LONDON TOPICS

Evening Star, Issue 21935, 23 January 1935, Page 9

LONDON TOPICS

NAVAL CONVERSATIONS [From Our Correspondent.] By Air Mail, December 27. The naval conversations between delegates of the United States, Japan, and ourselves, which have been in progress since Juno last, came to an end at the House of Commons last, week. Officially, there is no suggestion that the talks have broken down; they are merely declared to have reached a stage when it is felt that there should be an adjournment in order that the delegates may resume personal contact with their Governments, and the resulting situation can be fully analysed and further considered. It is agreed by all the representatives that the conversations have served a useful purpose. Though to the unofficial observer this purpose would appear to be mainly that of having afforded all sides an opportunity of realising how little hope there is of finding a basis of agreement, no word has been said as to when and where the next meetings may be held, and the adjournment consequently may be regarded as being on the Kathleen Mavourneen principle. In the meanwhile, however, these naval conversations have done nothing to make Japan reconsider her intention of denouncing the Washington Treaty. EMPIRE AIR MAIL SERVICES. The House of Commons last week allowed itself to become boyishly excited over Sir Philip Sassoon’s announcement of the bigger and faster Empire air mail services. There was something irresistibly thrilling in hearing a bald official statement to the effect that letters are to be carried to India in just over two days, in four days to the Cape, and within the week to Australia. It was possibly even more inspiring to be informed that this wonderful postal system is to be available for the same familiar three-halfpenny stamp that has to be affixed upon a letter to one’s nextdoof neighbour. Only the weight of the air mail letter is to be reduced to half an ounce. This will mean that papermakers will have to return to the manufacture of that flimsy stuff on which our Victorian grandmothers used to write to the children overseas. Sir Philip explained that by using the right quality of notepaper eight sides of correspondence could bo sent for one three-halfpenny stamp. The only disappointment was that the new service is not to be inaugurated now, ns apparently quite a number of Sir Philip’s hearers anticipated. In fact, there are still two years to wait before the full service will bo in operation, and before the Post Office can bring down the charges to the new level. Progress in the air has been so rapid that one cannot help wondering whether by the time the two years are up the schedule announced now may not appear hopelessly slow and antiquated. trade agreements.

Colonel Colville, the Secretary of the Overseas Trade Department, tells me that he will think himself lucky if he gets a fortnight’s holiday for Christmas. Part of it he hopes to spend with his chief, Mr Runcinian, at Ins home in the Island of Eigg, but he will have to be back in London early in January in view of the large number of trade agreements now being discussed. These affect British trade literally from China to Peru, the last-named country having recently decided to send a delegation to this country. Tho benefits derived from the agreements already in operation have been so satisfactory as to encourage an extension of the system. The department had a disappointment in not being able to conclude the negotiations with Poland before the holiday, but it is expected that tho outstanding points will be settled next month. ANTI-BANK CRUSADE. It is interesting to note that the chairmen of the banks are beginning

to protest against the attacks on these institutions; they evidently mean to be wicked enough to defend themselves. So long as demands for State control were limited to Sir Stafford Cripps and his friends they could be ignored, but if they are to be seriously supported by Mr Lloyd Georgo as part of his “ new plan ” a counter-agitation will be essential. Last General Election showed how sensitive the public is to any suggestion of an attack upon the banks, and if that becomes part of the Socialist policy that party may queer its own pitch, So far the banks have assumed that they could safely trust their record to speak for itself, but they are now being urged to adopt a less passive defence. TROUBLE IN BELGRADE. Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, who wears the tragic mantle of the late King Alexander, has anxious times ahead of him. He is a devoted patriot and an earnest worker whose great ambition is to reconcile his hostile Croat and Slovene subjects. In this task he had a firm helper in M. Jevtich, the Foreign Minister, who has just resigned his post. The resignation is the result of public resentment, carefully agitated by the hotheads, on account of M. Jevtich’s more progressive and enlightened outlook on European affairs in general and those of Yugoslavia in particular. Prince Paul may prove strong and diplomatic enough to carry through his ambitions, but events are not exactly favouring that hope. His position might at any moment become thoroughly difficult, if not impossible. WEST AUSTRALIA. I am told that the representatives of Western Australia, who are in this country to press tho claim of their State to secede from the Commonwealth of Australia, are well pleased with tbe suggestion that a House of Commons select committee should be appointed to consider whether the petition should be received. _ It is the most they expected at this stage. In view of the Australian Commonwealth Act and the Statute of Westminster, interference by the Imperial Parliament, if possible at all, is beset by many delicate constitutional questions. The delegates have stated their case with great moderation and cogfency, but the feeling here is that they should seek a remedy at Canberra rather than in London. The main grievance of the State is that it is hit both ways by the fiscal policy of the Commonwealth, which may suit the other States, but operates with great hardship on Western Australia, SAAR TROOPS. London papers emphasise the fact that Saar crowds watched the arrival of our troops in silence. Did Fleet street really expect the Germans to cheer and throw up their hats? But it is quite conceivable, Cockney mentality being what it is, if foreign troops came to London, as part of an international army of occupation, London crowds might start hurrahing. Germans, apart from not being built that way, are more intelligent. We must go back to tho Boxer expedition, I imagine, to find a parallel to such a conglomeration of army uniforms as now mingle in the Saar. There was nothing quite like it even during the war. There are British, Italian, Dutch, and Swedish troops in the Saar, and we may be sure they are all picked men. I back the Italians for panache, tho Swedes for physique, the Dutch for stolidity, and tbe British for bonhomie. If there is a scrap it is ranch more likely to be between the different foreign military contingents than with the local Germans. Esprit de corps is apt to be rather truculent on such occasions. DESERT TRAGEDY. Tho short and dramatic annals of the air have no more abrupt tragedy to tell than the disaster to the famous Flying Dutchman in the Syrian desert. This is the Douglas machine which took the great Melbourne air race in her stride as an interlude to regular passenger service, and pressed so hard upon the tail of the whiners. With three pas*

