LONDON.

Northern Advocate, 7 January 1920, Page 4

LONDON.

WONDERFUL BUSINESS ACTI-

VITY

DESI'ITE THE GREAT WAR

There never were such times. The country is hopelessly bankrupt, and roiling in luxury—so writes Mr Alexander ivi. Thompson in the "Daily

Mail.'

me London streets, he continues, never were so crowded. The fashionable restaurants, the the theatres, the music halls, and picture shows, the big West End stores are pacited beyond record and precedent. i\ever in the high and palmy state of home did such a motley horde throng the places of public assembly.

There is more wealth and splendour m London to-day than in the Arabian lights. Such a bustling, hustling, intermixed and intertangling wonder! There is a cosmopolitan medley of frock coats, mantles burnous, hats, caps, tcrbans, and gabardines.

Within a hundred yards' walk along the Strand or Picadilly you shall jostle Japanese, Chinese and Americans, an Archbishop, a victorious general, the hero of the last football macch an infinitude of Dutch, a bevy ut' famous actresses, a tattooed islander from the South Seas, a Basuto chief, a trader from Tierra del i , uego, and even natives of Pudsey.

AMAZING MIXTURES

There are habitues of Court and Police Court, of Church and turf, of Stock Exchange and Parliament, a wonderful mixture of earthworms, pigeons, rooks vultures and carrion crows, flunkeys, and panderers, the cankers of a fevered time and topsyturvy world.

What are these phenomena doing here? Whence comes the money they so prodigally lavish?

Bankruptcy? Economy? Stint? Why the car of luxury never rolled so merrily. The general air of prosperity and plenty-of-money-to spend is the crowning constant wonder of the amazing pageant.

In the course of an hour's trudge through the rain and slush, the only people I saw who showed signals of distress were the blue-chinned, brok-en-down actors in buttoned coats and mouldy hats, the sere and yellow veterans of the stage, who eternally do hover between Short's and the Bodega. In all the war's changes they haven't changed. They still wait in irrepressible expectation of the Blessed Philanthropist who is to come one day to take them by the hand, to afford them unlimited fluid assuagement, and engage them all to play Hamlet till the sheeted dead do rise to squeak and gibber in the London stieets.

WAR-RICH NOBILITY

I went to one of the highest-priced restaurants for luncheon. The place was packed. After a short wait through gross and shameful favouritism I suggested a seat. Judging from the'quality and quantity of the wines which were being imbibed, the people were all of the highest war-rich nobility. They drank as generously as the lord of the proverb.

The "duchess , at the next table, whose jewellery must have cost thousands, called the waiter "Jow," and when she ordered her sumptuous and delicate repast she asked him for "a double 'elpin' of cracklin'." The scene at the exit recalled memories of the days when I played forward at football.

Evrybody wanted ears or taxis, and pushed aside everybody else to get them. One fat-paunched "marquis" of obviously foreign oiigin inserted his elbow in the small of my back what time a puffy and profusely perspiring plutocrat in a fur coat did me the honour to stand on my Victory corn. Then the blood of mine ancient, but still heft Yorkshire race, surged in my sanguinary conduits, and, sparing neither foreigner nor war contractor, I rudely split the serried ranks of Britain's new chivalry

and quit.

TURKISH BATHS FULL UP

Then I met a theatrical manager from Chicago, a man who

uiiows mute ii'Lioui jaz , /. u-i.icci and

bedroom scenes uia'/iSiiitlosiJtMre ever I guessed. When lie landed vi ihi s luimleL he had an impression that London j was down and out, with the shutters up and the broker:;; in. Alter trying every hotel from Euston to Knightsbridge he partially recovered. Having come straight from Chicago, where the brain waves come from, he had one. "I will try," he said to himself, "a brilliantly bright and wholly original idea. If 1 cannot get a bedroom I will.charter a cubicle in the Turkish baths. The British are a brave and thirsty race, but in the cerebellar subtelties they cannot touch Chicago. This stunt is pure 'Me-

rican." But when he got there the cupboard was not bare. The place was full of mutton-headed persons with straws in their hair, s illy primitive cattle dealers from Hogwash-in-the-Slush, who yet had had the sense to .book their cubicles a full week earlier. The Chicago man was very much surprised. He inquired whether he could have a cubicle next day. The manager answered that every divan in the place was engaged for quite a week ahead. v "The only place we can offer you, he obligingly added, ."is a shelf on the top of the main boiler. The stout "•entleman, who occupied it last night has not yet come down, but if you care to wait a minute 1 will send an attendant with a sheet of blottmg uaper to collect him." The man from Chicago having thought it over, concluded that a seat 011 the Embankment might peradventure be better for his cough.