"ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 3443, 9 March 1920, Page 57

"ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

iSpeciallv Written for the Ladies' L'age.J FAREWELL, 1919. The great festival of the year has come and gone. No other festival means so much in England as Christmas Day. Coming as it does in the midst of winter—the long and dreary winter of this hemisphere—it breaks the monotony of the sunless months with its festivities, and the ioy because "a Child is born" brings liappiness to many another child. The anticipations and preparations and plans for the one day occupy the mind 01 the country for weeks ahead and carry many over what would otherwise mean a desert of dreariness. Even the most lonely live with the ghosts of Christmasse% past, and people the silent room with memories. And now England is turning its face to the New Year with question and anxiety, for the years are past when, as in the Victorian era, year glided into year unmarked save by landmarks of sentiments. That is, unmarked on the surface of things accepted, which like the brook, would apparently go on for ever. A long 'established and accepted social ordier, which was to all appearances as unassailable as the Ten Commandments, has so changed its laws as to be unrecognisable. A grey-haired lady, who sat beside me on Christmas night, as we watched the frolics of a party of young folk, said: "When you and I were girls the doors of society—yes, even the doors of our own homes would have been shut upon us for self-expression as innocent. The women honest and courageous enough to reject the shams of our youth were the pioneers to whom the girls of to-day owe their freedom from convention. They have to thank the women who were brave enough to kick against the conventional pricks, and to suffer the sting for their good times to-day." The girls of to-day rarely think of that, however; They rejoice in the joy of their youth, as it is meet and right so to do, without the censoricusness of-hide-bound bigotry, which sees the "appearance of evil" in every spontaneous act. This Christmas has seen a considerable toning-down of the mad frolic of the last, when the armistice joy unbalanced the staidest of old-fashioned folk, and went to light heads like wine; for was not 1919 to be the beginning of the new heaven on earth. It may have been, but heavens are not evolved in threehundred and odd days. We have just muddled and scrambled. through the social and political confusion, perceiving vaguely the big schemes which the future will test. Perhaps 1920 will be the vital testing year of many years to come when these big social schemes will be tested, and what fails will be oast out.

We learn as nations only as we learn as individuals, by bitter experience, and the nation as the individual is alone worth the discipline. . And it is true of the nation as of the individual, our fate is bound up with the welfare ,of others, and, what hurts and hinders them' hinders US also. ' ... '

England, as a nation, is learning, from the experience of the past. In the words of. Lovat Fraser, in the Daily Mail: "The war' has shown us that we have lost our. island isolation. The encircling sea and the Royal Navy no longer serve to protect us, and we must discard the notion that they still suffice. Warfare has been carried into the skies, and we are almost as vulnerable to attacks from the air as any Continental country. That the other fighting services are unwilling to recognise this fundamental change is clear from the contemptuous relegation of the Air Ministry to a subordinate place. Yet the right course is so obvious that a/ separate Air Ministry is certain to be revived in 1920." More than a year has passed since the signing of the armistice, yet we are still living in an atmosphere of threats. And when every excuse has been made that can be made for the expenditure, the fact remains that the reckless expenditure of the Government is the chief cause of our financial plight. The experts say that the Prime Minister will have to • face the music in March, and that we must either change our system of Government or get another "Premier. For "it is absolutely certain that there will be fresh and heavy taxation in 1920." It will mean a stout heart to a steep brae hi England for years and years. The year 1919 has seen the first woman admitted to the British Parliament. And there is every reason to be glad at that, for /there are many problems of our social system. Take the reform of our prisons, for instance, which are far behind modern ideas". The question of juvenile courts is to come under consideration, where juveniles can be tried apart from the influences of the ordinary courts. And the brutal survivals of the past must be abolished from the prison. Attention has been drawn to the fact that when a woman about to become a mother is sentenced to death and recommended to mercy, she is not informed of the recommendation, until after the birth of her child, the. miserv of her mind punishing the innocent child n life-long after-effects most probably; a heavier punishment that falls upon the guilty woman. Of crime, since the demobilisation of the army, there has been an appaling list in 1919—especially of the more brutal attacks on human life. Even the Christmas season has been startled by four murders of women, one by an English ex-officer of a beautiful woman, another by a Canadian ex-officer. The body of the first victim was found at a lonely spot on the sands between St. Annes and Blackpool. She had been shot and stabbed about the head and neck and body, and left there to die of loss of blood and exposure. It seems almost as though the war had roused a lust for killing in some men who before had never been suspected of latent cruelty,

