LONDON CHAT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13355, 8 December 1906, Page 5 (Supplement)

LONDON CHAT.

'J '.' [FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.] Lo.vdo.v, .November 3. 'run mrSICIPAL ELECTIONS. .Yesterday may yet prove a memorable day . in the history of English polities,: for on that day were made known the 'results of the first series of municipal elections held :. shico the Parliamentary general election of last January, when tho Radicals swept the country with so huge a 'majority. Whether or not the-remarkable results -of Thursday's Borough Council elections throughout the I country really afford the first indication of "the turn of the tide,", and of a general ■revulsion against Radicalism ; and its methods as already demonstrated, even in its J first year of ascendancy, it might be rash, or at least- premature, to judge. But if ; one may go by former experience a portent of prodigious import has appeared, v. f;> For many months, indeed for years past, there has prevailed a "growing, feeling of alarm at the enormous increase, alike :in municipal indebtedness and municipal expenditure, at tho rapid mounting up of ■-the local-rates, and at the apparent reck- ). lessness and • profligacy, with which the money thus squeezed from the helpless and y unfortunate ratepayers ' was squandered *or -misappropriated on all hands. New Zealand readers will probably admit that when local rates in many cases exceeded 10s in i .the £, and in two instances at least reached I 12s, and when even a.2os rate was openly advocated, it was time that tho victimised ratepayers bestirred themselves. On the other hand, the self-styled "Progressives" Haunted the great things they had done for • the public with the. public's money, and I pleaded that such advantages Mere cheaply . purchased at a cost of a 10s or 12s rate. They took up, in fact, the position of the spendthrift, who buys everything that he : needs or desires or that ho thinks will be useful to him, quite regardless of the fact that he has not money to pay for them; and vast as .are the resources of London,

» iiw impossimo lor any level-headed person not,to perceive that the world's greatest and richest city has long been steadily drifting straight in tie Erection of bankruptcy. But now they have-experienced a tremendous setback. The revulsion in public feeling has been so sudden and extraordinary that even so staunchly Radical a journal as the Westminster Gazette refers to it as follows: — There will be very few coun- ' cils left having „. a Progressive I majority. The Moderates (the new style 'Municipal Reformers') have- brought up enough reserves to win sweeping victories, and the. borough councils are once again as great strongholds of Toryism as the old vestries. The present success of the great private interests-may conceivably be salutary if it serves as a warning to Progressives for the County^Council elections next March. We have had on the County Council a Progressive majority even when Unionism was at Parliamentary elections at its flood-tide it would be lamentable if in the days of a Liberal Parliamentary representation of London the County Council were to lose its Progressive majority." This attempt to represent the just revolt of the; ratepayers •gainst corruption and extravagance as the mere triumph of private interest, is sheer i nonsense unworthy of so able a paper as ! tho Westminster—much better suited to the j virulent but feeble Daily News. - which hysterically shrieks that " Trusts triumph i in • London," and ' declares that borough councils "ought, never to have never to ; have v been.: created" (please follow. this peculiar wording, which evidently conveys the Daily Mewsian idea of solemn, emphasis!). But, however, the Progressive wastrels and pro-Boer Radicals may " furiously rage together,*' it certainly/ "does look, very -much as if a drastic reaction were beginning in political, public 4 opinion' generally. ; The people of; England. were thoroughly sick of the Balfour Government and > its tricky muddling, but they v certainly never I contemplated committing the great' interests of the Empire into such incompetent hands as at present. hold these ; interests. t; Less than a year has sufficed to emphasise that incompetence, and there is. little doubtithat the crushing defeat of the= so-called "Progressives" in Thursday's borough elections represents the first ebb in the Radical tide. I do not go into details j' of the elections, which would uninteresting, if not unintelligible, to colonial readers." ; I content myself with saying that the "Moderate" party, now and henceforth to be known as,, the " Municipal Reformers." ; have ■ secured a majority of 715 over the Progressives, there being:! 973 Reformers elected as against only gtt Progressives. Something like a;■ victory: ij. ■■}._ -,-'■"' -:■'.';'":•■'■

WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY. ■i ' For some days past a conference has been going on ;at Berlin with regard to. the Inrational bureau is contemplated, in -which, The proceedings have been ;. kept strictly secret, but it is rumoured that an international Bureau is '., contemplated, ,". in which, according ; to. present- intentions, Great ; Britian would be grossly under-represented, /Germany in realitybeing able to pull -the 1 string?. '. It would be premature, however, to enter into this question until fuller and more clearly authentic information is avail-: ?;able. I. But' in view of the recent large developments of the wireless system, and of its urgent importance in case of war, the • matter is one of great moment,• and should '•assuredly receive much attention from the N.Z. Government. Possibly it may have ? received it already.' ■

THE BERLIN HOAX. In a recent letter I fully described the sensational "Raid of Koepenick," in which a clever thief disguised as an officer of the . Guards, assumed command of a detachment of ten soldiers and captured the burgomaster and the municipal treasurer of Koepe-'-nick, a Berlin suburb, deporting them to •i the capital and robbing i the municipal treasury of 4000 marks.. It will be re- . membered that nobody entertained the - slightest doubt 'a? to the military standing I?-, of "the audacious thief, and neither soldiers £ nor civilians dared to hesitate at obeying : > him in everything. It now turns out that this distinguished "captain. - ' whoso aristocratic air and martial demeanour so power- ■■•■'. fully impressed everybody, was a wretched, oldish cobbler and veteran gaolbird, an ex- ' convict who had been serving a continuous - series of sentences for robbery during a fS-perjod-Jpf forty-three years. In all that time he had never -served in the army, al- .; though he had served in the ranks prior to * .863, when he underwent his first arrest, - His actual appearance inspires great ad- , mirationfor the blazing imaginations of •_'■ those upon whom he so easily imposed, J. They described him as a fine-'aristocratic--. looking officer with remarkably, white and . delicate and well-shaped hands. He turns . out to be an under-sized, broken-down sexagenarian, with hands of. the roughest and t coarsest and most plebeian type. ' It seems he had long realised that if once ' he could clothe himself in the uniform of a. Prussian officer he would be able to carry '■.all before him. Upon'- that conviction he . successfully acted, choosing Koepenick as -:. the locality because he had never been there before. When a detective remarked that - he could not understand how anybody could have allowed such an old man to pass as ' a captain without asking him to show his authority, the " captain," with . a touch of i 'his old "fire, replied:" Sir, I do not know f; who you are. But even if you had come 'with your full police force and your chief, f- do you suppose that I should have entered into la '-palaver with you? No, I should simply have said to the soldiers, ' Take those fellows by the scruff of the neck and march them off into custody.' And then you would have seen how quickly you would have been sent flying." Voigt admitted - that he nearly lost control of his countenI ance when the police-inspector of Koepenick stood a.t "attention" before him and asked leave to go off duty in order to have a bath. ; He was so surprised that at first he hardly knew what to say, and then he exclaimed, 'What, : you .want to go and have a bath?" And then, regaining his composure, he majestically waved his white-gloved hand .;. and said: "Well, yes, I suppose so. Yes, ;; you may go." All Europe is still following J the affair with amused interest;. and, : I fear, with a certain sneaking sympathy with ! .Ihe clever criminal who so successfully, bain- ■ boozkd the f .Prussian, authorities. '-'''Even, the Kaiser is declared to be highly diverted v and very anxious - to, pardon Voigt, if a fv loophole* can be i found for the - exercise ; of l\ clemency. : ' Everybody ': except the' military

and civic -authorities feels quit© sorry that the daring pretender should have been caught. .But those same :authorities" have naturally been stung to-the v quick; and am simply furious to think that from his studies of the Gorman officer, at work and: at plav tins decrepit old cobbler, with his k horny hands. his white hair, and his; gaunt . figure bowed by years of penal servitude;- was able to pass as a ■ captain of the First Guards, • and to play the part, in his own words, like a gentleman."

