"ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 3400, 14 May 1919, Page 57

"ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

(Specially Written for the Ladies' Page.)

TO DATE.

February 17.

The joys of a great frost followed the miseries of the railway strike and the snow blizzards, and England was beautiful—even London was beautiful, for the grey murkiness of its winter 'was transformed into sparkle and glitter. The skies were blue by day and the sun shone, and by night the skies were steel studded with stars, and the moon shone. For a whole week the frost held all day, despite the sun, and at night wag intensified. Radiant nights-of a world transformed, and those who did not go skating and tobogganing sat by the fire and talked of the great frost of 1895 —the longest and hardest frost, it is said, within living memory in England, lasting in some parts of the north from January till March. Well I remember it in London. It was my first English winter after years under the Southern Cross. But there has been another side than the exhilarating picturesque side of the frost and cold. Deaths from, influenza have multiplied, and many, in London can be traced to the tube strike, which caused the people to suffer for hours in the cold arid sleet, struggling to mount a conveyance, or to walk for miles. And there has been that pitiful sight of the early war "winters —of long queues of people waiting for coal. The London depots are besieged. Women and children with perambulators, barrows, sacks, bags, and baskets collect outside the dealers —a pitiful sight! Coal comes in in limited tons, and in 20 minutes or half an hour it is all sold off in quarter-hundredweights or less.' The coal shortage owing to the war has been aggravated by the reosnt strikes, and if the threatened great strike of the miners comes to pass the common suffering will be intensified, for in England there are only about three months, at the best four, when we can do without fires.

It was on one-of the coldest and most brilliant days of the week that the. King opened Parliament. Owing to Court mourning for Prince John, the pageant was shorn of some of its splendour, but nevertheless the occasion lost nothing of its historic interest, and London—especially overseas Lon3on—thronged the route from Buckingham Palace to the House of Parliament and back from Westminster to Buckingham Palace, cheering and showing honour and affection to their Majesties all the Avay. It was the opening of the Parliament of Victory, after the storms and tempests of the past years, and in the air and in the music was a sense of that victory. Although the Royal mourning subdued the pageantry, it was. still an imposing spectacle. And, strange to_ say, the most enthusiastic of enthusiastic spectators of these Royal pageants are the democratic sons of Empire. The "Anzacs," as we like to call our boys of Australasia, can cheer, and our show crowds of the future will miss their voice as their presence. In Whitehall the crowd was preponderantly military, and the ■window ledges of the War Office served Dominion soldiers as grand stands. There was a continuous roar of greeting all the way. Black horses drew the Royal carriage instead of the famous cream-coloured ponies usual on State occasions. In the golden House of Lords the scene also was subdued, the peers and peeresses wearing Court mourning, which was morning dress, except for the many peers in khaki. Yet still it was an imposing sight, and a great pageant of colour with the gold and scarlet and ermine of the judges, the robes of the Lord Chancellor, the Purse-bearer, the Mace-bearer, and others. The great officers of the State enter, the glittering crown is borne in, then come the King and Queen —the King in undress Fieldmarshal's uniform, the Queen in black with a necklace of pearls, and also wearing the Star of India diamond. The ceremony over, the King's Speech read, the new Parliament, from which the country hopes so much, is soon at work. As the King and Queen came out intothe winter sunshine again, a great roar of cheering welcomed them and accompanied them on their honoured way, the scarlet liveries and flash of swords making a brilliant patch of colour in the white-and-silver day. the bells of St. Margaret ringing clearly on the frosty air. The old trees of the Mall and the Park made a picturesque framework for the cavalcade, with every knotted twig encrusted with frost and twinkling in the sunbeams. Even before the frost has gone there is the hope of spring. The flower girls and florists are making lovely displays of snowdrops and the gold of jonquils and mimosa with the first bine of the violets. They say the first birds mate > on Valentine's Day, and this morning in the rain of the thaw that has followed frost I heard the notes of an early bird. With the thaw the white world of fairyland disappeared, and instead of a landscape gleaming with snow we have slush and puddles and grey skies once more —much to the disappointment of the skaters and tobogganists. These alpine sports folk are many, and, owing to the war, for four years past have not paid their usual winter's visit to Switzerland. Not all the skaters are boys and girls, or even men and women up to middle age. A good many of those who have been discovering the snow-clad slopes of Hampstead' and Wimbledon and elsewhere are men and woman of the pre-war armchair age. A good many of the elderly folk think that if they could do a young man's work efficiently -while the war was

