BRITISH MADE CURRENT LONDON TOPICS

Taranaki Daily News, 7 November 1935, Page 12

BRITISH MADE

CURRENT LONDON TOPICS

LORD CONWAY’S ANALOGY PAINTERS OF FLEMISH SCHOOL. PLANTAGENET SOVEREIGNS. (By Air Mail—Special to News.) London, Oct. 15. Lord Conway, who. was among the passers-by in the Str.md last week, is probably better known to most people as Sir Martin Conway, the erstwhile Member of Parliament. He was hi pensive mood, contemplating perhaps another book on art. He is a great authority on painters of the old Flemish school, and, as I passed him there came to my mind an incident described in his work on the Van Eycks. He was describing the conditions under which the Plantagenet Sovereigns lived in England, and spoke of an interview which Edward I accorded to one of his Ministers in Rochester Castle. The interview took place in the Royal bed-chamber, with the King and Queen Sitting on the edge of the bed, and the Minister standing before them, and, while the Minister was discussing matters of State with his Sovereign, guards kept passing through the room, because it was the only way to the ramparts. Recalling this circumstance, Lord Conway says: “Imagine King George and Queen Mary sitting side by side on the edge of the bed in a small bedroom, giving audience to Mr. Lloyd George, while the Windsor Castle police on their rounds keep passing through the room.”

Rugger Delusions. Rugger enthusiasts are already, on the strength of their defeat at Swansea, anticipating the All Blacks being beaten in big international games. It is the most egregious non sequitor. It was a New Zealand side weakened, and structurally deranged, by casualties that Swansea so gallantly beat. With their best team available, and in a really important match, we shall find these visitors tough enough. I doubt whether our selectors will assimilate the real moral of Swansea. This first All Black reverse was in their first game with a club side, and that club side included at half back two schoolboy Rugger twins like Kershaw and Davies. It was a Midland club side, too, that scored the one victory over the last tourists. Surely the moral is plain enough. Perfect team work, by a practised club fifteen, will always beat a fortuitous all-star scratch side, if the club team is up to any standard at all. I am not suggesting that the All Blacks are not a team. But our international sides /and combined county sides most emphatically are not. Norwich and Evolution.

Norwich this year is the seat of the British Association’s annual conference, which is taking place there this week. Times have changed greatly since the “British Ass" last gathered itself together in the East Anglican City; and our store of - scientific knowledge has been added to so enormously as to reveal more than ever how little' it is we have yet solved of the wonders of the universe. The last meeting in- Norwich was in 1868, when the great controversy over Darwinism was just at its height. The meeting was memorable in that it marked the first general recognition on the part of scientists of the trutns of the doctrine of evolution. “Capital,” was Huxley’s comment to Darwin upon the meeting, in a letter which he wrote to him in order to prophesy that he would have the rare happiness of seeing nis ideas triumphant in his lifetime. AH Blacks. ’ The All Blacks arrive from New Zealand next week to “show the world” how Rugby should be played. In New Zealand the one and only occasion upon which their team was defeated in Wales in 1905 is still regarded as a dark blot on the national football reputation. The desire of every youthful male New Zealander is to become an All Black, and Rugby, strictly according to rules, is played by young men of five in the public schools. In New Zealand women take the game seriously, and are expert at the colonial sport of “barracking.” The college girls gather' in sections and, under a leader; barrack in unison against the boys in the next stand. Badges of loyalty sre diverse and extraordinary. Two picturesque personalities in the present team are Solomon, the South Sea islander, and the magnificent Maori giant “Tori” Reid. The latter is always much in demand as a singer of Maori songs. Connemara Curiosity.

It was a Lancashire lass who made the Irish film of J. M. Synge’s classic “Riders to the Sea” possible. Miss Grade Fields financed the venture, and travelled to Ireland to keep an eye on the production. The scenes were laid almost entirely in Connemara, where the film has just been completed. Amusing stories are told by some of the players on their return. In outlying Connemara districts visitors are a rarity. A picnic foursome was espied from afar off by two urchins, who ran all the way, more than a mile, and sat solemnly watching the party from a distance of six yards, biscuits were proffered, and the children ran off chattering in Gaelic. Soon, a small procession wound its way up the hill. Grandmother, mother, and all the rest of the family had come to see the queer strangers. They sat in a row, quite silent, obviously enthralled by the sight, and no amount of tactful hints would dislodge them. Wireless Problem.

Probably few of the millions of wireless fans in this country know that the experts are being somewhat anxiously perplexed by a remarkable phenomenon. It seems that the reactions of the ether to wireless are not what they were at first. In the early days of broadcast transmission it was possible to pick up dance music from London on a wireless crystal set in South Africa, for instance. People in Johannesburg have actually danced to a London orchestra by that medium. At that date the power behind the transmission station was only a fraction of what it now is, but even with improved listening-in sets in South Africa the same clarity of sound is by no means obtainable. This applies not only to South Africa, but generally, and the question is why this remarkable fading-out symptom should occur.