OUR LONDON LETTER

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 2715, 24 June 1925, Page 9

OUR LONDON LETTER

LONDON, May 21. AMERICAN ULTIMATUM. The intimation that Caillaux has “a' plan” for France’s repayment of her .war debts is—timely! In financial circles in the city the American reminder to Europe that the discussion of the debt question cannot be indefinitely postponed is taken to be almost an ultimatum. Unless a favourable reply is received, it can be assumed that Wall Street will find it difficult to discuss the credits which France, at any rate, urgently wants. On this question Washington and New Tork are understood to be in complete agreement, and it was not until the great American bankers had been consulted that the Note was drafted. Without American finance France certainly cannot restore her own. Without a debt settlement, she cannot get American finance. It is a neat position, not at all palatable to the Paris laissez-faire school. AUSTRALIA’S NEW GOVERNORGENERAL. Sir John Lawrence- Baird, who has just been appointed to succeed Lord Forster as Governor-General of the Australian Commonwealth, is a short, dapper looking man of 51 who has had a most varied experience, and who has shown a capacity for utilising every ounce of experience that has come his way. On leaving Oxford he entered the diplomatic service, and served successively in Vienna, Cairo, Abyssinia, Paris and Buenos Aires. From 1910 he has been in Parliament. and in 1911 ho became Bonar Law’s Parliamentary private secretary. Having had military experience in Somaliland, the Great War called him, and it will not be the least of his claims to popularity in the Commonwealth that he met the ‘Aussies” in Gallipoli. He has been Under-Sec-retary at the Air Ministry and the Home Office, First Commissioner of Works, and latterly he has been associated with Lord Weir’s business. THE NEW VICEREINE. Lady Ethel Baird will be no stranger to the Southern Hemisphere, for her father, the Earl of Kintore, was Governor of South Australia, where she spent part of her girlhood. She is a charming hostess, and with her daughter and young family she will prove a worthy successor of Lady Forster at Government House. She will be pleased to return to Australasia, and not the least of her rejoicing will be that her husband goes out as Governor-General, for she has subordinated everything to the furtherance of his career. QUEEN’S SHINGLED HAIR. A friend just back from Brussels tells me that the Belgian Court is now a shingled Court. When the Queen of the Belgians had her first “shingle” a couple of months ago, there was a certain amount of disapproval among the more conservative of her maids of honour, but the fashion has so thoroughly suited the “smartest Queen in Europe” that more than half the members of her Court have now followed her example. Not a single woman under thirty is unshinglcd. HATS TO MEASURE, The unshingled ladies are disconsolate at their inability to buy hats big enough to accommodate their buns and chignons! All the smartest hats, they declare, are made for the bobbed or shingled head; no one seems to bother about the others. Some of the smartest hat-shops have hit upon an excellent plan, which will please both the woolly lamb and the shorn one. The felt hat, which is almost a uniform to-day, is modelled actually on the head of the wearer, after being reduced by steam to a state of pliable good humour. The modiste pinches and pats, bends and clips until the chapeau fits the head exactly and the brim is at its most becoming angle. Then it is dried off — and madame has a hat which is “perfection,” or "ravishment,” as the case may be. DONOGHUE’S MOUNT. Donoghue’s mount for the Derby had been the subject of speculation for days past, and the announcement that he is to rid Manna has set many doubts at rest. Everyone is pretty well agreed that on the difficult Epsom course he has no equal as a jockey, and the keenness there has been to secure his services is not surprising. One'well-known owner is said to have offered him £IOOO to ride his horse, and another £SOOO if he won! And yet Donoghue hesitated. He is “keen as mustard” to win the great race this year, and to build up such a record of Derby “wine” that no jockey who comes after him will readily beat it. And being a free-lance he has been free to wait and free, in a sense, to pick and choose. A magnificent judge of horseflesh, he has an almost uncanny power of picking out the horse on which he can win. It is recorded of one of his Derbies that when the Prince of Wales smilingly asked him who was going to win, Donoghu e replied with supreme confidence, "I am, sir!” And he. did. Again, on the occasion of his last Derby win, he declared with the same supreme confidence that there were two other horses in the race on either of which he- could have won if he had been “up.” THE WAITING LIST. I am told by a friend in the shipping trade that shipowners are contemplating going back to the policy of laying up ships for the time being. This course of action was tried during the trade slump after the war, with the result that freight rates hardened slightly owing to the decrease of tonnage. It is not whplly a successful policy, because whatever rise in freights occurs has to be set off by the number of ships not earning money and upon which expenses of upkeep have to be met. Laying up was gradually abandoned when rates rose, end since then agreements with i Continental shipping lines have resulted In better outward rates. Homeward