sengers and four members of the crew aboard, whilst carrying the Dutch Christmas mail to Batavia, she has crashed within 300 miles of Bagdad. There was an urgent 5.0.5., then ominous silence on the anxious ether, and now 11.A.F. planes have found the charred wreckage of the Douglas machine, with all aboard dead, lying on the desert. The theory is that she must have been struck by lightning, though it seems difficult to fit that in with the S.O.S. message. It is a cruel denouement to recent triumphs, and that tragic wreckage, with the lone and level sands stretching all around, has the aura of one of Shelley’s most memorable poems. Truly it is “ ad astra per arduum.” SIR A, SPICER. Sir Albert Spicer, who has died in his West End home at the age of eightyseven, was a splendid type of the oldfashioned Nonconformist Liberal. He was a director of a famous papermaking firm in the city, and after an active business career of sixty years retired ten years ago. He was .the senior exchairman of the Congregational Union, and for some time M.t*. for Central Hackney, and, as that bordered on the late Mr Horatio Bottomley’s constituency, he was in some degree brought into personal touch with that remarkable character. It must have been a highly incongruous association. “If I mix with you chaps,” commented the unabashed Horatio, “I shal have to turn over a new leaf!” It was as chairman of the Marconi Committee, before which L.G. figured _ so dramatically, that Sir . Albert achieved his greatest celebrity. A strict non-smoker till he reached the age of sixty, Sir Albert took to tobacco then in order not to lose touch with his sons. He was a firm disciple of the precept, now much discouraged by Harley Street, “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.”. SLIPPED PLEDGES. 'Apart from the formal and official dinners at which members of various battalions and other army units regularly seek reunion, there are no doubt many quite private dates kept. How many men, thrown together in the welter of the Great War and sharing the same epics, solemnly undertook to hold annual reunion if ever they got back to Blighty again? And how few, even of those who did manage to survive, have been able to fulfil their sentimental engagements! I can speak for a par ty of four n.c.o.s who met at a Boulogne rest camp after the Third Ypres Battle, and piously pledged themselves to a constant annual reunion after the war. So far as I know not one of the four even knows whether the other three are alive, and no meeting has ever taken place. But there must be some cases where the pledgetakers had better luck, and can occasionally meet to fight their battles over again, and enthuse upon the quality of army issue rum. ANOTHER WAR FILM. I have seen a very good film founded on this private reunion theme. It is, I believe, the work of ex-service men, and they certainly get plenty of realism into it. These reunionists of the film are the survivors of a mixed party' who huddled together one night in a shell hole in No Man’s Land. One of them, a colonel eventually, provisionally invites the others to dine at his country mansion. They all turn up, including the son of one man who was killed in the war. Varying fortunes have attended them. One man has done well. He is now a foreman. Another has hit the weather badly, but begs the colonel host not to insist on paying his railway fare, because it would spoil the bgi occasion for him, though he had to borrow the money to get there. It is the denouement that puts the crown on the whole story. It turns out that the admirable butler, who attends on the dinner guests, really owns the mansion, but has sympathetically lent it to the down-and-out colonel to enable him to keep his promise. NO-HAT PROBLEM. Some debate has arisen amongst those intresting people jvho write let-

ters to the newspapers concerning th» right etiquette of the no-hat fashion. How’ can a gentleman, it is asked, make adequate or polite salute to a lady if he cannot raise his hat ? Many solutions have been recommended. It i* suggested that the gentleman should salute wtih his hand. Not in the military manner, of course, since it S is a gross dereliction to give that form of salute unless properly dressed, which in the Army’s uncompromising view includes either a cap or a helmet of some kind, but in the more dramatic style borrowed by the disciples of Mussolini and Hitler from Ancient Rome. It is also urged that Parliament having decreed sex equality, nowadays a mod and a smile should suffice.

Happily the problem has been fap solved by an eighteenth century patrician. On the authority of ‘ Wraxall’s Memoirs ’ we are told how Mr Darner, afterwards Earl of Dorchester, was talking to an eminent solicitor one raw cold morning at fh« corner of Lower Brook street. Lady Melbourne passed in her carriage, and bowed to Mr Darner. The latter. “ being unwilling to take off his own hat in the severe state of the atmosphere,” instantly made free with the eminent solicitor’s. Wraxall tells us that the lawyer, having his back to Lady Melbourne, was not a little surprise at finding himself thus made the involuntary instrument of Mr Darner's good breeding, but the latter replaced the hat on its owner’s head “ with many apologies for the freedom.” A perfect example of noblesse oblige, and aii invaluable hint to the no-hat brigade.