"ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 3403, 4 June 1919, Page 57

" ALIEN'S " LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

(Specially Written for the Ladies' Page.) IN THE RAIN. March 10. " The rain it raineth every day," week after week, and the floods in tiie lowlying districts are getting serious. Never within memory has the Fen 'Country looked so desolate, miles and miles of water stretching like a Dead Sea. The Thames has been rising for weeks, and continues to rise at an alarming rate, for already the lowlands of the Thames Valley are flooded, and tramcars frequently stop running between Kew and Hampton Court. "At Windsor the river has risen over. 3ft, and ficoded a portion of the .Castle Park and Gardens. At Datchet the rise is over 6ft. The Eton College boathouses are flooded, and much of the ground of the playing fields. Many farms and cornfields are flooded or water-logged, and garden stuff is being washed away or rotting under water.

Statistics show that the milder damp weather is more beneficial to the public health if people keep dry, take exercise, and do not lose their appetite than is the severe cold of late January and early February. The influenza which raged in London is beginning to subside there, but it is still at its height in the provinces. As with you, whole families have been swept away. The scourge has been as bitter as the war scourge, the deatHlists rising from hundreds to thousands in every town. In Sheffield Workhouse 34 out of 50 inmates died. The veterinary surgeon for Westmoorland County Council has diagnosed an illness for sheep in that neighbourhood which corresponds with the influenza epidemic in human beings, and among which there are about the same percentage of fatal cases. If it is the same disease it goes to show how infectious the germ is. Doctors, asked how they escape, although visiting so many cases, attribute it to the general care of their health and attention to the cleanliness of their teeth, etc., sufficient nourishment, and absence of fear of infection. Many people are affected after exhausting spells of work and fasting. Medical science the world over is puzzled, and more than one investigator has already paid the price of his life endeavouring to ascertain the nature of the germ; but this will not deter others. That the influenza of the present epidemic is something more deadly than the old-fashioned attack is evident. Many believe it a heritage of the war. If so, its victims are more numerous than the victims of the air raids. Last March moon we were not so contented under the silver rays. The air shuddered with the resounding guns from the shores of Flanders, and the night was pierced and stabbed bv the shaft of the searchlights. Of the full damage done in the air raids the countrv was not informed at the time, each district knowing only the full measure of its own horrors and dangers. But the official reports of the London Fire Brigade just issued are giving information. In the raids 12 nlaces of amusement (including the Strand Theatre, where three persons were killed and 18 injured), a number of schools, and fire stations were damased. At the North Street School. Poplar, nine bovs and seven girls were killed and 31 im'ured in the daylight raid of June 13. 1917. In ' ' the London raid on the night of Sentember 24. 1917. which T described at the time, happening to have been in the think of it at the TTavmarket (when a bomb fell near enough to feel the thud "and hear the exnlosionl. it now transoires that among manv other nlaces hit near bv that night were the mansions of the Btil"' 1 of Devonshire. Mr W Bnwfett-Oon+K M.P., fh«. -Duke of Rutland. Lord Ma-rcmis of Salisbury. Marrmis of Zetland. Lord Fnrringdon, the Farl of Yarbormwh, T-ord T-TiPinsrdon. Viscount TtfortkcHffe. Lord Lelthe of Fyvie, Lord Wolvprton. Farl Sneneer. C/vnon Shnnnard. Ladv Wp.rnher. Sir R. W. B. Jardine. and Ladv "NTortbeote. No -wonder the orchestra of the theatre nlaved the big drum and sounded the loud timbrels to cover xm the noise outside! "But I would not h*>ve massed the exnerience of that terrible night, anrl two nights later, because I wa? an eve-witness of the courage and calmness of a birr a/ndienoe and a, rifcv in the fane of death. It is this same snirit. that will " carry on" the fretfulness of the moment. When the eomparatlvelv little things are upsetting the enuilibrium of the country in its hour of reaction from overstrain, one has onlv to remember how it bore rtiA achieved for fnnr wara to he of its courage and stability. It is the alien element in our midst, the enemies of the Fnrnire's future, that catch tihe moods of discontent and Are, them.

The overthrow of militarism for which wo have striven and suffered is one thing, and the overthrow of the social order of civilisation is quite another thing. We have triumphantly emerged from the struggle that threatened our life as a nation, as an Elmpire, to do fight with the foes of our own household, who are bent upon breaking to pieces the social fabric, and, instead of reconstruction, reducing everything to ruins. Fanatics, the lawless, men without nationality, a few desperate men, are in this vital creative hour of tho nation's life interested not in the rebuilding and remaking of a better world on the foundations of the tested good, but in the breaking to pieces of everything good and bad. Change—evea drastic change—can be accomplished with* out pulling the whole temple about our ears in anger and revenge, or to exhibit our strength. Labour has not had its full ehar&—far from it—of ita achievement in the past, but the destruction of capital, the defiance of law and order, doea not appeal' the surest and the sanest way to construct a new pattern of life. Tho genius of labour and capital combined could build a world after a noble design. ißut a house divided against itself will fall. What is to be deplored is the melancholy depression of the moment, the lack of courage and faith to face the future, as it faced the four dreadful years that -are passed. It is the reaction from long strain, the irritation caused by the difficult problem of trying to make two ends meet. Hearts are heavy with anxiety, aching with loneliness, and after the long months of sunlessness and rain, and sickness, physically weary and unfit* The mood will pass, and hope carry on to new achievement. But while the black mood lasts pessimists and alarmists and agitators put the spark to conflagrations that consume what it has taken years to build, what it will take years to rebuild. These strikes that are planned to destroy the wealth of the rich, destroy the thrift of the poor also. And, personally, I could never see that a strike was a triumph of freedom; it 4s only a substitution of one rule foT another. The rule of the master is abandoned at the will, of the strike leader, who as often as not is studying his own interest. Whether a man has a just cause of complaint, or no complaint at all, individually he may not stand or fall by his own convictions, but must abide by the decisions of the strike leaders.' On the other hand, that there is something rotten in the state" of the Labour market that is poisoning the lives of millions of faithful working men and women is undeniable. The hopeless fate of millions of the world's best workers is to spend all their youth and energy and talent in "forever climbing up the falling wheel," with no prospect of rest when their lifework is done, except by public charity. 1

