LONDON TOPICS

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4047, 3 May 1932, Page 7

LONDON TOPICS

March 10. JOHN BULLS MIRACLE. The stunt London newspaper talk of a trade boom is foolishness. Our postwar recovery, hampered by world conditions and handicapped by past political profligacy, must be slow and painful. Yet the contrast between now and six months «ogo is nothing short of a miracle. Prophets are rarely so promptly and utterly confounded as those who declared that the last General Election was a disaster. It has given us a stable instead of a palsied Government, reduced our crippling burden of expenditure by over £70,000,000, saved a currency collapse, changed a Budget deficit into a prosperous surplus, and averted what might have been a bloody tragedy in the East—not a bad record for six months of non-party administration. Yet the party wirepullers clamour to get back to schism. ROMANCE OF THE £. One fact alone is sufficient vindication of the coiintx-y’s political sanity, when it plumped for the National Ministry. Six months ago we were desperately strugglii ; and borrowing millions from abroad merely to keep the pound sterling from sagging below 12s 6d. To-day we are deliberately adopting measures to prevent it rising above 14s fid, and succeeding with some difficulty. Such is the measure of our rehabilitated national prestige at home and abroad. The one danger now is that vi may rMax our national salvage efforts prematurely. It is vital that further big cuts should be made in national expenditure. No system of tariffs could stand up against the existing level of direct taxation. Income tax must be brought within reasonable hail of Gladstonian traditions. TARIFF TRIUMVIRATE. The disarming tact with which Mr Neville Chamberlain piloted the fiscal revolution wins grudging acknowledgment even from political opponents. But the choice of the tariff triumvirate sets the crown on his work. Not one word of criticism comes from either camp on the three distinguished knights chosen as the Tariff Commission. They are a perfect blend of impartial business acumen, administrative experience, and scientific knowledge. The chairman, Sir George May, who started as a 6s a week office boy and became our leading insurance magnate, lias twice rescued the country. During the war, when he put the Prudential's American multimillions at the Government’s disposal, and more recently when he aroused public attention to our then rapidly impending national bankruptcy. PROOF POSITIVE. People generally are taking tho momentous change from Freetrade to tariffs much more quietly than the politicians. The average citizen rather welcomes an opportunity at last to put to a practical test the hopelessly conflicting and confusing theories of rival experts. Hard facts will now decide between arguments that admitted of no conclusive settlement by any other process. If the change is half the calamity or the benefit claimed by the rival partisans, the country will very soon discover the truth, and what Parliament has dom Parliament can as readily undo. If the Tariff Party is wise, it will make national economy its main plank. Whatever the merits or demerits of Freetrade, what killed the Cobdenite goose finally was taxation’s ruinous burden on industry. GALLIC LOGIC. The British and German diplomats found the late M. Briand both more tolerant and more adaptable than his compatriot, M. Poincare, but ho was no hugger of illusions, and his comments could at times be almost as piquant and incisive as M. Clemenceau’s. Only a few days ago Mr Wickham Steed narrated a good story about M. Briand, on tho authority of Sir Austen Chamberlain. At one post-war conference M. Briand and Herr Stresemann sat next each other at lunch, and Sir Austen noticed that something M. Briand had said to the German Chancellor caused the latter to laugh with remarkable heartiness. Sir Austen inquired what the joke was, and was told that Stresemann pressed M. Briand as to his private view about the real origin of the war. M. Briand finally said: “ Well, history at any rate will not record that Belgium invaded Germany.” MR BONAR LAW’S AMBITION. Mr Baldwin raised an interesting point when he asked whether Mr Bonar Law was ambitious? The answer, I think, is “ Y'es and no.” He told me, when he first became a parliamentary candidate, that, having made a success of business, he was equally determined to make a success of politics. I was in close touch with him when the Conservative leadership was vacant, and the claims of Sir Austen Chamberlain and the late Mr Walter Long were being pressed by their friends. Mr Law, when I suggested to him that ho was the man for the position, replied that he would take it if offered, but would not raise a finger to get it. Nor did he. Later, when he was urged to return to public life, it required the strongest pressure on the part of his friends to induce him to do so, and he yielded only when they convinced him that it was his duty. Once, when ho was asked the secret of his influence over the House of Commons, his answer was: “I’m sure I don’t know, unless it is that they believe 1 am honest.” DISLIKE OF OFFICE. Office for its own sake had no attractions for Mr Law after be had once had experience of it. He was much happier as a back-bench member, mingling on equal terms with his colleagues in the smoking room or the chess room. Still more did he dislike the ceremonial paits of his duties. On State occasions he obviouslv 1 olt ill at case. I hough it was his'lot to take part in many fierce contests, ho was singularly unpngnacious in disposition, and only when warmed up did he show his lull intrepidity in debate. It was appropriate that his portrait should have been unveiled in the week in which this country started on a new fiscal policy. No man of his time did more to advance the cause of tariff reform, which, apart from tlm Irish question, was the only political problem that really interested him. I had that statement from his own lips. SOUSA. Tho post-war generation did not know tho real Sousa. Ho was a shorn Samson in more senses th*Cl x>ne when ho came here alter

