LONDON TOPICS

Evening Star, Issue 22685, 26 June 1937, Page 19

LONDON TOPICS

BRITISH SECURITY FIRST TWELVE-INGH GUN DIPLOMACY [From Our Correspondent. 1 (By Air Mail.) June 3. Those in touch with the Imperial Conference sense a significant change in its attitude towards Geneva and the League. Our Dominion statesmen now in London have heard from Mr Eden the full inside history, of which revelation cannot yet he made to the general public, of events during the tense ItaloAbyssinian crisis, and also of the international psychology that developed amongst the Genova delegates. More widely known, these facts might help to explode an intolerable amount of dangerous emotional cant. Briefly, the Imperial Conference outlook on the world situation is that, whilst loyally supporting Geneva as a potential rallying ground for pacifist sentiment, the British Empire's security must be guaranteed exclusively by its own disciplined solidarity and co-opera-tive resources. No other nation in Europe, except ourselves-, would fight in a cause that did not directly and vitally concern its own national existence. That is the long and shor.t of it now. EMIGRATION PLANS. After tlie war an active emigration policy was urged upon our Home Government by clear-visioned statesmen who saw the economic slump coming. For various reasons, though repeated efforts were made to get things moving, very little was actually accomplished. The blizzard hit the oversew dominions almost as hard as it did this countrv and no possibility seemed to exist of developing emigration under feasible auspices. For more than 10 years now nothing has been done. But the Dominion Secretary and the dominion statesmen now in London have been discussing the problem from a new angle. Farm schools and family settlements are now the favoured approach. The former are, however, a much simpler and easier problem than the latter. Financial difficulties are not the only ones, but both our own and the dominion Governments are fully alive to the mutual advantage of some workable scheme. THIS SPANISH IMBROGLIO. Mr Eden’s ambitious bid to extend the Spanish non-intervention agreement and secure the withdrawal of all foreign contingents from the peninsula did more credit to his courage than his judgment. Allowing for certain fairly wide loopholes, the non-intervention plan may be working satisfactorily, though it has already cost us the lives of some good seamen and considerable expense. But withdrawal of all foreign troops, with or without equipment, presented a far more difficult problem. It is hard to convince Franco’s German and Italian backers that if they recall their people France and Russia will do the same effectually, and that there will be no further infiltration via the FrancoSpanish frontier. Moreover, as Berlin and Rome have not failed to point out, foreign propaganda agents are just as vital as foreign troops. Will Moscow recall her agents, including the Soviet Ambassador, who has played a leading role in gingering up the Madrid Government's activities?

There is no saying how far the German fat may be in the Spanish fire as the result of recent happenings. On Monday the Nazi ensign floated halfmast above the German Embassy in London, outside which in August, 1914. a crowd of German reservists greeted the declaration of war with shouts of “ Hoch der Kaiser!” Is tragic history about to repeat itself so soon? Such a tangle of lies .surrounds all the news from Spain that it is hard to get the vital facts. That Spanish Government planes bombed the German pocket battleship Deutschland, causing serious casualties to her crew, is certain. But we have yet to ascertain whether, as the Germans allege, that attack was unprovoked or whether, as the Spanish Government states, the warship’s antiaircraft batteries opened fire on the planes first. The answer makes all the difference, to the righteousness or otherwise of Germany’s reprisal bombardment of Almeria. UNCLE STANLEY.