rates in most trades are very low. I am told that, owing to the poor'grain crop in South America and the pompetition of foreign tramp steamers, grain rates are now as low as 10s to 12s a ton for the run home from the River Plate. There are a large number of ships competing, even for such miserable business as this, and it in this competition which will prevent rates hardening in the near future as prophesied by some optimists. Shipowners, of course, expect to take bad times with the good, but such rates as those quoted above are not economic, and do not cover the cost of the coal burnt on the, voyage. THE LEVERHULME ESTATE. I understand that the fortune left by Lord Leverhulme may not prove quite as big as some prophets have thought likely. The soap peer was extremely generous, both to charities and to his family during his lifetime, and the capital value of his estate, although large enough to bring the Inland Revenue something like £1,000,000 in duties, will not be as large as his numerous activities might suggest. Indeed, probably the largest part of his fortune consists of real estate and objets d’art. BIG BEN’S CRACK. Not many of the people who listen to the chimes of Big Ben are aware that the famous bell has a crack in it a foot long. A famous clockmaker tells me that this is the case, and that the crack has been there during the whole of the seventy years that the bell has been telling London the time. It has recently been suggested that the bell should be taken down and recast, now that so many more people hear its note, but the work would demand the dismantling of the,whole of the interior of the tower to get it out. Big Ben weighs 13S tons and the job would cost seevral thousand pounds. Talking of Big Ben, I chanced the other evening to be “listening-in” at a friend’s house in the Westminster district. Punctually, at seven o'clock the sound came over the wireless of the great clock booming* out the hour. An appreciable part of a second later the actual note of the bell came reverberating through the air and in by the open window. Anti we were less than a quarter of a mile distant from the clock tower. Which reminds me that listeners in to 2 LO in Scotland are Said to hear, the notes of an opera at Covent Garden before those notes penetrate to the utmost recesses of the theatre itself. “AND PARTNER,” The partner problem is always with us in dancing circles. For some time a solution has been attempted at subscription and public dances by stipulating that each purchaser of a ticket shall be responsible also for a partner. This.solution is now to be attempted at private dances, and Mrs. Douglas King, whose husband (Captain Douglas King) is Financial Secretary of the War Office, is sending out invitations with the words “and partner’’ boldly written after the name of the invitee. Mrs. King is an Australian by birth, and the “Aussies” could always be trusted to surmount a difficulty, even if the method were novel. THE ENGLISHMAN ABROAD. A friend of mine who is travelling on the Continent IS* much disgusted with the English “trippers” he meets who are “sacking” Belgium and Northern Fx-ance a la prowling Hun. “There they go,” he writes, “crowded together in miserable quantities, bleating and babbling about this solemnly fascinating land—chattering where they should stand bowed of head and in silence: pointing vain-gloriously and in ignorant reminiscence when they should feel tears in their awed eyes; thoughtless, where once all thoughts of England centred.” JOHN BULL ALONE. Despite his vaunted, insularity, it strikes my correspondent “that the Englishman abroad Is never so much at his ease as when he herds with his kind—never more happily miserable. Truly, John Bull hasn’t the heart to pursue lonely ways, alone. Believe me, there could not be a funnier sight on earth than to witness the dismay of an ‘insular’ Englishman (Inadvertently left behind on a Belgian waste of new buildings, old wire, burst trees, scattered mortar, weeds and twisted fragments of rust) shuffling about the earth, like ajost cause, spasmodically embodied in partially successful plusfoui’s, looking for signs of civilisation. And then at last they come to him, ‘Oh, I sye, ‘Arry, y’ did give us a turn! W’erever ’ave you bin?’ ” COLLECTOR’S FIND. There is a typical story behind a set of Sevres china, part of the Carnarvon collection of treasures announced for sale. It came into the possession of the late Mr. Wertheimer in this way. Hearing of the existence of the set, Mr. Wertheimer went down to Brighton and made an offer for the house and “contents.” His offer was accepted. Hr. Wertheimer promptly took away the Sevres sot and gave instructions for the house and its contents to be sold by auction. This ia only one more example of how indefatigable collectors are in pursuit of a “find.” A man who owns a real old oak panelled room and fireplace has had an offer of £IOOO for it from America. He tells me his name and property is marked down in every famous collector’s records in the United States. They await his death, because be is unwilling to sell. IN THE PARK. Mr. Kipling tells us that East is East and West is West, and “Never the twain shall meet!” They mot one morning this week in Hyde Park under the shaded walk where London’s fashion promenades beside the gay riders in Rotton Row. I saw a charming lady, who looked far too slim and young to be a matron, walking with her small baby girl, who was wheeled in a Sumptuous pram by a Chinese Ayah. Mamma, who nodded to dozens of friends, was attired _ in smart riding breeches, with riding boots to the knee, a brown jacket and a brown

wideawake hat. The Ayah wore , blue trousers of the pre-Oxford cut, a flowing blue coat, and a black silk handkerchief round her head. It was a problem which represented the more advanced mode—the newest woman—the daughter 1 of a Western Mayfair or the daughter of Far Eastern Hongkong. FASHION IN THE PARK. The hours in the Park, twixt tea and dinner, become smarter and smarter. About G.SO there are quite as many beautiful young men in tophats and fair damsels in chiffon frocks*, as on any Sunday morning during church parade. They sit on the chairs beside the broad walk in long and closelypacked rows of smartness,-smoking fat cigarettes from the new long holders. Only last year the girl who smoked a cigarette in the park, if not outrageous. was unusual. This year in the evening probably every girl is a smoker. It is still “not the thing;” to smoke on Sunday morning; and even the men forego cigarette and cigar at church parade.