LONDON TOPICS

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 57, 9 March 1937, Page 4

LONDON TOPICS

AIR RAID BOGEY. A London correspondent says: "I havo just been reading a vivid description by an alleged expert of an enemy raid on London. How these scientific fat-headed boys try to make our flesh creep! This one pictures the total and quick paralysis of the Empire’s capital that favourite “blow over the heart”—by enemy raiders, who instantly and infallibly pick off all London’s most vital centres. At once we are to be plunged in darkness, earthquake and eclipse. 1 wonder does this alarmist realise that owing to modern defence equipment raiders must fly high to reach their goal? The only hopeful altitude would be somewhere around 20,000 ft. up. At that height a bomb, falling at 500 ft a second and with approximately the same forward speed as the plane that drops it would take about 40 seconds to reach the ground. In that time it will have travelled forward well over two miles, perhap- nearer three. What sort of accuracy does anyone imagine bombing under those conditions could possibly achieve? Talk of picking out power stations or other vulnerable spots is just bunkum. PRODIGIOUS! The Queen Mary's sister ship, the 552, will be the biggest vessel afloat. Though laid down in the same Clydeside dockyard, the 552 will not b a twin liner to the Qneen Mary. She will embody many improvements, both of design and engines, and will be bigger. The Queen Mary is I,ollft in length and 80,774 gross tonnage. This makes her just 18ft longer than the magnificent French luxury liner Normandie, but of 2,025 less gross tonnage. With a length of 1,030 ft and 85,600 gross tonnage, the 552 will be at once 12ft longer than the Queen Mary, and nearly 3,000 tons heavier than the Normandie. Her builders will be very disappointed if she does not easily hold the Atlantic record, even though her rivals manage to squeeze in a few more knots than they have yet done. Will the 552 be known as the King George, or will they risk confusion with the famous battleship and christen her the Queen Elizabeth?

WINSTON SUMS UP. In his scholarly life of the late Earl Grey of Falloden, Professor G. *M. Trevelyan quotes an interesting private letter written to him by Mr. Churchill. On the vexed question whether Grey, as Foreign Secretary, did all he might to avert the Great War, Winston writes: "There may b? much to be said on these points, an I whether his rigidity of character—he was a true Whig— always served the cause of temporary peace, ills life s justification depends upon whether England ought to have done in 1914 what she did against Philip 11. of Spain, against Louis XIV., and sgainst Napoleon. I have no doubt what the answer should be.” He sd'*-: “if England had not resisted German militarism, in my view the German hegemony of Europe would have been established, and our island wo~m have had to face a united Continental bloc.” How much more convincing Winston is in deliberation than in impromptu! He is one of those people who ought always to act on judgment and not on impulse. NO MORE COLDS! This was certainly the opportune uoment, right in the midst of a virulent 'flu epidemic, to announce a cure for the common cold. It is claimed by a Sunday journal, that two doctors, brothers, have achieved this long overdue miracle after 20 years' Intensive research in a laboratory attic above a London hospital. The cure is said to be cheap and easily taken, in the same way as quinine for malaria, and it is a preventive also of such dangerous ’flu complications as bronchitis and pneumonia. Tests have proved successful in America, it Is said, and also here, but further ones are in j course of being carried out. Half the boys in a well-known school havo been dosed to compare their results I with those of the nor-treated boy 3.1 One somehow doubts whc‘her, with- I