LETTER FROM LONDON

Taranaki Daily News, 27 May 1933, Page 2 (Supplement)

LETTER FROM LONDON

OLD HISTORY RECALLED. WHAT GLADSTONE SAID IN 1860. (From Our Own Correspondent.) London, April 13. Advocates of reduced taxation, even in defiance of strict Budget propriety, now call Mr. Gladstone, the great exemplar of sound finance, as witness. In his 1860 Budget, the year - before the Prince Consort died, Mr. Gladstone said the country was “on a high tableland of expenditure.” As this was not an occasional or momentary charge, they must, he contended, consider how best to keep ihemselves going during a period of high charge. “In. order to do that,” Mr. Gladstone went on, “we will aggravate a momentary deficiency to make a great and permanent addition to productive power." It is worth recalling, in this connectien, that the Budget of 1860 was not within sight of the £100,000,000 mark, and income tax was less than 6d in the £. But at that epoch the Commons had not made themselves sole masters of finance—and slaves to Whitehall. ALTERED CASES. Many important people strongly our a reduction of taxation in the coming Budget as the best and boldest bid for a trade revival. The name of Sir Robert Home is being billed as the leading exponent of thi> cheerful “damn the consequences” policy, and his own example, in 1922, when he reduced income tax by Is with the happiest results, is now quoted. But, however favourable one may be to that policy, truth demands some discrimination.- between, the circumstances of then and now. Mr. Chamberlain has a Budget deficit of over £30,000,000. Sir Robert Home had a Budget surplus of well over a £100,000,000. So the measure of his pluck is hardly that of Mr. Chamberlain’s needed courage. It is a matter of serious conjecture whether those huge post-war Budget surpluses, and the whole policy of excess profits tax, were not a great blunder. INDIA COMMITTEE.

Mr. Churchill’s refusal to serve on the joint committee to consider the scheme of Indian Government is not surprising. His many literary engagements make it difficult for him to give the necessary time, which is bound to be considerable, and besides, he may well desire to keep himself free to comment on the scheme as it emerges from the committee. Sir Robert Home, too, I believe, was compelled for business reasons to decline an invitation. The complaint that the crix tics of the Government have not been offered their fair share of places will be difficult to substantiate, for no one knows exactly what proportion they form of the Unionist Parliamentary strength. The selection of the Liberal and Socialist members was easy, seeing that these two parties , are fairly homogeneous in their views about India. MOSCOW AMBASSADOR’S DEPUTY. Mr. William Strang, who in the absence of Sir Esmond Ovey has been left in charge of the British Embassy at Moscow, is recognised as one of the ablest among the younger members of the diplomatic corps. His career has not been the conventional one. The son of a Berkshire farmer, he was educated at the local school, took his degree at University College, London, and studied at the Sorbonne. He did not enter the .Foreign Office until after the war, by which time he was 26, and, except for a period as

