LONDON TOPICS

Evening Star, Issue 23175, 26 January 1939, Page 19

LONDON TOPICS

ITALIAN DESIGNS IS MUSSOLINI OVERPLAYING HIS HAND? BERLIN’S NAVAL- STRENGTH [From Our Correspondent.]

[Br Air Mail.]

January 5. Suggestions in Paris that ttic British Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary should meet the French Premier on their way to Home are approved in London political circles. Aunough, of course, no decision on this matter has been taken, it will not be surprising if a meeting is arranged after M. Daladier’s tour of Corsica and Tunis. The need for close consultation arises from Italy’s threatening attitude towards French Somaliland and the subject of the ownership of the Djibouti railway, the transport key to Addis Ababa, and we may find very early in the new year that these are the Imperial and political aims hitherto hidden behind Italy’s bogus and rather ridiculous demands on Corsica, Tunis, and Nice. Unfortunately there can be little doubt that 1939 has opened in an atmosphere of now familiar Continental tension, and there are many political observers in London who believe that the Italian Government is at last overplaying its hand.. Meanwhile daily contact is being maintained between London and Paris diplomats on the possible consequences of Italian agitation. The two capitals are working like clockwork on foreign policy these days. From the point of view of Mr Chamberlain’s appeasement policy it is most unfortunate that Germany’s intimation regarding her submarine construction should come just at this moment. Under the Anglo-German Naval Pact Berlin agreed to limit her naval strength to 35 per cent, of ours, with a slightly higher ratio in / U boats. Berlin now desires to increase her 45 per cent, submarine ratio to 100 per cent. Coming on top of everything else, ’ including the Jewish trouble and the German propaganda wireless calumnies, this may have the effect of’weakening popular faith in the Prime Minister’s crusade. People in this country may believe the German U boat prm gramme is aimed straight at us. This country has not yet quite forgotten the “ spurlos versunken ” atrocities of the war, which sent a third of our merchant tonnage to Davy Jones’s locker and brought us nearer to semistarvation than we liked to realise. That the British Fleet blockaded Germany is no answer. We observed strictly the international code, whereas the U boats outraged every sea tradition. We are told the Berlin naval talks were quite friendly, and that our Admiralty is not greatly concerned about Germany’s'U boat, plans. One reason given for this equanimity is that Berlin 1 explained . the doubled submarine programme as having no reference whatever to us, but being purely a retort to Russia’s submarine activities, which are reported to be extensive. Perhaps a more convincing reason for Admiralty calm, however, is the fact that since the war , our anti-submarine equipment has improved out of sight. Sq -much so .-that-we Royal Navy, ho longer regards theyU. boat threat as a nightmare. But though Hitler’s Ukrainian, ambitions certainly make Russia the country about- which he is. most concerned at the moment, the awkward fact remains that a swarm of German U boats in the Mediterranean : might cause not only us, but Franca, a great deal of trouble and anxiety. That would, in brief, be Hitler’s most effective way of rendering naval assistance to his axis partner. Finally, the submarine is no use whatever as an anti-submarine weapon. So the Berlin assurances may be what Polonius called “ springes to catch woodcocks.” AIR DEFENCE. Our official policy regarding air defence, so far as we have any, is challenged by two distinguished 'authorities. One is Commodore Fellowes, who won a D.S.O, in the war before he was captured in 1918, and who led the 1933 Everest expedition. The other is Lieu-tenant-general Sir Gerald Ellison, author of ‘ The Perils of Amateur Strategy,’ who served in the Boer War and the Great War, in the latter (latter with a high staff appointment. The view these two fighting men put forward is that to concentrate on digging ourselves in like troglodytes is the worst possible form of air. defence. General Ellison strongly deprecates the panic created on this subject, _ and quotes an A.R.P. official, who said to him recently: “If we don’t put the fear of God into people they’ll do nothing!” He points out that the blue funk school existed, and left its impotent memorials, in Napoleonjc days, when we built the Martello towers, and tn 1914, when we kept back troqps badly needed elsewhere-to guard against impossible invasion. Commodore Fellowes and General Ellison put their faith in active, defence, and ask why it was we were Sever raided after May, 1918.