file Armistice. His jet black hair was snow white, he had put on fat, and shaved oil that virile Captain Kettle beard that gave extra point to tho vigorous prods of Sousa’s baton. The latter was as ambient as D’Artagnan's sword. Those who know him only on the film or on gramophone records should have seen Sousa in Ids pre-war prime. As a conductor he was like Kipling’s Fuzzi-Wuzz: “ All ’ot sand and ginger when alive, and generally shamming when ’e’s dead.” Highbrows said his platform acrobatics were obscene, and it is a fact that his whole anatomy kept time to the riot. But he got results. There was nothing mopey about Sousa’s bands. MOBILISING MIDAS. When we were still struggling to keep on gold, and before the Silent Service fortuitously pushed us off, some patriot urged that people should help the tottering, pound by selling their trinkets. Tke idea was derided by economists, who said we might as well take thimbles to a fire. But after being in full blast for a month at least tho rush to sell hoarded sovereigns and gold trinkets still totals about £l,1)00,000 a day. it must eventually dry up, but not before a huge sum has been realised. From the sellers’ standpoint, if they do not squander the proceeds it is sound business. The ultimate buyers’ bargain entirely depends on whether gold remains an international symbol, or becomes merely a more or' less decorative metal. Either France or America, by unloading their coders, could burst the bubble iu a day. THE CARLTON. It is rather a blow to realise that so hoary an institution as the Carlton Club seems to us is only now celebratits centenary. It is only two years senior to the Reform, which in its great political days had a far more distinguished aura. During the past hundred years, by tar the most dramatic and critical iu English history, many famous statesmen helped to mould the Carlton’s armchairs whilst moulding those policies that made the country great. Long alter he had parted company with the Carlton’s politics Mr AV. E. Gladstone remained a member, and one night, exactly eighty years ago, after he had gone baldheaded for Dizzy s Budget, there vas a great row. W.E.G. turned up at the Carlton, and some irate old Tories wanted to throw the G.O.M. out of a window. EXIT. The underground railway, which has been the pioneer of artistic posters and brighter travel in is nuich criticised for a literary decision. Some Cockney journals object to its action in changing all the “ exit ” notices to “ Way out.” The Fleet street critics argue that it is a substitution of two words for one. and to that extent contrary to the brevity of the epoch. 1 beg to differ. “‘Exit ” and ” May out ” are of two syllables each, but the latter is by far the easier to articulate. Moreover, whilst “Exit” is pretensions Latin of dubious authenticity, because I question whether the Romans used it in their theatres, “ Way out ” is good honest Anglo-Saxon, and has a jollier ring than any base coin forged by pedants. I salute the underground, which is, after all, not the subterranean. PREMIUM ON POKER FACES. Mr Baird, the inventor of television, is not the first British genius to find more practical encouragement abroad tha i at home. Tho result in his case is that, after systematic.experiment, it is now possible in Paris for people who talk on the phone to see as well as hear each other. This marvellous do--vice, which ullies the televisor with the phone, is going now to be extended from the French capital to provincial towns. No doubt wc shall adopt it in due course. But it is an invention that, to sav 4 ho least, has two phases, it may be useful to see the person who has' rung you up, but it may also be inconvenient to he seen. One of the few advantages of the phono lor many users is that it facilitates the art of polite deception and casual mendacity. But if the receiver is also a mirror these artifices will require a genuine poker face in future. ROTTEN ROW FASHIONS. A storm of protest has greeted Sir Walter Gilbey’s proposal to set up a dress censorship for Rotten Row. Presumably the sumptuary dictatorship would bo vested in the Commissioner of Works, whose department controls the Royal parks, and tho only comment is'that the last one wore muttonchop whiskers. The costumes of pre-sent-day riders in Hyde Park strike me as far more sensible and much more artistic than the stupidly stiff habits of the Victorians. No doubt the same outcry was raised when cricketers first gave ii]) wearing top -hats on the field. No artist, asked to choose between the gracefully easy attire of modern Rotten Row cavaliers and Sir Walter Gilbey’s conventional atrocities would hesitate for one moment. Whatever its demerits, the post-war epoch is one of definite sartorial advance.