not even by themselves. Men of education and respectable social standing who served their country with honour, and were discharged to all appearances sane and fit, have committed sudden deeds of horror. And the ex-convict class, to whom the war give a life's chance of redemption, went out and wiped the stain from their name by valour and self-sacrifice, only in some cases to return to their former criminal life. The danger ahead of us Alexandra Thompson, a writer on social subjects. sums up as follows: —"ln . 1930 we shall have to cope with a wry determined campaign of lying, the unmistakable purpose of which is to provoke war between, America and Britain. . . .We must save ourselves or mankind will be wiped out. ... If war recurs within 60 years science will then have discovered ways of destroying whole cities in a single night." Pray for peace 7 We should do more; we should live and work for it. Princess Bariatinsky, who has just come ■ back to England from Helsingfors, tell* some of the terrors "of Bolshevism she experienced during four years in her unhappy country, where she worked in hostels for the refugees until she had to fly. ' 'My country ! How it is devastated 1 Its inhabitants murdered! Its Avomen violated, and—horrible—lruiman bodies openly offered for sale in buchers' shops. It is ghastly!" "There is food enough in Russia," she proceeds, "if only the country were properly governed, but the people are starved. The one mad desire to eat uproots all sense of decency, ghastly passions are stirred by the taste of bread, and she , thinks the secret of all the terrible deeds there is hunger. Russia now is. a larid where a roll of bread cast to the people and devoured is like strong wine to maddened brains. . . . Life is cheap t cheap!—but bread is very dear and scarce. I have seen for myself any number of women of high social, position thronging the station approaches in Moscow, ready to sacrifice themselves for a piece of bread. Shocking.! Yes, but you have never felt the torturing pangs of hunger that*-drives'you mad." No year can be a happy New Year for. the world while these things are. And while half the world is torn asunder in the maddest kind of civil warfare, it affects every home in our graceful Empire. »• But never had we more reason for satisfaction and gratitude that we were born under the British flag; for desrjite all the mistakes and disappointments of 1919, the trials and troubles of the year that is gone still leave us with hope for the o future upbuilding. But if the ravages are to be repaired we must all work for the upbuilding, not rest upon the pa3t. If we are not builders ourselves, we can carry the bricks for those who are. And now to turn to the lighter aspect of the holiday: —We had two newspaperless days—Christmas Day and Boxing Day—and the world became very local; nobody knew what was happening even.'so far away as in the next street, much less without any effort of our own being transported all over the world. The moving pictures of life were closed for 48 hours, and we we're shut out from the vital happenings" of, others beyond our own social circle.!; ,; When the curtain rang ap again 'we learned lots of thing?',- among them that the utility .presents did "not give entire' "satisfaction, and that the housewives who received a saucepan for a gift look upon 1 Christmas 1919 as tragic! • From pantomihe : world came the news of lively, bracing, cheerful, and much more refined influences than of late—wholesome fun without vulgarity. No child could imagine anything half so beautiful as the pictures in which Mr Arthur Collins has set "Cinderella" at Drury Lane Theatre. Hoops and powder gave an old-world attraction to the prince's ball." where "Cinders" was transformed into a glittering princess. "Dick Whittington," at the Lyceum, has fine spectacular effects, and is distinguished by an excellent comedian. The West End theatrical employees—-scene-shifters, money-takers, and-others — • who had threatened to strike on Boxing Day for higher wages, decided to suspend action until after a meeting of managers, and so calamity was averted from the children's world. Over 10,000 people waited; in the queues outside the London theatres on Boxing night, even more. wonderful were the queues outside the; booking offices hours before the were open. .' The Strand, from the Gaiety to almost Charing Cross, was a long, dense line of patient people. Fortunately it was .a-fine night. A reporter who went the rounds two hours ' before the commencement of the performar.ee gives the following interesting list:

Gaiety ("The Kies Call").—Queue of 1000, some of whom, had waited two hours..' Strand ("The Crimson Alibi"). —Queue of 500. Only standing room inside. Aldwych ("Sacred and Profane Love"). — Queue of 400. • Drury Lane ("Cinderella").—Queue of 2000. Booked up many days ago. Streams of callers at booking office all day. Lyceum. ("Dick Whittington").—Queue of 1000 to 1500. No seats. Savoy ("Tiger Rose"). —Queue of 100 at Strand! entrance. One box only to be let. Vaudeville ("Buzz Buzz").—Queue of about 800. All '-boxes and stalls, sold. Adelphi. .("Who's Hooper?").—About 500 in Strand queue. Coliseum;—Air advance booking but a queua of several hundreds for standing room, Duk© of York's ("Arms and the Man"). — Five hundred in queue. Four times the number of seats could have been sold. New ' Theatre ("Peter Pan"). —Seven hundred in queue. Hippodrome ("Joy Bells"). —Queue nurnbering at least 1500. Daly's . ("Maid of the Mountains"}.— 1500 to 2000 in queue. Seats sold out weeks ago. Empire,("The Bed Mill").— Five hundred queue. Alhombra' (Films).—All seats full and queue outside. •

The great circus and fair at Olympia -is thronged with merry youngsters at each, performance, -whose ages range from seven, to seventy. •■< To-night. New Year's Eve is the* occasion of the grown-ups. The children have had their day—and the children have a New Year's Day every day of their

lives' Great preparations have been made bv the large West End hotels and restaurants and clubs for the reception 01 New Year's guests. To-night is not a family "circle" party, but a universal party, and Britain will dance itself into the JNew Year ■ It is the final big dance before settling down to the work of the winter In a few hours, round St. Pauls, that historic crowd will gather, waiting for the midnight boom of Big Ben, and then with hands clasped the mighty song will upraise "For Auld Lang Syne," many thoughts will go to sons and daughters of Empire overseas, who last sang with us, and sang likewise: 0 God, our help in ages past, Our hop© for years to come.