OUR LONDON LETTER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9401, 6 January 1894, Page 1 (Supplement)

OUR LONDON LETTER.

[from our own correspondent.]

, 'L, v.; . London, December 2. The coal strike has ended, bub what one paper aptly calls the " Butcher's bill" of the late war has still to be reckoned up. It must) be a terrible one. Apart from the loss of human life caused directly or indirectly by tho coal war, and the grievous amount of personal suffering caused to the wives and children of the strikers, there are many other items which tend to swell the bill. ;

* An ' absolute loss, estimated at ; ■ thirty millions sterling, to British trade is no insignificant unit in the great total. ' Then | the wages of the whole army of colliers and other workers in connection with the mines have not been earned or paid for four months. These would total a vast sum. Next, all the small shopkeepers who make their living by supplying the miners and their families,all these have lost four months' trade. ' Many have been ruined; all havo been gravely injured. A number of manufacturers in all parts of the kingdom have had to close their works owing to scarcity of fuel. This has not only lost so ' much to 'the country and its trade, but has also thrown out of work many thousands of people, caused acute distress to their families, and half-ruined the tradespeople who supplied them. The coalowners have received no income. Their capital has returned no interest. All the great railway companies Buffered in loss of traffic, and that involves decrease of employment to their men' and s lessened dividends to their shareholders, who in their turn will spread the ios3 by curtailing expenditure and denying themselves luxuries. In fact, the entire spending power of the whole nation has been diminished, and that must act and react upon trade in all its branches for a long time to come.

And the outcome of all this widespread loss and inconvenience aad even suffering is "As you were!" Tho coalowners can and will readily pay tho old rates of wages, while the enhanced prices caused by the strike still last, but when coal comes down to its normal level, what then? Will the Board of Conciliation bo able to dominate economic laws ?

This question only time can answer. Meanwhile we rausb rest satisfied with the fact that so valuable a step in the right direction has at last been taken. The Opposition papers censure the Government for delaying so long to take the initiative. I do not think this censure is just. Intervention at an earlier stage would have been alike futile and mischievousfutile, because neither party had arrived at a frame of mind favourable to the toleration of any outside intervention: mischievous because failure would have seriously discounted the likelihood of any future action on the part of the Government proving beneficial. It seems to me that Mr. Gladstone, in this instance, acted with consummate wisdom. Ho chose the right time and the right man. Had he moved earlier or delayed longer, or had he nominated another man—say, Sir William Harcourt or Mr. Asquith—to preside, failure and discredit to the Government and a prolongation of the miserable war might, and probably would, have been the consequence. Bub there is another result which perhaps few people have yet discovered. The outcome of thab Conference has in all human probability settled also the question of Mr. Gladstone's successor in the Liberal leadership. That successor will, in my opinion, be Lord Rosebery. He is the one and sole man who can keep together the miscellaneous elements of which the present Liberal Party (like the present Conservative Party) is composed, and who can save ib from otherwise inevitable disintegration when Mr. Gladstone disappears from its front, as of course' in process' of " time he must. Sir William Harcourt bids high for the reversion of the leadership. But I do not believe that his lead would be tolerated by the party or his Premiership by the country. Mr. Asquith will one day lead but not yet. Air. Chamberlain would beyond doubt have been Mr. Gladstone's successor but for the Home Rule split. It is an old saying thab a man who has no enemies is generally of small account. Rut Lord Rosebery is the exception ho that rule. I do not believe ha has an enemy in the world. Bub that is due to his rare and consummate -tact. Now Sir William Harcourt and Mr. Asquith make brilliant speeches but they seldom if ever do this without offending somebody. They are always treading upon somebody's toes. Not so Lord Rosebery. He contrives to be brilliant and witty and incisive without hurting anybody, and he has succeeded in impressing all parties alike with a deep conviction of his remarkable sagacity. Foreign complications loom darkly on England's eastern horizon, and nexb to Lord Salisbury, Lord Rosebery is the one living man to whom, in the view of the British public, English interests abroad can be safely entrusted. With cither Lord Salisbury or Lord Rosebery at the helm the nation would feel reasonably secure. Not so in any other hands. In this connection I may remark thab a curious and sinister tendency toward the isolation of England as a European Power has suddenly come to light. The FrancoRussian entente is regarded as aimed mainly at Great Britain. The Powers forming tho Triple Alliance aro exasperated at England's persistent aloofness from active association, and hint vaguely and disquietingly that she may be left to settle by herself with Franco and Russia as to India, and Constantinople, and the colonies, while France and Russia would do better to tackle isolated England than to try conclusions with the Triple Alliance. These are portents which neither the mother country nor the colonies can safely afford to ignore, and it is not surprising that an immediate result here should have been a loud demand for the strengthening of the British Navy. Those showers of rain and gusts of wind which drenched and chilled tho waiting crowd on the evening of Friday week, proved to be the precursors of a great and terrible tempest—one of the mo3b violent and destructive storms of the century. Indeed it is declared that if other storms of modern times have attained a higher windforce—which is doubtful— leaab none have inflicted such largo and widely-distri-buted damage. There was a sorb of preliminary meteorological canter on Friday night bub Saturday morning was moderately fine. The barometer, however, had fallen an inch within 24 hours, and even the slightly weather-wise knew thab that must mean mischiefs And ib did ! Early in the afternoon a northerly gale came on Co blow in nearly every part of these islands. Soon afterward snow also set in, and as darkness closed round the gale increased to a hurricane and the snowstorm to a " blizzard."

