“ALIEN’S” LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 3755, 2 March 1926, Page 69

“ALIEN’S” LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

(Specially Written for the Ladies 1 Page.) NINETEEN HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SIX. Nineteen hundred and twentr-five came in like a Hon, and went out ring likewise. It was literally washed and blown out. A newspaper wag headed his column, “ Wring Out the Old,” and there was in truth a melancholy record of floods throughout the country and terrific gales at sea, jeopardising shipping and disorganising telephone services. Very heavy seas swept the Channel, and the lifeboats went out along the coast to more than one vessel in distress. Heavy rain has fallen day after day since Christmas, the milder airs melting the suows of the north and Midlands, and instead of the skating hoped for it has been wading. In the Wold district of Yorks heavy peals of thunder and vivid lightning joined in the storm revels, and in North Wales animals and trees were washed away by the floods. The Thames at Sliepperton and Walton and many other places overflowed its banks. After a lonely vigd of 10 days a young man named Lewis was taken off the lighthouse at St. Ives, Cornwall, by the lifeboat. Before Christmas his mate was taken ill, and had to go ashore, but the terrific seas and storms prevented a relief man being sent out, and Lewis was isolated all through the Christmas and New Year, doing day and night duty, and never once during all those terrible days and nights did he fail to wind up the machinery every four hours, and kept the light burning brightly for the guidance of ships on that rockbound shore. Hotels, houses, and streets are flooded in the Midlands. Worcester, Northampton, Exeter, Bath, Bristol, Warwick, Cardiff, and Buckingham are among the places suffering. In Northampton only the railway lines are showing above water in miles of desolate country. Warwick was plunged in darkness on Saturday owing to the flooded electricity station, and trams stopped running. The girls at Bath waded to their knees in water to their work. It has meant picking the road and going slo'v for motors and trains and every other sort of conveyance and late arrivals and accidents. Motor buses simply “paddle” on many roads. Tradesmen are calling and delivering goods in boats in many of the ihaiije:riverside towns, and men are rowing themselves to and from the railway stations. The latest news is that thousands of people are imprisoned in thenbungalows in the Thames Valley at Shepperton. Walton and Wcybridge people had to leave their homes in boats. The Sunday newspapers were delivered by a boy who rowed in through the gates. Near St. Meellons, Monmouthshire, two lives have been lost —one, a local farmer, who, while attending to his cattle, was washed away by the floods, and furthei up the river another man was also drowned. In addition to the Thames, the Severn, the Wye, the Avon, and the None (Northamptonshire) are all in flood ; the Severn is reported 12ft above its normal level. The condition of the rivers is causing the river conservancies the gravest concern, for if the rain continues, as predicted, thousands more people will be compelled to leave their homes. Abbe Moreux, the famous priestastronomer, who foretold the severe winter from which we have suffered, says

that the weather in the British Isles is dependent upon the atmospheric depressions that form in ip id-ocean. According to whether their centre passes north or south of the British Isles the meteorologist is able to predict rain in Scotland, in Wales, or in Ilia south of England, as the ease may be. The abbe further says: “The sun, the centre of our planetary system, by no means furnishes us with a constant supply of heat. Every important rise in the heat given off by the sun causes a corresponding rise in the evaporation of the oceans of our earth, ami this evaporation means a fall in temperature At the end of a certain number of months, sometimes of years, this evaporated water is deposited in tin forui of rain. For more than a thousand, years, concerning which we possess more or less precise records, our climate has oscillated between periods of rain and of. drought, controlled by the action of the sun. • These periods are of, roughly, 17 years. The dry cycle began in 1018, and will end about 10.35 The diminution in aqueous deposits is already very marked in the south of France, and the next few years will see the dry area spread gradually northwards towards the British Isles.” Hotter summers and colder winters are predicted in the near future. The cold-

est winter to which we are moving, we are told, will be in 1930. Judging by the hilarity with which crowds speeded the parting guest Britain was not sorry to see the last of 1925, and greet with fresh hope the New Year. We do not know what the country has in store for us during 1926, but we can at least hope for fewer troubles than last year. But, to echo an observation that has been made in other quarters, “ if we are to have much to rejoice over, people in general must get out of the way of behaving as though the war had brought us an enormous legacy instead of loading us all up with taxes and debts.” What little relief there has been in income tax has been more than counterbalanced by additional burdens of the tensions Act. Ever since the fictitious and short-lived boom of the armistice our trade and industry have stagnated, keeping afloat, but making no progress. The only way to restore prosperity is by a cheaper and increased output; but less energy is spent on work and more on pleasure than before the war. Lord Hugh Cecil, in a recent speech, stated the case precisely when he said there was too little seriousness applied to serious things, and too little frivolity to the frivolous things. What he meant was that amusements were not

