CURRENT LONDON TOPICS

Taranaki Daily News, 14 October 1933, Page 2 (Supplement)

CURRENT LONDON TOPICS

GRIM SPECTRES OF FAMINE WASHINGTON AND MOSCOW. WESTERN EXPERIMENT FAVOURED. (From Our Own Correspondent.) London, August 24. Serious students of contemporary events have for some time been gluing their eyes on Washington and Moscow. Whilst President Roosevelt is attempting to ginger up America by a voluntary five-year plan Commissioner Stalin is still driving the Soviet industrial push by sheer dictatorship. Which of the two plans emerges with most credit from the practical test of results must have immense reaction on world politics everywhere. It is a duel between conflicting systems of human outlook. At the moment fortune appears rather to favour the Western experiment. Food is scarce now in Russia, and what the position will be next winter is almost too grim to conjecture. Children are being enrolled to spy on peasants who pocket precious grain during harvest work. The next six months may bring volcanic upheaval to the Soviet. The I.L.P. Changes its Views. Circumstances not only alter cases, but fervent principles too. The Independent Labour Party, which has severed its official relations with the Labour Party, has changed its views about the political levy. When, four years ago, Parliament discussed the substitution of contractingin for contracting-out, where payment by trade unionists of the political levy Is concerned, the suggestion outraged the emotional sentiments of Mr- James Maxton and his Independent Labour Party associates. But now, I observe, it is formally declared by the party that its members’ payment to the political levy “shall be made permissive.” Even the contracting-in system, it seems, is not adequately permissive for the Independent Labour Party nowadays. It almost appears that the more democratic a party’s politics is the hollower it is.

Restarting Emigration. Not least amongst the disastrous results of the world slump and economic blizzard was a sudden stoppage of emigration. Not long ago I stated that efforts were afoot to get this healthy flow of Imperial citizenship going again. Mr. J. H. Thomas has, I now hear, sent out diplomatic feelers on the subject, and, there is an encouraging if cautious response from Canada at all events. Tentative proposals are being made by the Dominion Government to leading municipalities with a view to the sponsoring of a system of family settlements on a carefully organised basis. No suggestion of any direct financial assistance is made, but the Dominion authorities will be prepared to offer land at a purely nominal figure, and also to advise settlers and supervise each settlement, affording them the best facilities for cooperative trading. Virtue in a Name. If President Roosevelt makes a success of his audacious attempt to play the role of popular dictator in America, he will owe that signal triumph to his name and his wireless efficiency. Dr. Woodrow Wilson stated that there was more benighted ignorance to the square mile in U.S.A. than in any other country in the world, a fact that is the more understandable if one remembers the type of mixed European immigrant that has peopled Vast areas of America and the remoteness of huge sections of public opinion from the affairs and thoughts of the outside world. Thus the name Roosevelt in itself, though the President of to-day bears no affinity to his famous namesake, counts for an immense amount with America’s population. Added to this lucky accident is the fact that'President Roosevelt is one of the best wireless talkers yet discovered. He “gets across” on the ether as no other statesman has yet done. Sea Politics. There are signs that Herr Hitler! and his Nazi associates are thinking better of their shipping ukase. They startled the shipping dovecotes by announcing that in future Germans must travel exclusively by German boats. And they propose"d to follow up that ukase by another, compelling even German freight to be shipped in German bottoms. This absolutely conflicts with the Anglo-Ger-man Treaty of 1924, and strong representations have been made by British shipping interests to our Government on the subject. Should Germany under, its Nazi regime persist with this policy, there will certainly be reprisals, and I am told that, in the long run, it will be German shipping that will bear the brunt of the warfare thus inaugurated. Berlin’s attitude, I understand, is that the ukase is not aimed at foreign shipping interests, but is a part of the antiSemitic policy of Nazism. Peace, Perfect Peace. Encouraged, it may be, by Mr. Ely Culbertson’s success as film star, the latest personality to court cinema fans is Mr. de Valera. He is now giving a rendition of views on Ireland on the screen at various London cinema palaces. His tall, lean physique and horn-rimmed solemnity of features come out remarkably well on the film, but his opening sentence, carefully read out from notes, like the whole brief address, met with a burst of ironical laughter at the West End cinema where I listened to ,him. “Peace has reigned,” said Mr. de Valera with unutterable gravity, “throughout Ireland for eighteen months.” That was too much even for a genial cockney audience. With at least three Free State armies in the field, the arms ukase coinciding with drumhead Court Martial procedure, it is certainly “the peace that passeth all understanding.” Our Bagdad Representative. This is, I seem to remember, the second time Sir Francis Humphreys has been recalled from a well-earned holiday by international emergency. He is hastening back from Norwegian fiords to Bagdad, where the climate at this time of the year is far from alluring, in order to patch up the trouble between our Iraqian mandatories and their Assyrian malcontents. It was Sir Francis who had charge of that dramatic air evacuation four years ago from Kabul, when the Afghan revolution was putting things in a ferment, and Europeans were in dire peril at the British Embassy. He is a tall handsome soldierly figure of 54, and his wife, Lady Humphreys, is a sparkling brunette who speaks several North-West Frontier dialects and used to roughing it in the hinterlands. Her father, Sir Harold Deane, was formerly in charge of that troubled region. Diplomacy and Golf. One of the hoary chestnuts of the golf club smoke room is the story about the person who found golf was interfering With his parochial duties, and feared he would be compelled to give up his parish. Sir John Simon, our very capable Foreign Minister, is not quite so bad as that. When he returns from his sea trip to Brazil with Lady Simon, he will be engaged in removing his household effects from Fritwell Manor, his Oxfordshire place, to a house on the edge of Walton Heath golf course. I imagine Sir John would make no concealment of the pretty obvious fact that