TRADE MORALITY. In a West End club last night half a dozen really big men in London finance and commerce were discussing international trade ethics. They all agreed that there was nothing to beat one of London’s old-established Jewish firms in the City. Until the Great War seemed to upset things in this respect, the Chinese merchant also ranked high. Another exemplar of high business conduct in whose claims all concurred was the better-class German trader. Not a particularly high grade was awarded, however, to the average French trader, and the Japanese came by common consent last of all. This is because, until comparatively recent years, commerce was quite outside the pale of what the old Japanese Samurai considered honourable occupation. A remarkable instance was quoted. During the war the only matches procurable in the Mediterranean were Japanese. Directly peace came, the Japanese matches were taboo. This was because of the high and steadily increasing proportion of “dud” boxes per dozen. Oftpn these matches consisted of headless sticks. THAT NELSON TOUCH. A young R.N.R. officer, who has recently been doing some training under the auspices of the Silent Service, confides to me his belief that the Royal Navy may be slightly overdoing tradition and the Nelson touch. It was this tendency during the war which led to so many R.N.R. men deliberately inviting a court martial in order to escape from the Navy. Only when the Admiralty tumbled to this' fact and had the discharged delinquents promptly turned into Kitchener privates, did this leakage cease. M’ young R.N.R. friend wants to know how long the ritual of saluting the quarter-deck is to continue. It has long ceased to bear any sort of relation to its original meaning—saluting the sixteenth century ship’s crucifix located in that quarter. Even more absurd, in my informants’ eyes, is the practice, methodically kept up, of (R.N. ship commanders going the rounds at night, along passages beautifully lit with electricity, preceded by, a P.O. carrying a candle in a lantern! But the R.N. has no monopoly of this kind of thing. Do not our gallant mechanised cavalry troopers still wear jingling spurs? "OUR BELISHA! ” Lieut.-Col. T. A. Lowe, D. 5.0., M.C, formerly of the Highland Light Infantry, has an entertaining study in ‘ Men e Only ’ of Mr Hore-Belisha. Ho tells us that the present War Minister has achieved "much during _ his 18 months’ stewardship, but nothing like so much as he is credited with hy the private soldier. “ Thomas Atkins thinks he’s a hell of a fellow, and Leslie HoreBelisha agrees”! But actually many of the reforms with which he is credited were initiated under Mr Duff Cooper’s regime. Lieut.-Col. Lowe invites us to watch Mr Hore-Belisha inspecting a guard of honour. How he halts to speak to the right-hand man while the cameras snap and rattle like machine gun fire on the flank. “Leslie knows better than to halt in the middle of the line to speak to, say. number 10 of the front rank. If he aid this, some officer with drawn sword might spoil the picture, and Leslie does not like his pictures spoiled”! “That’s our Belisha, that is! ” remarks Thomas Atkins proudly when he opens his paper in the morning! PROPAGANDA GOLF! There must be an element of propaganda in the announcement that Italy is prepaying plans for a new golf course at Addis Ababa. The Italians have never igken very kindly to the Royal, and Ancient game, but Mussolini is* quite-hlife to the value of golf courses in attracting English and American tourists.. There are already links at Bordighera and San Remo, the latter in as beautiful a setting as can be imagined, though space is limited. Even the scent of orange blossom and the waving branches of mimosa hardly reconcile you to some of the stiff climbs. There is to be a new course also in the Dolomites, and another at Fiuggi, near Rome. The Fiuggi course will, no doubt, supersede the links quaintly laid down some years ago along the Appian Way itself. But even the most optimistic dictator can hardly expect to attract tourist traffic to Addis Ababa. One rather visualises a course on the elementary scale which a few enthusiasts from St. Andrews and North Berwick laid down near Bagdad during the war. The hazards were unique. One consisted of a carry clean over an Arab encampment, where a misjudged shot occasionally landed you amongst the women’s laundry. M. KAREL CAPEK. The tragically early death of M. Karel Capek, the Czechoslovakian playwright, removes a personality who enjoyed great popularity in London literary and theatrical circles, and one who had always been noted for his proFrench, pro-British—in that order—outlook. His famous ‘ Insect Play ’ was staged in the West End once again only a few months ago, though his fame in this country rests mainly upon his 1 R.U.R.,’ the grim robot play in which the author envisaged a streamlined, brave new world recoiling upon mankind. Gapek’s last months were overshadowed, of course, by the misfortunes of Czechoslovakia before and subsequent to the September crisis. He devoted all his energies to publicising the cause of the democratic Czech State, and he was a signatory to manifestos restating Prague’s case which were published in Britain. It is ironical that his last play, seen in London early last year, related to the fall of a dictator who led his people to war. This play, ‘ Power and Glory,’ in which Mr Oscar Homolka acted in London, has now come under a ban in Czechoslovakia. MR TERENCE RATTIGAN. London’s most successful play, the work of a twenty-five-ycar-old author, is to finish its run at last towards the end of this month. The play, ‘ French Without Tears,’ has made for the lucky playwright, Mr Terence Rattigan, no less than £23,000 —including film and overseas rights. Mr Rattigan was intended for diplomacy after leaving Oxford University, for his father has served as Acting High Commissioner in Turkey and British Minister to Rumania. However, the theatre attracted him, and he enjoyed the dream of many would-be dramatists—he was given two years by his father in which to “ make good,” plus an allowance to see him through. Now he has made good, and he no longer requires that allowance. ‘ French Without Tears,’ a light satire on the ways of women, is one of those plays best described by Americans as “a natural ” —an inexplicable but triumphant success which was originally turned down by manager after manager as “ funny but too slight.” Mr Rattigan is now turning to a play of a serious nature, for his new work will deal with the extremely politically-conscious youth of to-day. Very wisely, Mr Rattigan is cautious of his future prospects as a playwright. If he can follow ‘ French Without Tears ’ with yet another winner he will have done what even Mr Noel Coward, in his earlier years, failed to do. HONOURS LIST. Those who are inclined to think of the honours lists mainly in terms of ■barons, privy councillors, and baronets.

