OUR LONDON LETTER

Taranaki Daily News, 20 April 1929, Page 8

OUR LONDON LETTER

NEWS FROM THE HOMELAND.

THE PLUMBER AT HOME.

London, Feb. 28.

Friends are telling me some good stories of the Great Frost. One quite amusing one, showing how even soeial amenities may sutler under such trials, concerns two ladies of a mean street in ono of London's poorer suburbs. Mrs. Brown rushed across before breakfast tc tell her dear friend Mrs. Jones some red-hot item of gossip, but received a temperamental set-back which has wrecked an old acquaintance. She knew Mrs. Jones saw her coming, but could get no response to her tapping at Mrs. Jones’s door, the poignant reason being, as Mrs. Jones cannot explain, that Mrs. Jones's false teeth were frozen hard in a tumbler of water. Better still is the experience of a friend of mine, who got home to find his pipes burst, and his wife in great distress. He rushed round to the local plumber, and found him at home all right, but up to his knees in his own basement, blaspheming with hammers at his own domestic pipes.

INFLUENZA DE LUXE.

London wine merchants are now sharing with the chemists the rich harvest brought by the influenza. The epidemic is still raging, and may even yet not have reached its peak. /Hl classes are equally susceptible. Society people, lawyers, doctors, actors, city men, and humble indoor and out-door workers alike all succumb with much the same symptoms. I hear that 3.000 London busmen are now on the sick list. A thrilling rumour has got around that Harley Street is ordering champagne in the later stages of the malady as well as castor oil at the beginning. As a result more champagne has been sold in London during the last few weeks than during the preceding six months with Christmas thrown in. Many St. James’s clubmen take a matutinal half-pint, ’flu or no ’flu, just to be on the safe side!

PREMIER COMES OF AGE.

On February 29, 1908, the Prime Minister was first elected M.P. for the Bewdley Division in succession to his father; so this week sees his Parliamentary majority. Not'so long ago I saw a letter written by his own hand recalling the fact that on the day he took his seat he lunched at the Carlton Club, and walked down to the House with Mr. Michael Hicks-Beach (who, as Viscount Quenington, was killed in action in 1916) and Colonel George Gibbs (now Lord Wraxall). For nine years the future Leader of the House remained a back bencher, attracting little notice until during the Avar he became Parliamentary Private Secretary to Bonar Law. and, in 1917, Financial Secretary to the Treasury. From that point he has not looked back, passing in quick succession to the Board of Trade, the Exchequer, and the Premiership. The fact that his hold on the Bewdley Division has never been seriously challenged betokens that he is one of those prophets who are not without honour in their own country. As a Parliamentarian the Premier is junior to seveial members of his Cabinet, notably Lord Balfour, who entered Parliament in 1874,

MEN’S. DRESS PARADE.

Anyone who knew nothing of Court etiquette, and who passed one of the well-known military tailor’s establishments on Tuesday morning from nine onwards, would have been justified in thinking that there was a sudden boom in men’s clothing. There were queues of cars outside each of them. Their owners, however, were inside, not to order new clothes, but to be “dressed.” That particular morning was the first Levee taken by the Prince of Wales. It is only the very old hand who has the courage to face the scrutiny of the Lord Chamberlain without being first passed by a tailor. For that official is merciless, and ruthlessly sends back any young officer whose uniform offends any court rule. After trousers have been pressed, shoes polished, and hair brushed, the "young gentlemen,” as the fatherly tailor calls them, are dressed, lined up, and inspected, and are not handed over to the inevitable photographer until sartorially perfect. It is the custom to present a print of the photograph to the kindly tailor.

LIBELLING BRITAIN.

Sir Donald Cameron’s revelations about the attempt to fake a film showing slavery under’ the British flag in mandated native territories deserve close attention. Sir Donald is Governor and C-in-C of Tanganyika, and naturally resents this dastardly endeavour to exhibit to the world, by means of “the camera which cannot lie,” conditions which are most abhorrent to the AngloSaxon tradition. The head of this filmfake expedition is said to be an Austrian Count, since described as a Czechoslovakian, and his enterprise went the length of filming, not a native,, but a white woman, whom he took with him, lashed to a slaver’s post. It may be the baud of Czeeho-Slovakia, but it sounds uncommonly like the voice of Moscow.

SOCIALIST LEADER’S HEALTH.

On the strength of Mr. Ramsay Macdonald having been in the dentist’s chair alarmist statements as to his health have been circulated. These have no foundation. He assured me only a few nights ago that he is better than he has been for some time. And he certainly looks better. His holiday at Lossiemouth did him much good, and he has shaken off the insomnia which troubled him. He is undoubtedly the worse for having attempted the impossible double burden of Premiership and the Foreign Office, and is not likely to repeat that foolish arrangement. Besides he is apt to dissipate his energies on matters of no consequence, and engagements which he should decline. Being a Celt Mr. Macdonald is mercurial in spirits, but the prospect of office and responsibility would be a tonic to him.

LENIN’S END.

None of Mr. Churchill’s brilliant pen pictures in ‘•The Aftermath” will excite wider interest than his macabre portrait of Lenin, the repellant genius and iconoclast, whom the Germans despatched from Switzerland to Petrograd at the psychological moment “in a sealed railway truck like a. plague bacillus.” He quotes his authorities for all the start-

ling facts he mentions about Bolshevik Russia, but does not reveal how he learned that Lenin, in the last months of his strange mind’s decay, murmured prayers to the divinity whose disciples he had overthrown and murdered. Clare Sheridan, Winston’s handsome cousin, to whom Lenin and other Soviet leaders sat for their busts, was intimately behind the scenes in Moscow about this period, however, and she may have furnished him with details hitherto suppressed even in Russia.