During the whole of the Saturday night every portion of the United Kingdom was buffeted by the furious tempest, Even in a sheltered London street the roaring of the gale was terrific. On every coast a mountainous sea was breaking. A bitterly cold temperature prevailed in all parts of the country. On Sunday the fury of the storm abated somewhat, but it increased again on Sunday night and Monday morning, after which it gradually died away. ; Monday brought a shocking record of human lives lost on land and at sea, through the violence of the tempest and a lamentable list of casualties on sea and on shore. I "cannot protend to attempt ,' even a summary of / the. disasters. They were almost innumerable and often most singular. From all Quarters camo records of shipwrecks, of buildings destroyed or damaged, of trees uprooted and houses unroofed. 1 ' | . ■ ' ' j Even in London itself an extraordinary amount of damage was done. " Many buildings' were unroofed and chimneys pro-, strated. In one street three shops were blown down. In the parks havoc was made among the fine trees, several of which were torn up bodily by the . roots. ! The placid Serpentine Lake was" lashed . into such mimic fury as to swamp various pleasure boats. '' ? But ib is from tho coast and from the country that the saddest accounts come. Several deaths are recorded from sheer exposure on that dreadful Saturday night. Many more were 'occasioned by falling

chimneys or buildings. In several cases high factory chimneys fell in and crushed the workers below. ■ In one case a chimney stack crashed through» the roof • of < a girls' boarding-school killing one girl as she.lay asleep in bed, and. injuring another. A railway porter was'blown right in front of a passing engine and ' was instantly killed.; A Yorkshire farmer's family , were at dinner when the chimney of the house was blown', down and' broke through the roof, killing two of the family on the spot and badly injuring another; Two soldiers ab Porta-j mouth lost their way in the dark and-their, dead bodies were found in the morning; they,had perished from exposure. I In Scabrorough, Sunderland, Southampton, and other large . country ' towns the; streets were literally" strewn with chimneypots, tiles, slates, and broken window glass. Actually the gentle Lake Windermere became roused to suc-'i savage ' fury * that , the waves swamped both of the large iron I steamers which ply up and down, and they sank in 100 feet of water. On several railways the brains were stopped by the sheer force of the wind, and in Scotland ono was thrown off the rails. Even within 40 miles of London trains were buried 20 feet deep in snowdrifts. ' ' i 1

How many hundreds of valuable lives have been sacrificed is nob even yet known —perhaps never will be. But enough has been learned bo show thab the loss of life has been frightful. Accounts continue to come in from all parts of the country of death from exposure and from falling houses, trees, or chimneys. ' Authorities say there is no record of an equally severe and widespread career of destruction in the case of any previous storm in these islands. However this may be, assuredly ■ the accounts which have filled the papers for days since the storm have been most saddening. Our worst New Zealand tempests > seem mere babies to this " Rude Boreas !" / \