successful participants in politics, or high finance, will find an unexpectedly Strong democratic element in the New Year’s awards. A dining car attendant on the L.M.S. railway, a telephonist, a Post Office sorter, and several foremen at Messrs John Brown’s Clydebank shipbuilding works are among _ those who receive the medal of the civil division of the 0.8. E., recognition of services in a year of railway centenaries and the launching of giant ships. The list is interesting, too, for its awards to various air-raids precautions officers in London and in the provinces, the first occasion on which those magic initials A.R.P. have found their way into the table of K.B.E.s, C.B.E.s, and so on. One of the happiest tributes, by the way, is the knighthood bestowed upon Mr Robert Mayer, whose philanthropy has taken the form of planning and developing concerts for the children of Britain. Sixteen years ago Mr Mayer began with a children’s concert in the Westminster Central Hall. Today they are conducted in no fewer than 27 cities and towns in the country. The honours list as a whole contains no big surprises, though it covers a great field of public service. The two new Privy Councillors are Mr R. A. Butler, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and Captain H. F. C. Crookshank, the Minister of Mines, often referred to in the lobbies as the possible future Mr Speaker of the House of Commons. Mr Butler is the long-suffering Government front bencher, who shares with the Prime Minister the responsibility of meeting Opposition assaults on foreign policy, and practically every week when Parliament is sitting sees him harassed much more strongly than his Foreign Office chief. Viscount Halifax, in the more placid Upper House. He x is not an outstanding Parliamentary spokesman, for his manner suffers a little by his painstaking wariness and adherence to the letter of his Foreign Office “ brief,” but he is recognised as an extremely capable administrator. There is doubtless a Cabinet post awaiting him in the future. Mr Butler, hy the way, is most active in his support of junior Conservative organisations. WHITEHALL’S PORTION. A former London policeman, aged 92, is still drawing at Bow, in retire-, ment, the police pension he started to enjoy in 1896. This is a truly remarkable and exceptional case, but the individual concerned, of course, is a man above average strength, who lived an outdoor life in his active years as a policeman. Very different is the “expectation ” of life in the case of sedentary workers. It astonished me to hear, for example, on what pensionable expectation the Whitehall Civil servant’s retiring allowance is actuanally based by the Government experts who work these details out. The retiring age for Whitehall is 60. The pension is based on a calculation ■which puts the average pensioned life of recipients at no more than two and a-balf years. There arc several factors which go to produce this startling result. One is the groove of daily habit, which is especially strong with most Civil servants, and on retirement is -suddenly changed almost completely. The other

