NOTES FROM LONDON.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CVIII, Issue 12942, 9 October 1902, Page 3

NOTES FROM LONDON.

"TREATING" THE SHAH. PYROTECHNICS AND PARROTS. [From Our CoiuiusroNnKNT.] LONDON, August 29. If the Shall had been a schoolboy and the British nation a generous uncle it could not.have given 'him a better holiday treat than was provided last -week. It hap taken him to Madame Tussaud's, the Empire, the Hippodrome, it has shown him tie ships at Spithead, the guns at Maxim's and the artilleTy at Woolwich, a<nd it has rounded oft' his week with fireworks at the Crystal Palace and the lions at the Zoo. Saturday's outing 'began with a visit to Windsor late in the afternoon. After the Shah had laid on Queen Victoria's tomb in the Mausoleum at Frogmore, a wreath of yellow roses, the i Persian national flower, he was shown over- Windsor Castle, where he had tea. The. train took 'him thence to the Crystal Palace. Here the first novelty was the " looping the loop" railway. After seeing one of his suite whirled round upside down and return in safety, the Shah seemed "half inclined to venture himself, 'but caution -prevailed, and he passed on to dinner in the King's rooms. Peaches a la 'Melba were one of the attractions of the menu. .At nine o'clock the Shah, Prince Arthur, of Connaught, Lord Lansdowne, and their suite tame out on the P.oyal balcony above the terrace, and were greeted with cheers by the 75,000 people massed below. The programme of fireworks that followed was one of the most brilliant -pyrotechnic displays ever projected on a black sky by Messrs Brock.- There were salvoes of rockets, whistling and otherwise, huge shells, gas balloons with festoons of jewels of changing trues, the rayon d'argent cloud, the swarm of dragonflies, the national cloud of red, white, and blue, the silver com sheaf, showers of lilac and laburnum sprays, fountains with dancing globes, showers of emeralds, rubies and pink pearls, gigantic trees festooned with garlands of multi-coloured blossoms clouds transformed from old gold to burnished ftilver. and from a, mossy bank to a bed of violets, a silent weird white waterfall 200 ft. in. length." Tho pieces do resistance were a colossal fire portrait of the Shah, fired by electricity by Prince Arthur of Connaught, and" a- grand Cna-onation device with portraits of the King andi Queen, fired lry the Shah, the arm's of Persia, "the lion and the cin." "The. Niagara, of fire," a torrent of molten gold, covering an area, of many thousand square feet, falling from the height of 100 ft witli a. roar resembling a cataract and rebounding in a brilliant, fiery spray," and a. motor-car race) (living fireworks carried out by asbestoj-cladi men), in the course of which one chaffem* hurriedly attempted repairs with up-to-data tools with terrible consequences. After a "melee of multitudes" of shells, candles, fiery glow worms a.nd writhing cobras came a grand finale of fire with some wonderful) effects m aluminium. The two- water towers in the groundts were transformed into temples of falling fire, cascades of aluminium globules forming sheets of the brightest and whitest light known to modern! science. Some hundreds of fountain of alumiTiium were disposed about the grounds', resulting in a dazzling spectacle, succeeded by pitchy darkness and a drenching downpour. On Sunday morning the Shah went to the Zoo. The lions, tigers and monkeys had no particular interest for him, but he closely inspected the seals, the diving birds, the great ant-eater and the kan-garoo. He was anxious that a performance should be given by the latter of the operation of talcing tho young out of and placing it in th© pouchy and was disappointed when the superintendent informed him that the aniriiaJ would; not do this, even "by Royal command." The hippos, he declared, ought to be all shot and exterminated. He. wanted to) know if the giraffes were good to- eat. They might be, said the superintendent, but they would be expensive, as a. pair cost £I6OO. The reptiles had a fascination for him, _ as he watched them swallowing eggs and live rats. He wanted to prod them. with, his stick, ar.d only desisted when he was told) he would certainly lose his stick. But what specially took his fancy was the parrot house. He promptly expressed a desire to purchase naif the brilliantly plumaged birds to take back to Persia, and when he was' told that they were, not for sale, commissioned the superintendent to form a - new collection for the Persian Court. Early on Monday morning the Shah took! his departure for France, having pr :ved himself a very punctual and considerate! guest. He has made a number of purchaser while here, including Mauser pistols, cameras., kegs of gu-npowdeT, which had to be hurriedly removed from Marlborough] House, an Ed'isorjogra-ph, showing his inspection of the Woolwich batteries, and tent motors. He has proved a grateful guest, and seems likely to carry away pleasant recollections of his week in London. EXIT KRUGER AND LEYDS. The visit of tho " Three Musketeers," as one Dutch journal describes Messrs Botha, De lay R-ev and De Wet, to Holland, has had, at any rate, one specific effect. Oom Paul has gracefully surrendered his "chieftainship" of the Boers, Dr Leyds has bowed his neck to the coup de gTace, and the Boer Bureau, or "Chancellery," in Holland has disappeared. Henceforth, Kruger and Leyds, with Reitz, Wolmorans and Fischer, may be considered as non-ex-istent so far as the political future of the Transvaol and Orangia is concerned. Dr Levds leaves the stage grinning. He knew quite well that he wai ,m for a fall, and the idea that he foiled to make- financial provision against the evil day is, to say the least of it, amusing. We do*not know'it for a fact, but is stated that the final rupture between Leyds and the Generals occurred when Kruger's chief henchman refused to account for tho disposal of a very large sum of money wlv.ch has disappeared from the "Chancellery-' exchequer, beyond stating that it had been spent in furtherance of the cause, secretly. To disclose particulars would, lie pleaded, be to break faith with the instruments he had employed. Dr Leyds has had, pretty well, absolute control of the late 'lransvaal Government funds in Holland for eighteen months past, and, at the risk of being deemed ungenerous to a fallen foe one must decline to believe that poverty will compel him to .accept an unsignifica-nt billet m far off Java. Mr KrugerV resignation is merely.a matter of form" He practically dethroned himself when he left the Transvaal, and his personality has counted for little any time this last two years. It is, however, mlc-retb'-ng to learn that not only does he deny the possession of any Transvaal funds, but actually asserts that ho is a creditor to the extent of £40,000, which he- declares he advanced when he left Pretoria to the exhausted coffers of the Republics. The ex-President, 'however, says that he will not insist on any interest on this sum if the principal is returned. But who in this world is going to pay the