treated lightly enough, but as matters of national importance. The first quarter of the century of 1900 has seen great changes—many gains and many losses. That all the changes are an advanu is questionable, but those who can look hack over 25 years realise that we live in a different epoch—almost in a different world. In *e last days .»f 1900 Lord Roberts returned home from the South. African War, having obeyed the wish of the aged Queen Victoria, who could barely recognise him. King Edward was then Prince of Wales. Kitchener was dealing with de Wet. Queen Victoria, King Edward, Lord Roberts, Kitchener, de Wet have all passed away. Queen \Alexandra and many great men and women who meant in 1900 the political, social, military, religious, and intellectual li.. of Britain.

The present Prince of Wales—the greatest Ambassador of the Empire—was then a little boy, playing, free of the duties of his great State, with his brothers and only sister. Princess Mary is now wife and mother, the then little Duke of York a married man. Trade was booming, and, compared to to-day, the price of food was ridiculously cheap. The Weekly Dispatch says the very poor could get a meal for a penny, and quotes figui Cup of coffee, £d; bread and margarine, Id each, and a bloater at a id made a wholesome and nourishing meal for Id. 1 remember on arrival in London 30 years ago my horror at the sight of so many poor in the streets, especially children, being greatly appeased by the realisation that a good meal could be obtainc by tlu carelessly flung penny of the passers-by, and that a feast was forthcoming at the cheap eatinghouses for a few pence. I spent hours and days in watching the poor shop—the respectable poor as well as the down-and-outs, —and preferred a Saturday night under the naphtha lamps of a coster market to a comedy from theatre stalls. In those days the prices varied according to the locality and the time of day and night, and a glut of anything meant cheap in the morning, cheaper in the afternoon, and cheapest in the evening, when toward midnight anything perishable left on the stalls of these slum markets—tucked sometimes away in alleys and sometimes flaunting in East End streets —was swept into the apron of a ragged woman to take away. At the vegetable stalls earlier in the (lay enough of potatoes, cabbage, and onions to make ample provision tor the Sunday dinner of the family of the women who carried the baskets, for 2d or 3d, and for 3d more enough “ block ornaments ” or meat pieces, the trimmings of joints, to make a meat pudding or stew. To a question a clean, bright-eyed, little woman made answer: “ It’s a matter of havin’ a fire, lady. If I’ve got a bit of e fire the kids gets their bath an’ their Sunday dinner, and ’im an’ me as well.” ’ And the fire. In those days j. hundredweight of coals was about lOd, with coke half that price and the ordinary poor working man calculated to half a hundredweight of each, say, i week. The very poor could get pennyworths from day to day. Now coal is over 3s the hundredweight; and the strikes for higher wages and fewer working hours, the doles, the pensions and all the taxation of the middle class has reduced the middle class to poverty and in reality left the poor as poor For if a rasher of bacon could once be produced for a fartning and now costs 2d, and a kipper likewise, and a once penny haddock now costs 6d, and the margarine which could once pe bought for 4d per lb now costs Bd, and a foreign mutton chop, w r eighin 0 a of a pound, which cost a penny, now costs 6d, how do the working poor gain even at wages at treble the old figure? And rent at an increase also. Where 3s to 4s would rent a cottage, 10s and more is now' demanded for two rooms. There is only a certain amount of money in a country gained by that country’s production, and, shuffle the money from one class to another a& may, there is not enough to go round unless each individual produce the cost of his ow'ii living and meet his responsibilities and his obligations to the State And millions think that if they keep themselves they have done enough. Ah that the maintenance of the British Empire costs to hold its position among the nations is unconsidered. If I could give one word tliat would count anything to the youth of to-day it would be “Work.” The world, the British Empire, your own country, your own town, your office, your shop, your own home, your ow'n soul asks it— Work! There is no sure promise that w r ork shall ba rewarded, except in the Bible, wdiere it says, “Work out your own salvation”—five words that ought to be flashed out in the arc lights over every city. There i 3 no promise in those five words that wages will be doubled, or stipulation that you only lay one brick in tho time you could lay three. But it utters the profound truth that & man’s salvation in within himself, and bids him w'ork it out. Those unpaid over-hours of life have had a value to ourselves and others not counted in gold —x value of character, of mastery, of self discipline, and self knowledge that has made the recognised tasks easier to perform. An idle mind and an idle body corrode and mst, and w*e pay more for dishonest ease than it is worth. Is there anything more desirable than that 1920 should havo a good time?