Labour has also been fretting under tho gross profiteering that has been going on. To save England, to reaoh a certain goal, to break the sword of tyranny, the people denied themselves and . gave themselves . freely, but not to be fleeced by those who have robbed and are still robbing behind tho shield of "war-necessity." Wholesale and retail robbery is rampant. When the big men of the country are freed from their first urgent peace duties in France there are mountains of problems to tackle at home. The people are, growing restive tinder the prolonged food restrictions; but if the prices were freed from control it appears that they would be higher still. For instance, last week the control was removed from the better sorts of fish, and immediately the prices not only doubled, but in • some oases trebled. There was a big outcry, and the Government threaten to fix the prices again if the exorbitant charges continue. The fishmongers say it was a mistake to remove control until after Lent, as during Lent the demand for fish is greater than at any other time. The regrettable incident of the riots at the Canadian Military Camp, Kinm'el Park, Rhyl, is no way expressive of the Canadian army's feeling or conduct as a whole. Here were men who had fought with honour and gallantry, who shirked nothing of the fighting, impatient of inactivity, longing for home, disappointed, and delayed week after week of embarkation because there were no ships. On the eve of departure there is constant delay"—a docker's strike, the stewards walk out of a ship—one postponement after another of Canadian transports for the last month or so. There is no excuse for the riot 3, says a high Canadian officer, but the irritation of the men is understandnble. Five § men killed and 91 wounded, including two officers, and £30.000 worth of damage done, is the lamentable toll of those houra of madness.

This morning brings news of another regrettable tussle -with soldiers,, this time Americans. Outdoor gambling among the soldiers has for some time past been a scandal in London, and on Sunday afternoon "American soldiers were nlaying dice behind the Eagle Hut in the Strand, when a police constable, acting on his instructions, ordered that the dice-throwing should stop, confiscated the money, and arrested the breakers of the law. Tha men hnstled the officer, who blew a nolice whistle for help. More police arrived, and there was an unroar. Soldiers and sailors poured from the Tint, attracted by the noise, and, without waiting to be-Informed of the facts of the case, together with some other overseas men who had collected, without understandthe matter, ioined in hustling the police In the execution of their duty. The oolice were so roughlv handled that the sergeant in charge was fustified in ordering them to draw their batons in selfdefence. The fight spread along Aldwych, where several policemen were hurt and thrown. A powerful American military policeman rushed in and tried to calm his fellow-countrymen, and when, his words failed to quiet the excited men used his fists, but, receiving a- cowardly blow on on the head from behind, was seriously Injured and taken to hospital. With, the

arrival of more police the mob scattered beforo baton charged, and for a time it looked as though the disturbance was quelled, but tho soldiers and sailors had now come up 1000 strong, pulled up the palings round the Eagle Hut, and, armed with sticks and bottles and iron bans advanced on Bow Street Police Station, which they had decided to wreck as a protest against the British authorities, who refused to allow gambling saloons to be made of the open spaces. A solitary constable was on duty outside the police station as the infuriated mob rushed up, and stood impassively at hie post while the men booed and shouted and threw stones and smashed a lamp-post. Thinking they had surprised the station, they rushed the steps. The doors were flung open, and out poured a strong force of police armed with batons, many of them army men, some wearing the Mens ribbon. What followed did not take long. The superintendent in command gave the order to charge, and in 10 minutes Bow street and the thoroughfare was cleared. It was a triumph of discipline over the lawbreakers, who had dropped their bottles and bars and taken themselves to safety before sharing the arrest of the ringleaders, and the neighbourhood once more resumed its Sunday calm. The week has seen a number of interesting weddings. The Anzac wedding was that of Miss Constance' Jean Birdwood, daughter of General Sir W. R. Birdwood ("the soul of Anzac"), and Lieutenant F. O. Craig, of Perth, Australia, who 'were married at Brompton Parish Church on March -3, the Bishop of Bathurst Prebendary Gough in the ceremony. The bride, who was. given away by her father, looked charming in ivory charmeuse with a Court train of silver brocade and antique lace, and carried carnations and lilies of the valley. She was attended, by three little girls, who wore long picture dresses of rose charmeuse, with belts of gold tissue, and gold tissue caps, and carried posies of primroses. It was a soldier's wedding, and the bride and bridegroom passed from the church door under an arch of Anzac swords.. With demobilisation these picturesque service weddings will be a thing of the past. Lady Rosemary Leveson-Gower, only daughter of the late Duke of Sutherland and of Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland, was married on Saturday afternoon (the Bth) to Lord Eltham, M.C., eldest son of Lord and Lady Dudley, at St. Margaret's, Westminster. It was a "daffodil" wedding. In attendance on the bride were 12 bridesmaids whose ages were from six years upwards. The guard of honour of the Tenth Hussars were men who took part in the capture of Monchy, where the bridegroom won the Military Cross.