principal, even if Kruger can prove that he advanced such a sum to tue late Eitr Government? The most ''mijiafmuiis" Briton would run his pen through such a claim without hesitation.

HoweveT, on this matter we need not dwell. The great point is that the 0.-ne-ials' visit has put the final touches to ihe obliteration of the Krugerite faction, and though Messrs Steyn and Reitz may continue to stump the Continent a;.d America out of love for the Cause, theirs will be ■but voices crying in the wilderness, and their action can have no effect in South Africa. Reitz is romping round on hie Continent in a last vain effort to convince our neighbours that the peace of Vereeniging is a mere armistice, that the British made war. in a fashion unexampled in modem times for barbarity, find that the Boer Generals have given their advice to the new subjects of toe King, " Be loyal to the new Government," with their tongues in their c!ieek3. He hints that in the Transvaal and the Orauge River Colony Great Britain has taken over a couple of new Irelands, and that when the Generals return to England they will demand certain conditions as the price of Boer co-operation in the new colonies. These coadithuishave been, vaguely outlined. Phey .- are pretty "eteep," for they include not only immediate autonomy, hut the payment by Great Britain for all damage done'to property during- the war. Unless the whole demand is conceded, we are told, the Boer Generals will take up the attitude of :rreconcilables. It is declared that the £3,000,000, which the British Government is prepared to grant toward assisting the Boers back to their farms, only represents 3 per cent- of the losses caused by wanton damage done by our troops during the campaign. This, of course, is sheer nonsense, and I suspect that the rest of the alleged Boer Generals' programme has been exaggerated on the same lines.