Third Secretary at Belgrade, he remained at headquarters until he went to-Mos-cow three years ago. His. record justifies confidence that in’ his chief’s absence he will handle a difficult situation with shrewdness and courage. GLORIES OF HOLYROOD. . Mr. John Buchan will be in his element at Holyrood when he takes up his duties as this year’s Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly.. , The office is an expensive one to maintain, but at i the Palace Mr. Buchan will find himself in the midst of historic surroundings that make a strong appeal to one who- has written so many dignified works of history. Incidentally, he may discover material for more “thrillers." Holyrood Palace is a perfect museum of Scottish relics, though nowadays many have to be sacrificed because of lack'of bawbees. Periodically, however. Holyrood is thrown open to the public for a small fee, and the gate money so obtained diverted to the acquisition of more treasures. Mr. John Buchan’s sister, who writes under the nom-de-plume of O. Douglas, is known'from one end of Scotland to the other. She is always opening bazaars for some charity or another. As the sister of “his Grace,” she promises to be busier than ever during the coming 'summer. . CHANGED TIMES. During the late unlamented Great War our Highland regiments were not popular in Germany. They called them, if I remember rightly, “Women from Hell,” and the gallant Jocks certainly established. a wholesome inferiority complex in Teuton .machine-gunners and others liable to their onslaught. But now a German film has been produced, called “The Daughter of the Regiment," which makes a bold bid for popularity with a thoroughly. Scottish setting. Kilts and tartans are galore in this venture, and,, to crown all, . a pretty Czecho-Slovakian actress, in the title role, dances in a Black Watch kilt what assumes to. be a highland reel. Amongst all the revenges Time has worked since 1918, I think this must take a really prominent place. But the ex-Kaiser was a great admirer of our kilted Jocks, and even aspired to a Colonelcy in one Highland regiment. King Edward, however, advised Queen Victoria to make him an Admiral instead. GRIM SOUVENIRS. After the war some sentimentalists wanted Ypres kept, in all the majesty of its colossal ruins, as a historic souvenir. It was an impossible idea. Left - to itself Nature would soon have dressed even those shattered ruins with fresh verdure. We should have had the paradox of an army of workmen constantly and especially engaged on restoring the devastation of war in peace time. But the Belgian Government has decreed that pill-boxes in the Salient shall remain as they are. The pill box was the German Army’s chef d’oeuvre. One could hold up a whole division. But I fancy few remain in the Ypres sector that are even partially intact. By an overdue inspiration of the obvious, during our big push in July, 1916, G.H.Q. .allowed Stokes mortars to be handled as mobile artil- ' lery. They soon settled even the pillI boxes.' ,1 wonder will future tourists I realise what lethal devices they were? “COMMERCIALS’ ” AIR TRIP. Gradually- the old order is being absorbed into the new. The latest adaptation to modern ways concerns our old friend the commercial traveller. Two young Londoners are shortly touring by ’plane from Croydon to South Africa, collecting orders en route at different places, and using a dictaphone, in their well-equipped aerial office,, to send back to headquarters the commissions and instructions. In a few years,

no doubt, we shall have commercial travellers, making _use . 0f... tfie.. air ..as a. daily occurrence, and thinking no more about it than when they , first realised the travelling possibilities of the road ear. The old- world is hustling up all round nowadays, but somehow nobody seems to have any more leisure than before. SOME AIR RACE, If the proposed air race from London to Melbourne* takes place next October, it will he the most exciting and. sporting event of the kind yet staged. Sir Macpherson Robertson, who is stated to have already handed over to the Mayor of Melbourne the prize-money is, I hear, a native-born Australian, though he came to this country as a small boy. As the race is to be an open one, with no limits or restrictions about the size, of machines or engine power, it may attract the world’s-leading aircraft makers as well as the best pilots, and to win the prize would be a big feather in , any airman’s cap. If the event is definitely fixed, we shall have a close liaison between makers and pilots to produce something really slick in aeroplanes. BACK HOME. / Another tfollywood, film star is, temporarily at' all events, deserting Los Angeles for Elstree. Victor MpLaglen is coming to London to play Dick Turpin in the film version of “Rookwood, and will be paid £lOOO a week, free of income tax, plus his travelling expenses. As Kipling says in one of his barrack room ballads, “blooming good pay”! Not everybody knows that Mr. McLaglen was bom in London, one of six strapping sons of a former South African Bishop. After serving m the War, he tried heavyweight boxing, and his devastating punch was demonstrated in one or -two big fights in the ring. America usually casts him for one of those adventurous roles in which the hero is a Marine ranker. The last time I saw him on the films he was in that metier, and took part in & simply gorgeous “rough house” thrill that he seemed thoroughly to enjoy. FAME. Well-known literary people and others have just been entertaining at Claridge’s Mr. Nis Petersen, the author pf that much-praised book, “The Street;of the Sandalmakers.” Mr. Nis Petersen is a Danish writer, and announces that he has a sequel to the. above-named work in hand. He is married to a famous actress who was formerly a star at the Copenhagen Theatre Royal, and whose family Is a very old Danish theatrical one. I could not help speculating, when Mr. Petersen was being lionised, how many people, outside the literary coteries, would be able, if his name were mentioned, to discriminate between the novelist and the good-looking young Welsh heavyweight boxer. _ I suppose, to the vast majority of sporting Britishers, Petersen the boxer is the famous Petersen, not the distinguished author of “The Street of the Sandalmakers.”' Fame is a queer thing. SPIRIT-HAUNTED PUNGEONS. There is one notable London "sight” that is never showir to excursionists. Even the most persistent American rubberneck tourists have never seen the London Port Authority’s storage vaultsThese constitute what future archaeolo-. gists, searching amongst the excavations of vanished London some centuries hence, will probably regaix. as evidence of Cockney troglodytes. They are actually wine and spirit bonded warehouses, larger by far than those that extend right down the main street of Liverpool, though quite unknown to the shopping ciowds who walk above these spiritous catacombs without even suspecting their i existence. The London Port Authority’s I vaults hold rum enough, I am told, to