this transference is an answer to the call of the fairway, and perhaps to. some extent of the bunker as well. It is not many years since Sir John first took to golf, and he has got it badly. And he has no slimming excuse. At near sixty years of age, he still manages to keep the trim figure of his college days. The Best-Governed People.

I met a gentleman to-day who is a retired Indian Judge with a very distinguished record. He intrigued me not a little by enunciating a theop' of government that some ardent pink democrats might usefully ponder. He declared that, after a long study of different countries, his conclusion is that the best governed people are those who are governed not by themselves but by impartial and well-disposed strangers. My beautiful faith in “by the people for the people” has become a little shopworn in recent years, but I found this theory rather steep. The ex-Judge replied that, Ijowever it seemed to conflict with recognised social philosophy, he had found self-government to lead to political intrigue and corruption. On the other hand, where outsiders, who were skilled administrators, ruled the roost, they did so even-handedly and without arriere pensee.

Money Out of- Flame. Commercialised incendiarism of the kind revealed in the record Old Bailey trial .has in the past been more common in America than here. But this case demonstrates that the U.S.A, has no monopoly of that sort of villainy, and public gratitude is due to the able legal brains that made possible the prosecution of our cosmopolitan “fire bugs.” A serious menace may have been arrested by the Old Bailey trial, though some people may feel that Mr. Justice Humphreys, who devoted such conscientious patience to his formidable task and spoke so strongly about the nature of the crime, has displayed almost extreme leniency in most of the sentences. The arch-villain gets 14 years, less the usual allowance for good conduct, but the rest of the conspirators get off rather more lightly than Old Bailey experts expected.

Strange Ambition. The details now available of the forrune of the late Sir John Ellerman confirms the impression that he was probably the richest man in England. It is estimated that he has left something like thirty million sterling, which means that the Exchequer will benefit to the extent of some fifteen millions sterling in respect of Death Duties. The passing of this great shipowner and financier should ease the mind of another of our great multi-millionaires. This man had the queer ambition to die the richest man in the British Empire. He believed that he had amassed almost sufficient wealth to realise this queer ambition. But he was always a little doubtful as to whether Sir John Ellerman did not own more than he did of this world’s wealth. To some of his intimate friends, to whom he divulged the truth of the millions he had accumulated, he would ask almost piteously: “Do you think Ellerman has more than that ?” And so, to make doubly sure, he went on piling investment upon investment. Back to the Ranies.