As we have taken the States into the Empire, we must, for our own sake, treat the defeated foe on a vastly different footing from a beaten euemy whose ravaged land is left to him, but the idea that Great Britain should pay the total war costs on both sides and compensate the losers as well, whilst retaining for herself merely a nominal hold over the country, is really amusing. The nation is prepared to do everything in rea.«on to obliterate speedily the ravages of the long campaign and to pave the way for the granting of that practical independence to the new colonies which is enjoyed by Australia and New Zealand. But it must b?. left to our statesmen to say when self-government shall 'beein, and to what extent financial aid shall be given. The Boer Generals will, of course, try to get the host terms possible, but they have nothing to gain by putting forward an impossible programme for England's acceptance as the price of Boer co-operation in the peaceful settlement and prosperous development of the country. AN ECHO OF FA SHOD A. many Britishers took " I'affaire Fash oda" seriously? One in a thousand, if bo many. Certainly an extremely low proportion, of t!h« newspaper readers of the Old Country ever imagined that a war with France was within the range of probability. Over the water, however, they seem to have taken Fashoda very seriously indeed, amdi to have believed that the danger of hostilities with Great Britain was imminent. We knew long ago that the t-ounitry dwellers in France were very uneasy as to the ultimate outcome of the Fashoda squabble, and' that petitions to the President to use his utmost influence to prevent a trial at arms between the two nations choked the letterbox of his official residence ; but throughout the average Britisher smiled almost contemptuously, not because he despised French power by sea or land, but because he could not conceive statesmen flinging away thousands of lives and' millions of memey over a matter that appeared to him as being very suitable of settlement by the spin of a coin. The potential value of Fashoda m;ay be immense, but at the time of the trouble, it was more national vanity t'hian the commercial or strategic importance of the post that gavel Fashoda importance in the eyes of the Britisn public, and' -anyone, seriously suggesting that we should at once forsake the virtuous road ot diplomacy for the war-path would have beein branded for a not-headed fool. In France, however, not oily the commwiilpeople, but the heads of the nation took it for granted apparently that England was st>oi!iing for a 'fight, and needed but small provocation to precipitate "War! bloody war,, north, east, south -and west," four 1 years ago. This much is made clear by passages hidden away in a yellow book recently issued by the French Health Department. This shows that our neighbours were so far convinced of the serious nature of the situation that they poured troops into all the coast towns and took active, measures for offence and defence. In a leport on an epidemic of v enteric fever which occurred at Cherbourg in the autumn of 1898, we are told that "at this moment came the political tension which threatened to end in a with England. Measures were adopted in order to protect our coast from insult. Cherbourg was expecting a sudden attack; preparations for defence were energetically carried out at the cost of much hard work to the soldiers, and towards the end of October the military strength of this great fortress was reinforced in accordance with the necessities of the case by numerous contingents derived from various garrisons." And the number of men concentrated there is stated as thiity thousand. The official writer, representing the straits to which 'the augmented population was reduced by fever—from which there were over a thousand attacks, with a hundred and twenty deaths—declares that the British Admiral need not have undertaken an assault. His orders to his captains would have been: "Remain on the defensive. The Divette (a stream supplying the water to which the outbreak was ascribed) and typhoid fever will fight for you; soon the batteries will have no defenders and the port will have to open to your ships." Whether this anticipation would have been realised may be doubted, though within the past t !l ree years we have elsewhere had some striking examples of the fact that fever anav be more fatal than pom-poms. But it is clear that in October, 1838, France was making substantial preparations for war with Great Britain, and of thee measure-; tho British public heard nothing so definite as has now been published.

Possibly the proneness of tlie French people to scent war afar oft is only the nahral outcome of the military system rommnn to all Continental Powers. They are .always thinking of war. and in the pipins? times of peace, when there is not so much as a cloud no- bigger than a man's hand on the political horizon, our worthy neighbours are for ever planning how to circumvent each other and Great Britain should a trial of i«trei!g{h become necessary. New plans for offensive and defensive actions against all possible adversaries' 'are always ready and constantly revised up to date. A diplomatic strain, leads in- the completion of those preliminaries, the postponement of which would', in case of hostilities, involve) delay or lead to a temporary disadvantage. It is known to some that in 1896, at the time, of the German Emperor's telegram to Mr Rruger, lie German Government made some of the- preparations indispensable in ca*se of war. The significance off these facts is easily appreciated contrasted with the official dsckirat : on of our own Government, that the. " intellectual equipment" for tie direction, oi! our own forces is unsatisfactory. The thinking departments are not as strong as they shtuld be, ard).

