OUR LONDON LETTER

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLII, Issue 20586, 27 November 1936, Page 14

OUR LONDON LETTER

A CHANNEL FERRY SCARE FINANCE OF AIRSHIP TRAVEL (From Our Own Correspondent) LONDON, October 22. The rioting in the East End of London has brought Sir Oswald Mosley and his little band of 13,500 British Fascists once more into the limelight. The Blackshirts are negligible in numbers compared with other political parties, but they are well organised and seem never w lack money. Who finances the movement? Opponents have made all kinds of allegations, but have never succeeded in. proving that Mosley is subsidised by Hitler or Mussolini. Sir Oswald and his wife were both wealthy, but it Is believed that most of this private fortune went in the lavish expenditure on founding the ill-fated “New Party,” which Mosley created before he adopted Fascism. Financially, it is clear that British Fascism. is not self-supporting Members pay 3d a week, which brings in a revenue of less than £lO,OOO a year. Yet the party admits that it spends £70,000 a year. Who finds the other £60,000? Rumour says that it comes from city financiers, who are secretly backing Mosley as an insurance against the risk of Socialism in Britain. Channel Ferry in Wartime The inauguration this week of the train ferry across the English Channel has revived the old set of arguments which used to be raised whenever a Channel tunnel was proposed. It is said that the ferry (which enables trains

to be run on board ship at Dover and run off again at Dunkirk) will have a vital strategic value in a future war. According to this argument, guns and munitions could be entrained at British factories and run right up to a fighting-line in France in a matter of hours.

Actually, however, the train ferry can have little military importance. It is true that, despite the slight difference in gauge, British and Continental trucks could run over the same lines. But in order to effect such an exchange, many tunnels and almost all stations in England would have to be reconstructed. French trains would foul our platforms. Quite apart from this, the special ferry docks enabling trains to run from ship to shore would be put out of action by the first wellplaced bomb of the future war. Atlantic Flying Germany Is going quietly ahead towards making a commercial success of transatlantic airship transport. Figures just published for the Hindenburg’s first ten flights to America and back do not reveal whether the giant airship is making money; but they do show that her accommodation has been fully booked up for almost every eastbound trip. In fact, 250 would-be passengers from America had to be turned away during this short period.

Traffic from Europe to America has not been quite so brisk, and the Hindenburg has often had empty berths. But she carries more mail from Europe than from America. The popularity of the Zeppelin route from America is ample proof that airships can be made to pay. Germany’s new airship, now being built, ought to make a handsome profit, for she will have accommodation for twice as many passengers as the Hindenburg, and yet cost no more to build or to operate.

Paying for Coronation Seats

In the unforeseen event of the Coronation being postponed or the route altered, sightseers who have booked seats will not be so lucky as those who reserved accommodation for King Edward Vll’s procession. The Coronation then had to be postponed, owing to the King’s sudden illness, and a legal battle followed between owners of stands and those who had booked seats on them. The Court decided that people who had paid for seats could not recover the money. On the other hand, those who had reserved accommodation without actually handing over the cash could not be forced to pay. Owners of stands along the route of next May’s procession remember this decision and are taking no risks. Sightseers are asked to pay cash now for their seats, or else to sign an unconditional undertaking to pay.

The Commonest “Crime” in England England is facing an extraordinary situation as a result of the growth of motoring offences. Police courts, which used to be occupied mainly with vagrancy, drunkenness and petty thefts, are now filled with an endless procession of middle-class drivers. Seventy per cent of all the cases heard by the courts are motoring “crimes,” varying in seriousness from dangerous driving to leaving cars too long by the kerb.

Both magistrates and motorists are aggrieved. The former naturally do not like working overtime. The latter (who paid £385,000 in fines last year) complain that this money ought to be spent on Improving the roads and providing proper parking places, so that many motoring “crimes” could be avoided in future. Motorists also complain that the law is arbitrarily administered. One bench of magistrates takes a lenient view of even serious road offences, while another imposes heavy fines for trifling breaches of the regulations. It is being urged that motoring cases should be heard by special courts. This would take a big burden from the shoulders of the magistrates, and at the same time ensure a more uniform administration of the law. Lord Nuffield’s Millions

It is seldom that the extent of a rich man’s fortune can be revealed in his lifetime, as in the case of Lord Nuffield, maker of Morris cars. His sale this week of a block of shares in the Morris Company disclosed that he must be worth at least £17,000,000. People were amazed a year or two back when he refused an American offer of £10,000,000 for his motor Interests. Now we know why. Actually Lord Nuffield must be worth a good deal more than £17,000,000. He has been successfully making cars for nearly 25 years. Being a man of modest tastes he could not possibly spend more than a fraction of his colossal income, and his accumulated capital must now stand at a very high figure. Britain's War Pensioners Seventeen years after the end of the Great War Britain is still paying pensions to nearly a million people, /’.most half are officers and men who fought; the remainder are dependents of those who were killed. Ever since 1921, when there were 3,500,000 pensioners, the number has been falling rapidly. To-day it is fairly stable and is likely to remain just below the million-mark for some years. The deaths of badly disabled men cut down the pension-roll considerably just after the war. Then war widows began to re-marry and, of course, forfeited their pensions by doing so. Finally the dependent children reached working age and they, too, ceased to receive allowances. Now these factors have ceased to operate. All the children have grown up and most of the widows are too old to remarry. The pensioned ex-soldiers themselves seem to have remarkable vitality despite their war wounds; latest figures show deaths are proportionately no more numerous than among the rest of the population.