It looks as though Lord Trenchard’s new ten-year enlistment for metropolitan police is going to be popular. I hear that the First Commissioner has been almost snowed under with applications from all over the country and distant parts of the world as well. A high proportion of the Applicants are former Navy, Army, and Air Force men anxious to get back into uniform again, and hold down a congenial job however short the tenure may be. Many of the candidates are'ex-officers with the highest • qualifications who no doubt rely on making good in the police ranks, and qualifying for one or other of the higher permanent jobs. So heavy is the tide of application that an assistant has been specially told off at the Yard to deal with such letters and personal attendances. In addition to filling his ten-year-service quota, Lord Trenchard will have 'an adequate reserve list to draw upon if necessary. Yard Prefers Brunettes.

Further thrilling details are now available about the three young women just appointed to the C.I.D. staff! These three plain-clothes women are between 20 and 30 years old, have had about a years training in police duty, are physically attractive, and two are brunettes and one a blonde. It is announced that they will mainly concentrate on West End night life, and will be “a terror” to international crooks 1 They may accompany the Flying Squad on important raids, and no bones at all is made of the fact that they will be “called upon to act as decoys.” This information may strike different people in different ways, but I make open confession that my sympathies are with the iron-grey police superintendent whose opinion I sought on this development. His quiet response was: “The Yard seems to me to be going movie mad!” Fleet Streets stunt journals, of course, just lap it up like milk. Sartorial Snobbery.

Whence derives the quaint British prejudice against shirt sleeves ? It is recorded as a sensational fact that duiing the recqnt heat wave men sat in the British Museum reading room, for the first time on record, in their shirt sleeves, with their coats hanging over the backs of their chairs. Yet we have had other hot spells, and the Bloomsbury reading room is perhaps the stuffiest apartment in Christendom. In New York men regularly - sit, and move about, in shirtsleeve attire. In London, though some may take off their coats in hot weather in their, own offices, they would be refused admission so attired in even, a popular restaurant. Shirt sleeves are regarded as slightly indecent, and braces as positively., obscene, for some mysterious reason. _ It is a middle-class

snobbishness, however, for shirt sleeves have always been de regueur indoors amongst our proletariat. In Salem. (Mass),

An American jury has, after a typical American murder trial, duly acquitted 1 the platinum blonde accused of poisoning her husband. The latter was the local fire brigade chief, and the platinum blonde, according to the prosecution, wanted his insurance money to gild her amours with a handsome young policeman. The latter said she vamped him persistently, and has been labelled by the American press “the-kiss-and-tell cop.” Whilst waiting for the Judge each day, the jury amused themselves with community singing, their favourites being “A long long trial” and “Nearer My God to Thee.” Hysterical emotion suggestive of the films marked the verdict of “Not Guilty,” and the platinum blonde had an ovation. She had promised her children to take them to the cinema after her. discharge. Americans seem to have drifted some distance from the Stoic psychology of the noble Red Man.

Armada and Waterloo. It will be a pity if the Seaton Barony, with its fine historical associations, becomes extinct. But the late Lord Seaton, a typical West Country squire, who has died at the age of 79, had no children, and his brother. Major Ulysses ColborneVivian, who now succeeds him, is also childless. The late Lord Seaton served with the Devon Yeomanry in the war, and held yarious staff jobs under Sir lan Hamilton’s Gallipoli command. The first Baron Seaton was Field-Marshal Sir John Colborne, to whom military historians attribute a decisive ■ part in the Waterloo" victory. His pension of £2OOO a year expires with the third baron’s demise. Besides this link with Wellington and Waterloo, the Seaton family retains memories of Drake and the Armada by virtue of possessing the immortal Drake’s drum on which Sir Henry Newbolt, another Devonian worthy, has written a song.