on, they can play a young man's g&iatfi now that the war is over. So they skatb and dance. And their figures have so much improved since they discarded tha easy chair. For the Three Arts ball the Albert Hall was not decorated, but the great floor waa a sea of myriad colours of every conceivable costume. These balls are impossible to describe any more than on© can describe a swaying field o." flov«ers of a thousand hues. To take a few and sav it was blue and pink and rose or heliotrope leaves the surging kaleidoscope of colour unguessed. The ingenuity and the skill of the character-costumes digE laved much talent not only in design ut in execution. There are a number of other big dances coming on. But beneath the surface the country is not merry. There is an entiro absence of the first joy of the armistice. Many of the men and women who meet and jostle in the ballrooms have war-wounds that dancing will not heal. Many are making vain search for the ideal of happiness which went before them like a torch during the strenuous years. Grey live* are brightened for an' hour; there is a ; rest in losing for a time the sense of ; individuality, but the necessity for burdenbearing is still there. The industrial strife is marring the peace for which the Empire fought, and instead of ushering in a new era of unity of labour and increase of production, the threatened strike of the miners and transport workers will paralyse productivity should it become a fact.

Discontent is growing at the continued high cost of living, for with the demobilisation of factory -workers and th» stoppage of war-work, the return of the men and stoppage of the separation allowances money is not so plentiful. " Reconstruction " is not of the mushroom growth that the masses seem to consider, and there has not been time enough for masters and men to put the new order of things to the test. To " down tools " before the job is begun is not fair play. It gives the country no chance of building anything, and it is throwing away the new chance of the new time. But the agitators do not want the new time. They are the enemies of the State. Their aim is to destroy order and to rule by brute force. ■ j ■'.

Rightly or wrongly the "public as a whole do not believe in the further necessity of food control—at least, to the present extent. With the fishing industry in full swing again Billingsgate is packed with fish of all kinds, and leading salesmen attribute ' the congestion of the market to the control of prices. Fish is almost as dear as meat, the choicer kinds almost twice as dear, and people won't buy it. "Why," it is asked, "should the public not benefit by the abundance?" Littte concessions are being made in the luxuries, as, for instance, it is allowable now to sell chocolates again at theatres and places of amusement, but at far froin the old prices. From to-day customers may purchase margarine in unlimited quantities at war prices. The great increase in the meat imports has not brought down the price of meat, and, despite all the fruit, apples are still Is 9d per lb in the cheapest markets, bananas 6d..each, and so on. Eggs are still each. There is a scarcity of butter and cheese. I believe that,the chief cause •of the labour unrest is the cost of living, and yet strikes will only increase the cost of production.

There is a certain class of munition workers now. out. of a job who havs traded on the Government allowance of £1 5s and £1 8s per week without shame. Thousands of these profiteers of a generous concession are being " struck off the roll" of Government aid each week. They have dogged any sort of employment, for in realitv their "allowance" has paid them better than their pre-war wages. This is the class who, when war wages brought them in pounds and pounds a week, spent their money on jewellery and pianos and fur coats and things. And why not,? Let come what come may, they Have had their

Tliey were splendid in their patriotq ; they worked from before grey dawn till niter grey evening, upheld by the ideal of the nation, the exhilaration of ■which Ls wordless when countless multitudes are of "one mind." If only we ■were of one mind, one interest, one purpose in the peace we could lift the -world on our Allied shoulders—aye, on our Empire shoulders. But we are falling apart again for individual interest. A recent notice in a pawnbroker's shop, " No more fur coats received," is an indication of the changed conditions of the luxuriating Eoor. Personally, I see no fun in it, nor 1 a recent cartoon where one charwoman pays to another, "I'm sorry for Mrs Brown. She has had to sell her pearls. One may laugh,', but it is pathetic. A sham fur coat, a mock pearl necklace ■would not make romance for you or educated to know that genuine homespun is more refined and of better value than shoddy finery. But to those to -whom the shoddy-means the real, think of the desolation of Mary Jane with her furs in pawn, and of Mrs Brown fallen from the estate of her pearls? More than they have toilfully reached out and touched ambitions which life has pawned.