There are happy occasions when events shape themselves to happen appropriately. A really admirable instance was Mr Baldwin’s last appearance in the old familiar dowdy setting of the House of Commons. His final valedictory act as retiring Prime Minister, before shaking off for ever the dust of that arena, was to announce that M.P.s’ salaries will in future be not £4OO but £6OO per annum. This largesse Mr Baldwin quietly indicated with that confidential air of informal avuncular benevolence which so well becomes him. The manner of it was that of the popular uncle handing round bright new half-crowns to all his favourite nephew’s small-boy cronies after a pleasant visit to the old school. The £4-a-week rise was received by the House of Commons without acclamation and by the public without comment, except for a man in my compartment on the way to town. “ Six hundred pounds is too little for what M.P.s should be,” he said; “£4OO too much for what they are! ”■ MR CHAMBERLAIN’S CABINET. Mr Neville Chamberlain’s new Cabinet has not escaped criticism even in the Press. But by far the most severe criticism has been heard viva voce in the big dubs. Admittedly the old fogies of Pall Mall and St. James’s may tend to exaggerate the merits of the illustrious political past at the expense of the not particularly distinguished present. Yet there does seem some sort of discrepancy between, say, the late Lord Haldane at the War Office and Mr Hore-Belisha, or between Earl (Balfour or Mr Churchill at the Admiralty and Mr Duff-Cooper. Sir John Simon and Sir Kingsley AVood are perhaps the only members of Mr Chamberlain’s Cabinet whose status comes near the high level of pre-war days in Cabinet personnel. But the critics might ask themselves this question: If some of the Ministers of today seem inadequate, where are more distinguished ones to be found ? The truth is that Westminster no longer attracts the outstanding brains of the kingdom. AIR MISGIVINGS, Are we quite so efficiently pre-emi-nent in the air as we make a habit of boasting that we are. Seventeen Jives lost in flying mishaps last week-end is perhaps not very formidable when nieasnred by onr year-in-vear-out weekly average of one hundred and fifty dead on the roads, but the arguments used to justify our excessive road casualty lists, as compared with neighbouring countries, cannot be applied to flying accidents. Some of our air casualties are undoubtedly due to stunt flying by the R.A.F. The public would like impartial confirmation of the brass hat

