NEWS FROM LONDON SEIZURE OF PRAGUE SHOCKS ENGLAND

Southland Times, Issue 23793, 15 April 1939, Page 13

NEWS FROM LONDON SEIZURE OF PRAGUE SHOCKS ENGLAND

“What Next?” The Eternal Question

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Air Mail from TREVOR ROSS

LONDON, March 23. JF a few weeks ago you had asked any Englishman by what sign he would know that spring had really come, he would probably have told you with a touch of irony that Hitler would close the winter season, by precipitating another crisis. Well, on that reckoning spring has arrived. But there was no gentle budding on the crisis tree. It burst into full bloom overnight in Czechoslovakia. And from all the poli-tico-meteorological signs, it is going to be a warm season. It is a somewhat sorry commentary on the state of mind on this side of a crazy world that we should be reduced to measuring time by the successive fits and starts of the Nazi machine. We had all been expecting longer days to bring longer faces and extended frontiers in Europe. But few of us were quite prepared for the magnitude of the “festival” which was to mark the coming of the new season. • TO say that England has been badly shocked this week would be to describe her reactions most mildly. “What next?” seems to be the eternal question which pops up before any conversation has gone very far. A letter from London in these strange days can scarcely escape the topic. We have all become politicians. More specifically, we have all become very Empire conscious. “Has Britain any business to plunge her Empire into war over Central Europe?” is a question I have heard dozens of times. A hundred years ago, even 25 years ago, there would have been only one answer. Today people are by no means so sure. “We have a big enough job to do now in looking after the very existence of our own lands,” people will declare. Here is a growing opinion which might mean much to us all in the coming months and years. Easter Season

IT was good to see at least one commentator clinging to his sense of humour after England woke one morning this week to learn that the solemn declarations at Munich were nothing but a farce after all. We were finding little at which to laugh and mapping out the coming days by seeing how far the German bayonets would stretch if they were laid end to end. But he told us that, Fuhrers notwithstanding, spring definitely came for him when the first whimsy half-column appeared in the papers about the Oxford and Cambridge boat race. Once the wooden faces of the crews were set out in rows across the picture pages, he said with commendable sanity, we could settle down to a journalistic cycle which had net altered for 20 years. Here, then, is his more sprightly approach to what we may expect until next winter. There will be leggy girls with fixed smiles emerging from huge Easter eggs, whiskered Mayors kissing May queens and on the first really hot day someone will try to fry an egg on the pavement. As the summer warms up the total weight of the average woman’s clothes (including handbag) will be compared with the total weight of the average man’s. And millions of readers will be astonished to learn once again that

“mere man” (why “mere man nobody knows), is wearing three times as much in pounds and ounces as Miss 1939.

Heat And Holidays ONCE we get to the really hot weather reporters will be sent round toclubs and restaurants to find out what “mere man” is eating. They will discover with delight that he is gorging Irish stew in his heavy tweeds, while Miss 1939, cool and smiling, delicately munches a salad. “Mere man” will be severely reprimanded by Harley Street specialists next day. The first heat wave (these things of course being strictly relative in England), will see the reappearance of our old friend “the man with the coolest job.” There he will be in muffler and great coat, handling meat in a cool store, while other citizens are mopping their brows and saying “Phew!” Then, round about August, we will have the “Dolly Goes Too” picture in all the papers. A little girl with her doll will be seen leaning out of a railway carriage window saying, “Hi, Mr Porter, is Dolly and me on the holiday twain?” Of course, if there is a Test match our summer would be incomplete without a cartoon of a lion in cricket pads with a kangaroo behind the wicket, or a kangaroo in cricket pads and a lion behind the wicket. Whichever it is will be called, “Played, sir!” Certainly a slightly more engaging, if more stereotyped, approach to things in general than morbid contemplation of whole nations being taken into “protective custody.” Dress Costs

