"ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 3333, 30 January 1918, Page 50

"ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

(Specially Written for the Ladies' Page.) A WONDERFUL SHOW. November 12. The Lord Mayor's Show has been the spectacular event of the London week, and London dearly loves a pageant. This Lord Mayor's Show, despite the war—rather because of it—has been, it is affirmed, the greatest Lord Mayor's Show in the history of England and London's civic splendour. Personally, I think that the most impressive honouring of the new Lord Mayor avouM have been, in this hour of the nation's self-denial and suffering, to have omitted the Show and the banquet altogether. This would have been a unique entry of London's Lord Mayor into the honours and responsibilities of his great and anxious office this dark and uncertain November of 1917; but the powers that rule the city thought

otherwise —all the old splendours of th i Lord Mayor's coach, carved and golden .with magnificent horses, and gorgcou ■ wigged footmen, the resplendent scarle and gold of the city pageantry unchanged where so much has changed, since th eighteenth century. And yet it was th new world, and not the old, that wa represented; not the civic dignity of th | city of London only, but at the heart o | the Empire the might of tho world'; I greatest Empire was expressed. And tha j was the motive and the reason of thii j year's war Show, and to thousands it wa; ' something more than a pageant—it wa: | an uplift, an education, a realisation o j what our Empire is. The marching khak ' streams, company after company —London j England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales. The : drums and trumpets stir the memory o: I all that the United Kingdom means, oi I men in unison fighting and dying' in th< j mud and the rain. A louder herald of the j trumpets, a louder thunder of the drums. j and our men of the Dominions march past ito loud cheers. From Newfoundland. 1 Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa—men who represent the men who have come from all the corners' of the earth to help the Old Mother of the new world in her hour of need —a material illustration of the eternal continuity | of life, the passing on to the present the j ideals of the past. | The navy contingents, men of the Royal Naval Flying Service, and men of the ; Royal .Air Service were of that new world | of which the old world did not dream less than 20 years ago. They received a deafening welcome for all they mean now, cheers that held thanks for heroism past and to be. The well-drilled London Volunteers, Boy Scouts, with the bugles that blow the "All clear" announcements, detachments of the W.A.A.C, women i munition makers at work, indefatigable j daughters of Empire in their munition overalls working on the making of shells I as calmly as they once made puddings. ! The neople who stoned them once for their : assertion of equal rights cheer them as ; they pass. Then come the monsters, the great, uncanny tanks, lumbering over the I smooth pavements they were not made to j traverse—it seems of their own volition, | for there is no man visible at the wheel; | uncouth, fascinating monsters, greeted : with laughter and applause, and wonder j of children's eyes. Captured German firearms, field guns, rifles, and helmets, i German anti-tank guns, Turkish guns and ] firearms, Gothas (our night enemies, laid i low); but nothing fascinates like the j tanks, of which one writes: "They do j not crawl; they come with a horrible I briskness along Gresham street, with an j inevitable movement as of a thing which has seen its prey and will most surely destroy it. They take the 'island' with skill, and the first of them comes clattering round the corner into Moorgate street, its guns moving to right and left like the feelers of some great monster. The j other monster hesitates; it noses the Bank of England and, as one may say, make 3 a dead set at it. But it is persuaded, and rounds the curve and goes clattering off after its companion." One extremely interesting feature was a company of_ members of the Women's Land Army, in white smocks, carrying rakes, accompanied bv a hay waggon containing weather-browned workers. Hearty cheers went up for the land women, on whom so much depends. The whole procession was patriotic and warlike, with an absence of the mummery of the usual Show. After the war show come all the high officers of city and corporation, then the fanfare of the Guards'trumpeters, and my Lord Mayor in his golden coach. One feature of this year's Show was the thousands of girls and women-at the windows and on the balconies and lining the streets, indicative of their occupation in the city. But the side of the Show that has neither been indicative of war times nor pleased the people is the banquet. It has been a coM douche on the enthusiasm of the Food Economy campaigners. Either food is" scarce or it is not. Either the office of the Food Controller and Food Committees is a farce or a dire necessity. En either case we are paying famine prices and standing for hours in "queues to get 2oz of tea at 4s a pound, and of butter at the same brice. That is, with luck. We are urged to deny the children the extra slice of bread that they need; jam is only a verv occasional treat for them, and sugar likewise; meat, hundreds of thousands never see nearer than the butchers' shops. The following rules have been urged for the adoption of everybody:—-

Use no cream for babies and invalids, and as little milk as possible. No sugar in tea. Tea once a d,ay only. Not more than one ogg in any form a day. Do without broad at luncheon and dinner; use potatoes instead. Be sparing with bacon and Imm, the foods of the poor and the worker. Be careful in the use of dried fruits. But even that is impossible for very, very many. Milk is 8d a quart, eggs 5d each, bacon—there is little or none except for the well-to-do. For hundreds of thousands dripping or margarine toast is considered a luxurious meal. At a