make the entire population of this island .dead drunk. Amongst toe stored. ytotages are'many belonging to old wine firms, and it is a sign of the bad tunes that some of these are to be auctioned to defray storage. ‘ \ SILENT STEAM WAGONS. Peers and M-P-’s, between their Parliamentary duties this.' week, watched a procession of steam road-wagons proceeding back and forth in front of the Victoria Tower of the. Houses of Parliament. Tire demonstration was for toe purpose of showing our legislators the last word in steam-driven road-vehicles. Silent, smokeless, pneumatic-tyred, these new wagons have none. of. the messiness of some of the old steam lorries. The coal finds its way into the furnace automatically from a mechanical: stoking device. The importance to the coal industry of this new development ; may ?ba gauged from • the fact that at, present steam road vehicles consume .1,000,000 tons of coal per annum, or about one-fifth of the consumption of railway locomotives. WHERE FALSTAFF GLORIED, . This summer in .London is to be enlivened by a Shakespeare festival.:, in Shoreditch. The Princess Royal has promised. to attend, and I- understand that Sir Frank Benson will deliver ■' a prologue, specially written for.the occasion by Mr. John Drinkwater, Shoreditch must have undergone . many changes . since the day when Sir John Falstaff gloried and drank deep in; its taverns, and the Prince and Poins pulled his leg there. To-day it is traditionally the home of London’s more exotic citizens.- There are streets where the passers-by, sb ,far from listening to 'Shakespearean English, will hear hardly a syllable of our Saxon tongue. But Shoreditch is taking?. Ito , Shakespeare festival quite seriously, and $ hopes to raise a goodly sum by it in -aid of housing schemes in the locality. The shade of the fat knight, however, will quest in thirsty vain for the neighbouring old ‘Boar’s Head tavern. RIBBON ANTHOLOGY. A gallant officer has undertaken a big work. He is busy compiling what’ is really an anthology, of ribbons. His book, which will be published in dueoourse by a London firm, sets out to give the history, with illustrations, of every medal, decoration and order known to the world. With official assistance . from many countries widely scattered about the globe, he has collected data about some 3500 different medals, harking back so far as a Chinese medal struck six centuries ago, and nothing so complete or comprehensive has ever before been even attempted- The work is to. be limited to 750 copies at £45 10s each, with a special edition of 35 which will, cost £75 apiece. At a venture I will wager that, in the entire collection of military medals, none will be so cheap and nasty, in production though not in design, as those awarded to the gallant B.E.F. in the Great War. MOLLISON’S PLANE. Amongst the most interesting, exhibits at a show of sporting trophies now being organised in London will be the record-making “bus” down by Mr. J. A. Mollison. This plane, christened “Heart’s Content,” will attract a good deal of attention, and that will be certainly intensified on a close-up inspection; for Heart’s Content, besides its wonderful record of lone-hand long-distance flights, is a unique autograph souvenir. Wherever he landed on his famous adventures through the air Mr. Mollison got the people he met to autograph his plane. There are hundreds of these quaint inscriptions, some jn Arabic, and the names include most countries. No other flying celebrity, I fancy, has thought of collecting autographs en route, .