Personally I watched the progress of the gale with much interest), being anxious to compare an English " buster" with those New Zealand experiences of which I have had so many. Ido nob think the force of the wind was greater than 1 have observed on two or three occasions in Southland and once or twice in Wellington. In London, of course, one is very largely sheltered by the high houses., Bub on that terrible Saturday evening I went some little distance out into the country and studied the storm. Its mosb severe feature seemed to me to be the excessive keenness of, the blasb owing to its icy temperature, and to the driving snow which accompanied it, rather than its actual force, tremendous though that undoubtedly was. Bub it was much worse during the nighb when I was not there, and certainly the way it tumbled over chimneys and chimney-pots, scattered tiles and slates, uprooted trees— every one on one Scotch estate!—tore off roofs, and smashed in thick plate-glass windows, was something amazing to see or even read about. The storm of November 18-19 will live in after years as one of England's great historic tempests. It is a little rather grimly so—that at the very moment when new and menacing complications have manifested themselves as regards England's relations with the Triple and Dual Alliances respectively; that this country should lose somewhat suddenly the invaluable services of two of her moat experienced ambassadors, one at the Court of a Triple Alliance Power, the other ab that of one of the parties to the Dual Alliance. Yeb so it. is. Lord Vivian's death in Rome, has been quickly followed by that of Sir Robert Morier in St. < Petersburg. ? The latter is perhaps the more serious loss > of * the two from a national view point. His I large experience and i special conversance With matters ; affecting « the Eastern question in its relation to our traditional British policy will be gravely missed at this present juncture, when all: sorts of complex ; problems appear to be presenting . themselves. At such a time the presence of a tried and trusted representative &b the Russian Court is peculiarly desirable, and aparb from the sorrow felt for the death of a man so deservedly esteemed, there is a prevalent feeling among those who can best realise the situation, that England has sustained a very severe diplomatic loss. Another name of high eminence in this past week's obituary is that of Lord Ebury. Just as Earl Russell was best known to the last as " Lord John," so Lord Kbury is enshrined in the memory of the English people as Lord Robert Grosvetior. As a legislative philanthropist he at one time ran a good second to the late Lord Shaftesbury. Lord Robert Grosvenor had a large share in the passing of the Ten Hours' Factory Bill. But the reform most specially associated with his name was that by which polling in county elections was confined to a single day. A third movement of which ho was the Parliamentary parent would seem in New Zealand a mere matter of course. It was to close all London publichouses on Sundays, This was fiercely resented by the lower orders in London because the upper classes wore permitted to keep open thoir clubs. The distinction made by Lord Robert Grosvenor maddened the populace, already seething with discontent, and for four successive Sundays in the summer of 1855 Hyde Park and its vicinity became the theatre of disgraceful riots, which the police displayed much brutal violence in endeavouring to quell. It seems strange to read of the proved conduct of the police 38 years ago, after my recent personal observations of their singular gentleness aud tact in dealing with the three great London crowds of this year. But such was the fact.

The Hyde Park riots of 1855 practically ended Lord Robert) Grosvenor'sr public career. Two years later he was raised to the House of Lords as Baron Ebury, and thenceforward he took little part in public affairs, lie passed away last Saturday, at the patriarchal ace of 93 years, having been in Parliament Lords or Commonsfor the amazing period of 71 years ! Yet one more obituary has to be recorded. Prince Alexander of Batteuberg, the brilliant hero of Bulgaria, has been suddenly called away, at the comparatively early age of 36. It is a matter of relatively recent history how he distinguished himself ;in the Russo-Turkish war of 1878 ; how he was elected Prince of Bulgaria on the emancipation of that State from Turkish misrule ; how, though only 23 years of age, he organised the Bulgarian army, and led it to a series of glorious victories against the Servians, who had wantonly made war against Bulgaria, these successes being mainly due to Prince Alexander's military genius and personal courage; and how, after being kidnapped by a band of conspirators at Russian instigation he abdicated, retired into private life, renounced his title, and married a beautiful and amiable actress, Amalie Loisinger.