- ; SUMMARISE ; MINKS ADRIIrT. Most people justly, regard -the English Channel passage as the most, risky portion of a voyage between London and New Zealand. ; But its perils seem to be gravely increasing for I observe that search parties ■from Hi Majesty's ship Vernon, the torpedo school ; ? at Portsmouth, have ? been searching the Solent for some: little time past tor a number of submarine >i mines which. were lost during recent experiments it Spithead. ; A field, consisting of 18 large , E.G. mines, [ containing , guncotton charges, was laid by the '.torpedo''gunboat -Mger .Only two were exploded, the remainder being cast adrift by the force of the exp.osion of the others. -Each of the mines .was; held to the bottom by three one-hundredweight. sinkers, but, apparency, the weight was not sufficient, to prevent the mines drifting in the strong tide. Ten of the sixteen mines have been recovered by sweeping, but six are still missing despite the sustained search. It is believed that, they will m time go ashore, and the coastguardsmen all along the Solent have been warned how to deal with them. In met, all precautions have been taken. It is intimated from the Commander-in-Chief's ofhco atPoreemouth that the missing mines, constitute no danger S to. shipping, so long, of course, as they remain secure to the sinkers which hold them. Oh, yes! Just so! "So long, of course!" But supposing they don't? 1 hope New Zealand steamers will give the Isle of Wight a good wide berth until these mines have Iweu found or exploded.

HEROIC DEVOTION.IO -DUTY.' ' Has ever a more remarkable instance of heroic devotion to duty teen recorded than this.' Late one evening recently Edward Morgan, of Caerleon. a signalman in the employ of the Great Western Railway Company, had a paralytic seizure in his' signal box at Maindes West, the most important signalbox in. the Newport district. His presence of mind must have been wonderful, for he had locked every signal and point at danger before he was seized. His box, controlled two, junctions, namely, the Great Western mail line to London and Bristol ; and the line to the North. When found he was lying on his back unconscious. An engine was sent for him from Newport station. He was massaged bv the ambulance men. but it proved of little effect, and he was afterwards conveyed home, where he received medical attention. Surely he deserves to have his name recorded on the list of railway heroes. He must have been suffering acutely at the time," yet the. sense of duty and thoughtfulness for tho safety of others predominated over bodilv weakness, and he made all safe before Nature gave way. . ./;.;

.., . A STRANGE ACCIDENT.i Just now when all travellers are rendered somewhat nervous by the numerous terrific accidents on British railways, which seem capable of no reasonable explanation—excepting on the score of total loss of reason on the part of drivers, firemem and guards ,—it is reassuring to read, paradoxical though this may seem, of a mishap which occurred yesterday on the North British railway, in which the special smartness "and presence': of mind of a* driver was nearly successful in averting a disaster, while the consequences of what did occur were minimised through the swiftness of the trains speed. : The East Coast dining-car train from London, which is due in Edinburgh at a-quarter to eleven p.m., had reached . a point a few miles north of Dunbar, when a- goods engine suddenly appeared .coining in the opposite direction on the up-line, showing several red lights and whistling furiously. The driver of the down express, guessing that this was meant as a -warning, promptly used every effort to stop his train, which was travelling a.t the rate of over 60. miles an hour on a falling grade. It was impossible, therefore, -to make; a complete :■ stop, and—fortunately t as \ the event turned ;> out—its pace was not greatly : reduced «when i it.ran .'full • htrtt'intoV three'derailed vehicles of the goods train, which had been travelling on the up-line drawn by the engine which had rim ahead to give the warning. The three waggons had strayed on to the down-line, and had not the express been running so: fast it would assuredly have .been wrecked with frightful loss of life. As it. was, however, the speed and weight of the express enabled it to cut right through the obstacles with no worse results than the dashing into matchwood and scrap-iron of the derailed waggons and the considerable damaging of the express engine and train, whose passengers, nevertheless, escaped with very - trivial injuries, limited in fact to slight cute from broken glass sustained by six of their number. ' ••-; . ' •;';■.■'..

But it is not only, railways that have been the scene of : recent 'accidents. A very curious one occurred in London to a motor'bus a few days ago. It was crowing Waterloo Bridge when, the road being slippery; through drizzling rain,,the motor : 'bus skidded, and first .struck the pavement on the city side, ..whence rebounding it dashed right across the opposite pavement, 1 ; coming with a frightful crash against the parapet of the bridge, fortunately at a. point where this was strengthened by massive buttresses. A considerable length of -the:parapet was dislodged,-and a number of its huge stone balusters were pitched into the river below, into which also the omnibus must assuredly have plunged with; all its living load had it not been providentially checked by the vast strength of Sir John Rennie's famous stonework: Happily nobody was injured, although, most of the passengers were badly frightened and a. good deal shaken . " ■-.-.. :