that being the case, what likelihood' is there* that Government, in case of a fresh friotiogi with a foreign power, will be ready or able to make its military or naval preparations keep pace with its diplomacy ? It is true that at the time of the Fashoda trouble certain, extra British ships were put into commission ; but, if report speaks truly, neither they nor the fleet in being ia either the Channel or the Mediterranean, were really in a position to put fcrtih their full powers in. battle at twenty-four hours' notice. And as the opening phases of the Transvaal war showed, us most clearly, our military preparations were wholly inadequate to our needs in case of war witih a near neighbour. DROWNING DISASTERS. HOLIDAY HORRORS. The opening of the holiday season is always marked by a large number of fatalities to holiday-makers. Som© of these, such as the instantaneous deaths of the Brothers Fearon and their two guides, on the summit of the Wetterhorn, by a flash of lightning, are "the act of God." Most of tho drowning cases, however, and th«se form by far the largest proportion. 1 of the holiday casualties, are the result of carelessness, inability to iswim> and inexperience- in boats. The saddest feature of so many of them, is that they might have been so easily avoided. By far the most pathetic tragedy yet recorded is the drowning of live children on the sands near Filey lash week. The Yorkshire coast is a very treacherous one, the tide coming in. with great rapidity on to the treacherous snnda. On the Reightoni Beach are a number ol " lyes," high banks of sand left by the outgoing tide, around which tho incoming tide rushes, transforming them into small Islands. There are no notice-boards to call the attention of inland visitors to tho dangers of the coast; and, if there were, so careless are people on the sands, it is extremely doubtful ■ whether anyone would pay attention to them. Last Friday afternoon-, Mrs Taylor, of Leeds, and her sister-in-law, Mrs Webster, of Reightou, to whoso farm she was on a visit, went down to an unfrequented part of the beach with their five children, Lily, Clarissa, and Elsie Taylor, twelve, nine and seven respectively, and Martha and Hannah Webster, eleven and throe. The tide was at half-flood, and the littlo girls took off their shoes and stockings, and paddled across tho shallow, narrow channel to the sand bank, where they played for some time, digging and building castles, careless of tho incoming tide. The mothers, busy chatting and knitting, never dreamt for a moment of their children's danger, until fifteen minutes after the children left them they were alarmed by cries of help. The tide, rushing swiftly in, had converted, the narrow ditch into vTi broad channel, with a strong current, which the children had sought in vain to ford. As the tide surged all-round tho sand bank, and rose higher and higher round the little girls, whose cries for succour became heartrending, the distracted mothers rushed into the water, and endeavoured to wade through to the rescue. Neither, however, could swim, bub they only desisted when, up to their necks in the channel, they were carried off their feet by the surging waves. Then, while Mra Webster rushed up the sands for help, a Miss Harper, in spite of her lameness, pulled off her skirt and plunged into the flood, while the children ran to meet her. But the sands shifted under her feet, and a wave drove her back exhausted. The two elder children, plucky to the last, held the little ones up,- in arms. Meanwhile Mrs Webster had fallen in with aMr Cass, a Scarborough violimist, who was cycling on the sands. He rushed up to the spot, and made a heroic attempt to save the children, who were now up to their waists in water, one hundred and fifty yards from the shore. Although unable to swim, he struggled on after falling into a deep channel. He was within twenty yards of the huddled group, when the tide swept him off his feet, and it was with great difficulty he saved himself, being quite exhausted when he got to land again. Then a big wave engulfed the little girls before the eyes of their mothers, and in a moment, tho only tra.ee left of them was their Tarn O'Shanters floating on the tide. Courage, how littlo it had availed! Had only one of the would-be rescuers been a. moderate swimmer, the bereaved mothers woidd not have seen " all their pretty chickens" swept away " at one fell swoop." Last Tuesday, two boat accidents of the very simplest character resulted in the loss of seven lives. In tho Thames, two 'of Doulton's employees hired a skiff just above Lambeth Bridge-, and, at a dock a little way up stream, picked up two comrades. One of the latter stepped to the back of the boat, leaned over to put the- rudder straight, fcxmibled into the water, and capsized ' the boat. A number of people were looking on, and made fruitless attempts to detach the life-buoys from the wall of the embankment, but, again there was no swimmer available, and only one man, who clung to the bottom of the boat, was saved. On the same day, five miners went out for a row in the reservoir of tho Merthyr District Council. There was no wind, and the water was calm, but, in the middle of the reservoir, the boat upset, and again only one man was saved, tho one who clutched the keel of the boat. As for the ordinary bathing fatalities, they are of daily occurrence. Poor swimmers get a little distance out, become frightened, struggle frantically against the outgoing tide, and soon succumb.

Although we are a nation of sailors, only a small * -oportion of the population learns to swim. In London, we have the Thames at our very doors, but no floating baths for the people. If, on a sultry summer's day, half-a-dozen youths do strip for a dip, they are forthwith rim in for indecent beha - viour. The Londoner ought to have better facilities for swimming and boating than, most people, hub our advantages are sadly neglected.