CURRENT LONDON TOPICS

Taranaki Daily News, 11 May 1935, Page 14 (Supplement)

CURRENT LONDON TOPICS

GERMANY’S “MAILED FIST” HERR HITLER’S DECLARATION. ABROGATION OF THE TREATY, (Special Correspondent.) ' London, March 21. Hitler’s declaration of military _ conscription in Germany virtually reduced the peace treaty to another scrap of paper. His statement that it'is done in reply to the French extension of army service to fill the cadres depleted by the slaughter of the Great War, is the merest subterfuge. Germany’s plans for this coup are known to have been prepared months before the French decisidn was taken. The latter was indeed not tile cause but the consequence of Berlins contemplated gesture. Hitler has thrown the European Chancellories mto a turmoil, and has given a peculiarly dramatic twist to Sir John Simon s contemplated Berlin visit. Under the Versailles Treaty Germany possess 6s a voluntary regular army of I° o .- 000 ’ P ro ' bably the most formidably efficient force of its kind in existence. _ In conscripting thirty divisions, of which this highly trained regular army will be the nucleus, Germany will raise not half a ; million more men as stated, but .nearer a million.’ . India and the Bill. A friend in India tells me that people i there regard the passage of the Bill as | inevitable, and await the event with little hope and no despair. They believe it will neither, do the harm predicted by its critics nor the good expected by i its supporters. - No doubt is felt that it i can be worked; and whether it can be successfully worked depends entirely on the character arid ability of the next i Viceroy and the Provincial Governors. I When the Earl and Countess of Athlone went off on their Indian trip, I suggested : that it might be a voyage of exploration in view of possibilities. I am interested to learn that the same idea occurred to my correspondent in India. Great Expectations. | The Marquess of Titchfield. heir to the dukedom of Portland, Joint Master of k the Rufford Hounds, and father of one of last season's most important debutan- | tes, has just celebrated his 42nd birth- |

day. He served with the Royal Horse Guards in France. For a time he was Conservative Whip in the House of Commons. 'ln 1883 the Duke of Portlands estates were over 183,000 acres, reputed of an annual value of £BB,OOO. The founder of the family fortunes was William Bentinck, Earl of Portland, William of Orange’s favourite. Bentinck nursed his Royal master through an attack of small-pox. William Bentinck was engaged on all sorts of confidential missions for William. At the Battle of the Boyne he served as a Lieut-General. Subsequently he became Ambassador at Paris and a Knight of the Garter. Lord Titchfield is a breezy personality. In the general strike of 1926 he acted as book.-, ing-clerk at the Westminster underground station, extracting considerable fun from the experience. Television and Sport. . > ; So shrewd an expert as. Sir Harty Greer' predicts that within three years television will effect a revolution in broadcasting even bigger than the transition irom silent to talking films. Nobody will be content merely to listen in when it is feasible to see as well, and when television sets are both thoroughly efficient and reasonably cheap. The effect on sport will be prodigious. The millions ’.-•ill be able to follow football, cricket, boxing, or racing almost as well as the immediate spectators. It has long been a reproach that the small punters whose betting with street bookmakers represents over eighty per cent, of all horse racing speculation, put money on a horse they have never seen. When television is really established, he and she .. will be able to watch their red-hot fancy finish gaily with the also rans. The Nelson Untouchable. One of the first decisions by the new Socialist L.C.C., after Cockney apathy i routed the Municipal Reformers at the i last elections, was to revise all elemenI tary schoolbooks. Bermondsey has now ■set the pace in this reform. Its Socialist borough councillors have ordered the 1 removal of all epic pictures from school--1 room walls. Nelson and the Charge of the Light Brigade .ere specialty banned, and suitable anti-militarist designs are I to replace them. Children are to prac- ' tise maypole dancing and Socialist; , hymns. But in developing little East i Enders into model citizens the use of the ■ cane is rigorously tabooed. A century ' ago England was thanking God that Trafalgar had laid the grim spectre of Napoleonic invasion. Little it dreamed | then that a day would soon come when 'Nelson would be ostracised ,in English schools. Service Rugger. j Since 1907 the Navy and Army, with an ! interregnum during the war, have played

each other at Rugger every year. This year’s Army victory made the score of wins equal at twelve . each. Curiously enough these two strenuous sporting combatants have never yet played? a drawn game against each other. • The Air Force came into the picture later on, of course, making a triangular, Mr. Midshipman Easy's duel of it, but only once, when the redoubtable Wakers was leading their scrum, have the airmen carried off the laurels. In the first twelve matches played, the Navy won no fewer than ten times. But that palmy period included the regime of the classic Davies-Kershaw half-back partnership. During the last twelve' years the Navy haye won only two\ games. It ' is perhaps characteristic of the two Services that usually the sailors are best at defence and the soldiers attack. Our Scarlet Hat. ' Many people'seem to be under the impression that Mgr. Arthur Hinsleys. appointment- as successor to thes late Cardinal Bourne as : Archbishop of Westminster implies that he will " come a Cardinal. This is hardly tfie-case, however, for it was some became Archbishop that Cardinal-Bourne received the red hat, and, assuming tha, the Vatican means to appoint another British Cardinal, the claims of Archbishop Downey, of Liverpool, may prevail over those of the newly made Archbishop of Westminster. In the latter, however, English Catholicism welcomes a thoroughly English fiignitery, whose , eloquence and Wide, knowledge of foreign and oversea lands as a missionary must make his personality of much account in our national, life. .< Mgr.. HipSlCy, ,wh° once ' worked 'in his? father’s, .carpentry shop, knows • Africa 'alS well as 'ltaly; arid Yorkshire. . Jubilee Profession.~ ’ It was a w'ise .decision Wldc^ : ' added something .more to' Silver Jubilee Royal procession. • through-’ ilkmdotij. than merely the Royal? coach- and nh 'escort of Life Guards. Though Th'eir . Majesties will be the- Chief, figures'in this .historic pageant, and it will be their, Stat? coach that draws.the .thunder, of-the crowds, a .Royal coach and a Life Guards hardly constitute ti popular spectacle. . -So now, despite the, idiotic alleged pacifist * outburst when the idea was first mooted,' we are to have picked contingents Of troops, blue jackets, and airmen, military bands galore, and something more worthy of the pomp and circumstance that hedges Royal heads. There will be a galaxy of distinguished Dominion figures, too, and all the quaint and. sumptuous coaches of the peers and commoners of distinction. Thus the long hours during which people will have to sit or stand in the streets will not be without some diversion-