven the leg theory unpleasantness, all arise from the absurd Ibw rule. No batsman should be allowed to play a ball with his pads instead of his bat* If a ball that hits

his pads,/ whether straight or not, might have hit the wickets, that batsman’s place is back in the pavilion. If this were the law, and all pitches were natural _ ones, first-class cricket would rank with first-class Rugger. Nobody E refers to watch minor rather than rst-class Rugger matches. My doctor, a full-blooded Irishman, who was with the cavalry in_France, has another idea. He enthusiastically desires the abolition of all pads. That, he thinks, would “ make ’em ,play the game.” But this is nearly as drastic as Mr Bernard Shaw’s suggestion for brighter horse racing. Which is that the last jockey home should be shot in his saddle. NIMRODS.

What is known as the United Hunts’ Club has at last fpund suitable, promises for its clubhouse. The club has obtained a lease of 17 Upper Grosvenor place, the owner of which was Mr Ronald Hambro. Now the club has been duly launched it is assured of a k successful career. One of its principal promoters is Miss Eva Fenton, who started the Imperial Rifle Club in Cork street before the war- and used to shoot regularly at the Bislcy meeting. Quite a substantial number of the men and women masters of hunts have applied for membership. It is suggested in some quarters that, in view of the nature of the membership, the club might appropriately have been named the Nimrod Chib. The United Hunts will eh joy all the usual amenities of a West End social club, with the added attraction that its members will always have one topic at least in common.