is that in many cases a sedentary man abruptly starts golfing or even more active outdoor activities daily. Both these are apt to be disastrous to men in the sixties. HADRIAN’S WALL. Antiquaries will welcome the Office of Works addition to its custodianship of some 15 miles of Hadrian’s Wall. This remarkable Roman relic has in places suffered much vandalism. Some of its masonry has been applied to farm purposes. Probably, when first erected about 18 centuries ago by Hadrian, it was a turf wall, rebuilt not quite a hundred years later in the existing stone by Septimus Severus. But Hadrian’s was the strategic idea, recently copied by us in Palestine, only we use wire fencing. Hadrian was a strange mixture. of progressive ideas and reactionary emotions. But it was he who instituted a Roman Civil service, schemed to consolidate the Roman provinces, reformed the taxation, supplemented the poor children’s dietary measures of his predecessor, Trajan, and ordered the rebuildng of Jerusalem. He was also a lavish exponent of “ bread ami circuses ” policy. Like a modern Ctesar, now in exiled eclipse, he was an art enthusiast, and rather sensitive about criticism of bis own virtuosity. , GOOSE-FLESH AT DAWN. Even the mention of Hadrian’s Wall tends to give mo a sensation of gooseflesh. A year or two before the Great War I devoted a summer holiday to tramping from York to Edinburgh. I did not carry one of those amazing pantechnicon rucksacks under which one sees the modern Cockney hikers staggering along, and I made pretty good going. But, owing to a misreading of map distances, one night, which was none too warm I remember, the necessity arose of camping out. 1 had to bed down in the open on the turf under the lee of Hadrian’s Wall, and the experience has made me a confirmed sceptic as to the theory of Charles 11. that ours is the best country in the world in which to sleep out. By the light of the stars I could see the dim outlines of that wild Northumberland fcllside, and the glow from a ritualistic last pipe revealed bits of Roman stonework scattered around. Despite the cold I slept fairly well. But just about dawn I awoke with a start. At first 1 thought the ghost of some Roman legionary must he tickling the back of my neck. But it was only a sheep nibbling my hair. SARTORIAL DICTATION. It has long been a sore point with tailors that they cannot get men to submit to the same sort of fashion dictatorship as women so obediently and even elatoly follow. Time and again attempts have been made to establish sartorial totalitarianism, but each has failed with ignominy. Men accept a few slight details as to their dress from the arbiters of the fashion plate, but for the most part stick determinedly to their own individual fancies. Now once more the master minds of the tailoring business arc conspiring together to force a male capitulation. A committee of

six tailoring experts—the Savile Row 13ix Six—has been set up by the Association of London Master Tailors to “ dictate ” men’s fashions for everybody. We are to inaugurate a new era in masculine dress, and all of us are to bo severely standardised. Only thus, it is argued, can London hope to recapture its former sartorial prestige and chic. As though post-War Englishmen cared two hoots about what foreigners think about the cut of their clothes! I predict that the latest attempt to dictate masculine dress will be as great a fiasco as all the earlier ones. Perhaps even more so, because nowadays taxation is far too heavy to let the majority of men be fastidious about what they wear. The epoch of the London dandy is past and done with. We are living in the era of the 50s tailor now. Which reminds me that, while Savile Row is trying to play Hitler, down in Commercial Row, where the East Enders buy their suits off the peg, the alert tailors are trying quite different tactics. They arc advertising, and exhibiting on the usual svelte shop window models, “ American style ” •suits constructed on those loosely flowing lines so dear to our transatlantic cousins. The prices of these suits are actually being quoted in dollars, and, to make the illusion quite complete, in one of the vest pockets of every suit there is a packet of chewing gum 1 On the whole one inclines to believe the East End tactics may be more successful than the Savile Row gesture. But West End tailors might try the effect of a choice Havana in every breast pocket 1 REINTRODUCING MR DIMPS. I trust readers may remember Mr Dimps. He is the small Wimbledon dog of mysterious ancestry and highlystrung neurotic temperament which goes sick when it thunders, and on Guy Fawkes’ Night. This Christmas Mr Dimps was off colour, and the vet who was at once summoned diagnosed rheumatism and proscribed a warm coat. The services of a smart canine tailor were engaged, and the finished overcoat duly arrived made to measure and extremely chic. It was tried on in front of the dining room fire. Mr Dimps only faintly resisted what be obviously regarded as an offensive innuendo. He believed the family were putting him in a straight jacket. But the final calamity was to come. The family cat, a lady of aesthetic tastes and illimitable progeny, took a coldly protracted look at Mr Dimps in his new coat and then went for him tooth and nail. Hampered by his straight jacket Mr Dimps hardly did himself justice in the melee. His owner rejected my theory of feline sartorial jealousy. No,” lie said, “ it was just art criticism.”