WITH the London social season approaching one hears it asked what it cost to be “one of Britain’s best-dressed women.” According, to a case in the London Bankruptcy Court this week, it cost one woman £5OOO a year. But she admitted “extravagance.” One of London’s best-known dress designers says in his opinion it cost Britain's best-dressed woman—he will not give her name —£4000 in 1938. Many women, he says, spend up to that amount. By and large it is estimated, the average wealthy woman in London spends round about £l5OO a year on her clothes. Many women spend between £6OO and £9OO on dresses alone if they wish to keep abreast of the fashions. They may spend 60 guineas or more on an evening model, and most wealthy women have five or six evening gowns in their wardrobes. In addition, of course, there are such items as furs, shoes, evening wraps and other very expensive odds and ends. Take, for instance, the spring wardrobe of one of the “bestdressed women.” It would be very empty indeed if it did not include two ordinary suits (40. guineas), two country suits (40 guineas), two town outfits (40 guineas), two afternoon gowns (20 guineas), and five or six evening gowns (30 guineas each), making a total of 320 guineas. Power Of 8.8. C.

WITH every month that passes more and more of the doings and the administration of the 8.8. C. is classed as “news” by the British Press. It is probably true today this huge organization exercises the greatest single influence in British life and thought, the movies not excepted. Radio in Britain could not be other than a powerful social and entertainment factor when it is realized that three out of every four families now have wireless sets, and that these families include 32,000,000 people of whom 7.500,000 are children under 16. For a very large proportion of these families the wireless is almost their only form of entertainment, so that it can be seen how great an appeal can be made to them. Eight thousand schools are taking the school broadcasts and nearly 4,000,000

children regularly listen in to the children’s hour. This, incidentally, is of a standard that New Zealand could profitably emulate. It is a great tribute to the common sense of the 8.8. C. and to its understanding of the type of true entertainment which pleases and also leaves the young listeners with abiding interests. The Queen confessed during a recent visit to the 8.8. C. studios with her daughters that they were both keen followers of the children’s hour programmes. The 8.8. C often wondered what was its minimum audience during a day. Research which established the facts already mentioned, has shown that fewest sets are often turned on between 11 a.m. and noon. Yet, even during that hour there are no fewer that 4,000,000 listeners. So no matter what time of the day anyone might be broadcasting, he can be sure he has an audience that would make a stage artist green with envy. “Less La-Di-Da” "VTOTHING, of course, has created so Jjl much controversy in recent years as the “8.8. C. voice,” by which is meant the smooth, passionless and cultured tones of the announcers. More than enough cheap gibes have been made at these voices, and it was something of a surprise the other day to see just how listeners reacted when it was suggested that there should be a “clean-out.” Professor A. Lloyd James, language advisor to the 8.8. C., had been discussing the question over the air with the Lancashire writer , and broadcaster, T. Thompson, who wanted “’regional chaps for regional, jobs and less of the la-di-da.” Readers of The Radio Times were asked to vote on the question whether the announcers’ voices were too “cultured” and standardized. Thirty thousand voted on the spot and 90 per cent, defended the present announcers. Several thousand letters and postcards were also sent in, with the same majority for the announcers. One must agree with the preference. No one who listened to the perfectly modulated, sane tones of the announcers giving the news during the great September crisis will forget the fine way they handled words that at times must have been almost burning their tongues. There are no frills about these announcers. They are unknown by name to their vast listening public, but most of them are identifiable by their impeccable tones. Their fine job during the crisis was no exception. The British public may throw brick-bats at them from time to time, but something would be seriously lacking if anything were done to strike at the tradition they have already established. Famous Voices

TALKING of voices the 8.8. C. provided a novel entertainment the other day to celebrate the sixth birthday of its recording service, now one of its most important. It has built up an immense library containing 75,000 records of the voices of many famous and nearfamous people. Most of these were made in Great Britain, but some were obtained through the International Exchange of Records. At this birthday party was played a selection of disks, and if some of them are not yet at the peak of their historical interest they Will be in a few years. There was Mr Gladstone recorded personally by Edison in 1876 (so we do know at least something of what he said in that year). Lord Tennyson was heard speaking his own verse. The words were inaudible but the rhythm was clearly marked. Other selections included Yeats reciting “Innisfree,” George Bernard Shaw speaking in the series “Whither Britain?”, Ghandi, Trotsky, Hitler giving his first speech as Chancellor, sounding quieter than of late and speaking in a lower register, and finally an incredible nursery rhyme by an Australian budgerigar!