Yes there is, and it is that 1926 shall not ftiake sorrow for 1927. Life was an easier problem in 1900 politically and commercially. The marvels of the road and of the air were yet to come. In t. -■ streets there were no taxicabs, and the hansom «ib was still the chief mode of locomotion, varied with the fourwheeler and the brougham for private use. The aeroplane was a small plaything, the buses were horse-drawn. One realises the extent to which London’s population has grown in 25 years when one remembers that in 1900 there was only one tube railway; while to-day not all tlie underground railways, the motor cars, and taxicabs can fully answer the traffic demands. Wireless was in its infancy—and skirts to the knees and bobbed hair would “have been the death” of Victorian society! But it was the develop ment of motoring a. 1 cycling more than a change of taste or lack of modesty that has resulted in freedom of dress. What could a cyclist do with yards of skirts on her cycle? What use the coiffure of 1900 on lie motor car? or the magnificent hat mounted upon it that suited Hyde Park and tlie accom panying lavishness of carriage and horses and liveried footmen? But the the beginning of the century “society was frankly pleasure seeking,” says th'autliority quoted. The social events of the closing century were the marriage of the daughter of Mr Zimmerman to the Duke of Manchester, the nobleman who a quarter of a century later, again caught the public eye by tripping up an alleged burglar in Jermyn street with the skill and ambidexterity of an old Bugger player; and the engagement- of the Duke of Westminster to Mis 8 CornwallisWest, sister of che Princess of Pless and the late Mr Cornwallis-West, who married Lady Randolph Churchill. Lady Randolph and Lady Sarah Wilson, by the way, were very prominent figures, both having done valuable work in South Africa during the war. Society entertained in brilliant and gorgeous fashion at the great houses. But what perhaps makes it appear that the love of pleasure has a deeper hold than ever, before is the fact that all classes now participate. The great balls and dinners of Society (with a big S) are fewer and on a less elaborate scale, but the jazz has spread throughout all classes from my lady to the kitchenmaid, and the junior clerk, if he can foot tin* bill, dines in public at a restaurant with the merchant prince. Talking of amusement reminds me of the “ Happy New Year’s ” fancy dress ball at the Albert Hall on New Year’s Eve, where 5000 dancers made an indescribable sea of colour. The ball, which was on behalf of tlie Middlesex Hospital and the British Empire Service League, was, it is believed, a success financially as well as socially. At one end of the hall, hiding tlie organ, was a gay Italian scene of a tall tower, round which were grouped trees and summer houses. When midnight came sweet-toned bells rang from the tower, and girls in Italian dress appeared in the summer houses, and as the bells rang the pirit of night descended among the dancers, and thousands of balloons were scattered among them from baskets in the ceiling. Presently as the dancers whirled, the balloons, of many colours, floated with them, .adding to the picturesqueness of the scene in the g r t hall. Throughout the West End there were scenes of gaiety at crowded restaurants, hotels, and dance clubs. But tlie ringing of church bells broke into the pauses of the dance music, and in many of tlie churches the watch-night services were well attended. At some places trumpeters heralded the New Year, at others kilted pipers gave it welcome. Departing from the usual custom, tlie bells of St. Paul’s were rung from 9 to 10, instead of at midnight. Hundreds of people gathered to hear the bells, and as the time passed the crowd spread down Ludgate Hill halfway to the bottom, and it was estimated that 20,000 voices joined in the singing at midnight, round the cathedral, of “Auld Lang Syne,, and “0 God, Our Help in Ages Past.” Women were included in the New Year Honours List. The Baroness Foster has been appointed a Dame Grand Cross of the British Empire in recognition of her services in Australia during her husband’s Governor-generalship; and five women have been awarded the Kaisar-i-Hind medal for public service* in India. These are: Mrs Evelyn Agnes Barton, Mysore; Miss Jessie Carleton, M.D., American Presbyterian Mission, Ambala; Miss Jessie Matilda Allyn, M.D., Canadian Baptist Telugu Mission, Pithapuram, Madras; Miss Slierin Ilormuzshaw, Commissariat ‘Superintendent, Medical Aid to Women. United Provinces; Miss Charlotte Leighton Houlton, M.D. Music is honoured in this country in tlie bestowal of knighthood upon Dr Albert 3rewer, the organist of Gloucester Cathedral, and conductor of the Three Choirs Festival. Among the lists is Sir Frederick Ponsonby, the King’s treasurer, who has been promoted G.C.B. “ for services rendered to three successive sovereigns for more than 30 years.”