CAR RUN ON INCOME TAX.

It will prove a sad blow for some thousands of peppery colonels and economical old maids if the Inland Revenue really carry out their threat to regard as “resident” in' the United Kingdom for income tax purposes those who come to England for live or six months every year. It has long been a tacit convention that six l months’ residence abroad gave exception from income tax, and thousands of people with modest incomes have owned a house in England and a house in some Continental resort alternately living in one and letting the other. A retired colonel in the Indian Army told me in October just before departing abroad fo. the winter that he and his family were able to keep a car on th© saving in income tax effected by this mode of living.

MONEY IN BRITISH TOYS.

Most people have vaguely known that toy-making has been a growing British industry since the war, but even some of the trade buyers have been surprised at the proof of this, which the British Industries Fair affords. The. industry has grown to such proportions that in some fields it has not only ousted German competition in the home market, but is actually doing a big export trade to Germany herself. The German manufacturer still dominates the cheap market—probably eighty per cent, of hawkers’ wares are German—but the British toymaker has established a profitable lead in the “quality” market. Toy cycles, motor-cars, and dolls’ houses are best if British. It is amusing to discover that as much is paid for a toy motor-car as the average young man pays for a good second-hand twoseater.

THE PRINCE'S “BODYGUARD.”

An interesting little romance in connection with the Prince of Wales has just been told to me by a reliable informant. When he went to the front during the war, a London policeman, who had joined the colours at the outbreak of hostilities, was told off as bodyguard to his Royal Highness, On subsequent visits to the war zone, the same smart young soldier was entrusted with the same responsible duty. When the Prince found himself back at Buckingham Palace his wartime attendant, Sergeant Burt, perforce returned to the Metropolitan police force. But when his Royal Highness set up a home of his own at York House, he remembered Sergeant Burt, and promp ly appointed him his permanent bodyguard on his household staff. In that capacity the police officer went on the recent tour to East Africa, and returned with the heir to the throne when he hurried home to the bedside of the King. The romance, is completed by the fact that a charming nurse who once attended the Prince in an illness is now the wife of Inspector Burt.

TRADE DOOR BOLTED.

Once again the Government is being taken to task for banging and bolting the door against trade with Russia. From facts recently brought to my knowledge, however, it seems that the door has been far more-strongly bolted and barred on the other side. While our Government does nothing to hinder the private trader, the Soviet officials will not tolerate any business that does not go directly through their own hands. The Russian trader, who wants to place his orders in Britain, is debarred from doing so by the Commissars, who prohibit him from making any monetary remittances to this country. On the other hand, such appalling duties are levied on any articles - sent from this side that the recipients live in terror of receiving parcels. A lady who recently sent to a child in Leningrad a pen and pencil bought at a “sixpenny shop” ,in London got in reply a letter begging her never to repeat this gift. Soviet Customs officials classified the pen and pencil as “jewellery,”’ assessing the duty at 30s, and allowed the receiver no alternative of refusing to take delivery.

LUCKY LINDBERGH

When he was in Paris and London after his record lone-hand Atlantic flight, Colonel Lindbergh made heaps of friends. There was a manly simplicity and quiet modesty about the young American airman that charmed most people. His many admirers on this side rejoice in the latest moves in what promises to be a fine career. Not only is he the youngest colonel in the American Army, and engaged to the daughter of a well-known politician, but Mr. Hoover has nominated him chief of the Civil Aviation department. The colonel must have been born under a lucky star. As a flying cadet, not so many years ago, he had a pretty close call, and escaped certain death only by his cool and prompt action in a ’terrible emergency.

THE CATERPILLAR CLUB.

He was engaged on manoeuvres with a flying squadron that was attacking another formation in tho air at 5000 feet up. In wheeling to grapple with an enemy machine, his aeroplane crashed into and became interlocked with, another machine belonging to his own squadron. From this fearful predicament both pilots escaped by parachute, but it took real nerve and activity of brain to make the descent so as to fall clear of the crashing aeroplanes. Colonel Lindbergh’s report on the accident, which I read the other day, is a model of unemotional conciseness. This adventure entitles him to membership of the most exclusive club in existence—the Caterpillar—qualification for which is a forced parachute descent.

“RED AND RICH.”

Mr. John St. Loe Strachey, whose engagement to the daughter of a New York leather merchant is just announced, is a prominent member of that small and select circle known to their frivolous friends as “The Red and Rich. Mr. Strachey is a Socialist—redder and more communistic than most Labour

leaders —and is a prospective candidate for the Aston Manor Division of Birmingham. He is the son of the late proprietor of the “Spectator,” and when not engaged in political activities is quite a figure in fashionable hotels and dance clubs. He is a close friend of Sir Oswald Masley, and believes in demonstrating the dignity of manual labour. Friends «,who visit him in the country are invited to assume the blouses he brought back from his recent visit to Russia, and to justify themselves by chopping wood. Only the socially obtuse dare to smile. BANNED BOOKS IN BLOOMSBURY It is not generally known that banned novels, like every other true of book,

have to be presented by then P ul^ s g’ to the National Library at the Bntwtt Museum. I can imagine a most ironical law suit which might involve, a■publisher if all his copies seized by the police, and the,museum exercisedJjhett powers to imprison him. o deliver their own particular c py. must not be supposed, liowevei, that the museum is a kind of gloryhole oLdubi ous literature. Books which are thought to be objectionable are locked away even from the junior attendants and find no place in the public catalogue. A student has to prove very good reason before h is allowed to consult them, though the British Museum has not yet followed the waggish example of the Bodleian Library and shelved all such books under the Greek symbol “Phi.”