5 meeting at Harrods the other day. Sir , Arthur Yapp, on the occasion of one of s his food economy lectures, said : " There t is no guarantee of victory unless our food , supplies hold out. ... A serious factor J in the situation is that we must help i our Allies, especially France and Italy. 3 . . . The situation that has been s brought about to-day by shortage of ships and the depredations of U-boats i should' make us organise ourselves for i national safety, as Germany had to dur- > ing the first few months of the war." ; But his difficulty was that one portion > of the_ community said, "It is all bluff. There is no shortage. The Government is trying to frighten us." He appealed to , the whole nation to save everything—- : food, clothes, waste paper, scrap iron,— and to economise in the Ulniotnias festivities, which millions will be compelled to do. Then into the midst of all this comes the Lord Mayor's banquet. A section of the " win-the-war" press began asking questions concerning the banquet in time to prevent it had there any such desire. There was a very gratifying response by a number of Lord Mayors to Sir Arthur Yapp's request to abandon the annual banquets. Comparatively few provincial banquets were held, and those that were held endeavoured to keep the "feasting" within the public meals order, which is: Meat, soz; bread, 2oz; flour, loz; sugar,' two-sevenths of an ounce. Meat to be the uncooked weight, including bone, as delivered by the butcher, 2oz of poultry and game to be reckoned as loz of meat. But a public official said of the Lord, Mayor of London's banquet: "It is all very well to suggest, as some people do, that we should hold a meeting, but how could the Lord Mayor, receive his guests—Ministers, Privy Councillors, and judges—in the Guildhall without the fitting trappings of gold plate, flowers and lights, and a banquet': Fae food scarcity has been considered, and the banquet will be as simple as possible. It is ridiculous to suggest that the city's guests should be on rations. If you dino 1000 people they must have a choice of foods. . . . The highly-placed and wealthy guests do not come for what they get to eat. Most of them would have much better dinners in their own home;;." Lord Rhondda the Food Controller, was not present at the Lord Mayor's banquet. He was engaged. He could never have countenanced that feast and held the position of Controller of the people's food. We have not heard the end of the matter yet, nor the result of the civic waste. Butter, tea, and margarine queues were seen all over the country on Saturday not only in London, and weary housekeepers will welcome the compulsory rationing, especially as the children are to come first. Lord Rhondda has at length issued an order giving local food control committees powers to deal with local tricksters. So many instances have been brought to his notice of inferior teas, butter, etc., being sold at prices far beyond the price fixed by him that he is determined to protect the public. The tea with which I was supplied this week at 4s a lb was, I am sure, the very cheapest on the market, the "controlled" tea. It is taken out of the packet which bears its brand and mixed in quantities of inferior stuff. The people are sick to death of speeches and promises of action. They want instant action, and the compulsory rationing that would rule the feasts 6i the rich as well as the appetites of the poor. The Lord Mayor's banquet was ill-advised. It has roused a storm b£ resentment that will not be easily overcome. But the patriot will not follow a bad example, and however it may discourage and detract from the value of the words of those who talk and do not act to the text of their own speech, every man and woman true to the cause of Empire's welfare will economise. "We are short of food. Had the war ended this year we should have come through with abundance; but there is only one way now to prevent hunger later on, and that is by a wise distribution and the husbanding of our stores and resources. The most notable passage in Mr Prothero's speech to the British Empire's Organisation was: ". . . remember that hunger is inexorable, essentially selfish, unplacable, blind, deaf, and pitiless." The Government will be compelled to ration the country without much more loss cf time, and the nation will obey a strong hand. What Mr Lloyd George said in 1915 holds doubly now in 1917: "Nothing but our best and utmost can pull us through." And we haven't done our utmost yet. The new moon is here, but without light yet' for the purpose of the enemy. The still, frosty nights of winter will be more to their purpose than ours. The "sitting out" of the hour raids from "Take cover" to "All clear," bad on a warm summer night, but in the -winter cold will be doubly bad. Many children have already died from the effects of being taken from their beds into the chilly, draughty tubes, and what will happen in the winter it is impossible to say. The alien population of London have been such a nuisance, flocking any night they chose without waiting for the warning, and blocking up the space wanted for the coming and

going of the thousands of the travelling public that pass through the stations every hour, that the police will not now admit these needlessly fearful people until there is a legitimate reason. And for sanitary reasons also, for they are not too clean, and ,aro a danger to the public health. The open with its dangers is preferable to many.