theory that such risky manoeuvres are really essential to proper training of pilot's for air fighting. It is hard to see why these should be more necessary for the R.A.F. than for the R.N. But this is not all. Over recent years our long-distance flight enterprises appear to have lacked the high-pressure efficiency of some notable foreign achievements. The air is about the last place in which to build a fool’s paradise. BUS STRIKE REFLECTIONS. Everybody concerned shares some part of the blame for a bus strike which cost all-in at least a million sterling and caused great public inconvenience. The Transport Board’s mistake was the quite unnecessary speed-ing-up schedule, which put the men’s neiwes on edge and made them read'ly amenable to alert agitators. The Transport Ministry’s futility was, as a body pledged to safety first on the roads, in agreeing to this step. The Transport Union’s executive blundered in allowing a handful of extremists to take the law into their own hands, bring the men out on a mere show of hands, and not on a formal ballot, and waste over £IOO,OOO of a million workers’ reserve fund in achieving nothing on behalf of a mere 25,000. Finally, the busmen were greatly at fault in allowing themselves to be stampeded into a false position by gangster tactics against the earnest advice of their trusted leaders. A general melange of muddle. UP THE POLE. In the Moskow make-up there is a strong strain of what psycho-analysts call “ exhibitionism ” but schoolboys designate as “ swank.” Hence all the ado over the Soviet’s _ “ annexation ” of the North Pole. It is 28 years since Admiral Peary made the Stars and Stripes the first ensign ever hoisted at the North Pole, and 11 since his compatriot, Commander Byrd, flew over that magnetic spot. The development of flying has, since the days of the earlier Arctic expeditions, turned what used to be a desperate epic into no .more than a thrilling adventure. Now we have a platoon or 27 Russians, all hall marked Red Communists, foregathered there in a sort of scientificpolitical picnic ipartj', and no doubt the Red Flag is floating amidst the frozen desolation for the edification of Polar bears and other habitues. But Moscow raises a fine controversial hare by stating that its picnickers have moved away slightly to the west of the North Pole. Geographers hold there is only one possible direction in which anyone could move from the North Pole, and that is duo south, RAPID RISE. Lord Dunglass, who is following Mr Neville Chamberlain to 10 Downing Street as private secretary, has made rapid progress in the political world. He is only 33, became an M.P. so recently as 1931, the year of the Labour Party’s debacle, and married a daughter of Dr Alington, now Dean of Durham, but formerly bead master of Eton. Lord Dunglass’s maiden speech in the House of Commons was enlivened by one good story, which made a real appeal to the humour of that assembly. An orator at a South African political meeting declared that all the country needed was a better water supply and a better class of settler. At which the inevitable heckler at the back of the hall interpolated: “Yes, and that’s all that’s wrong with Hell! ” A Prime Minister whose private secretary tells a story like that cannot be wholly devoid of a sense of fun. EMIR ABDULLAH, Amongst last week’s departing Coronation visitors, London said adieu to the Emir Abdullah of Transjordan. Lawrence of Arabia gives ns a vivid vignette of this highly cultured Desert Prince in his ‘ Seven Pillars.’ He played an important part in the Arab revolt against Turkish rule, which Lawrence inspired and controlled so brilliantly, and which did so much to make Allenhy’s Syrian march the triumphant success it proved. At first Lawrence had 'Abdullah in mind for leader of the Arab tribesmen, but finally decided on his brother Feisal, who afterwards became King of Iraq. The Emir Abdullah is passionately devoted to poetry and music, and on this London visit brought with him, as a gift for Queen Mary, a magnificent Persian mirror, 500 years old, and inscribed with extracts from poets and the Koran. To King George he presented a golden jewelled dagger, replica of one he wears at his own waist, and a gold loving cup. In London he met Haile Selassie, and on his journey home will see Kemal Ataturk. SUPERPAUSE. In recent years one of the big dramatic thrills of Malvern’s Festival has been some new Shavian play, because G. has generously encouraged the Malvern movement, of which _he so heartily approves, by allowing its annual celebration to be the great occasion of his latest play making its stag© debut. But this year, though the Festival will run from July 26 to August 21, and Mr Shaw will almost certainly be there, the stage managers must content themselves with ‘ The Apple Cart ’ and ‘ The Millionairess,’ Mr Shaw’s last year’s product, as no new Shavian work is yet availably. Mr Shaw is, like most of us, not so young as he used to be, and perhaps his output is nowadays less rapid. But when it arrives we shall certainly find plenty of dramatic and perhaps other sensation in his new play, on which he has been some time engaged, satirising the big puppets of Geneva. It may even give its the Superman’s analysis of modern dictator psychology. UNRECORDED HISTORY. This year’s Royal Tournament is as thrilling and spick-and-span as usual. It is undoubtedly the finest show of the kind in the world. But once, though no whisper of it has ever reached the public, the Olympia event was the scene of a mutiny. It was in 1919, the first tournament display after the long interruption of the war, and, to the horror of the n.c.o. staff, about 50 R.A.S.C. men, told off as moppers up, refused to go on parade. An officer was summoned from his lunch in mess, but the mutineers, though quite respectful, were obdurate. The war was over, mopping up at Olympia was no part of it, and they wanted to be demobbed. After vainly reasoning with the men in their own interests,’the officer rang up the G.0.C., London district. Within half an hour those R.A.S.C. men were packed in Army lorries under the guard of military police en route for Archangel. There they spent anything but a cushy time, and delayed their own demobbing by about one year. HIRSUTE CHAOS. For the first time on record the H. is staging a show at the Royal Military Tournament. It is a preCrimean battle episode, at a date when the Army was clean shaven, which has necessitated the H.A.C. sacrificing on the altar of military realism all its natty little toothbrush moustaches. ■ At the moment the whole Army is in a state of chaos apropos that subject. In 1914 moustaches were de rigueur. New Army recruits had to grow them under pain of the orderly room. About the time that we were heaping up casualties on the Somme in 1916 that ukase was lifted. Promptly every battalion

R.S.M., Ill's ginger moustache bristling with outrage! out iriipotent military indignation found himself looking at rows of soldiers whose faces were as smooth as curates! After the war King George V., who wore a naval beard himself, intimated that ho preferred his troops with hair on the upper lip. But now, with King George VI. clean shaven, the War Office is all of a dither. BRITANNIA. The only criticism so far of our new George VI. coinage, beyond the unsuitability of the twelve-edged threepenny bit for the acquisitive gullets of small infants, is that the figure of Britannia has lost something of its classic grace. This lady is older than most people imagine. Her first appearance was on the Roman coin of Antoninus Pius, who died 161 A.n. She made her debut in our coinage in the Merry Monarch's reign, and one of his Court mistresses, the lovely Duchess of Richmond, was the model. As Miss Frances Stewart this lady figures in Count Grammont’s ‘ Memoirs.’ The King asked a group of courtiers, of whom the count was one, to say whether her legs, which she obligingly displayed by raising her skirts, were not the most beautiful in London. One privileged onlooker, though acclaiming their shapeliness, declared that to be perfect a lady’s legs must be encased in green stockings. As this gentleman was suspected of being too friendly with the then Duchess of York, ■who wore green hose, ho. was nearly challenged to a duel by the Duke! t