GLADSTONE PAPERS: RECORDS BROKEN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18992, 11 February 1930, Page 8

GLADSTONE PAPERS: RECORDS BROKEN.

LONDON LETTER.

[(Special to the “Star.") LONDON, December 26. Lord Gladstone’s gift to the British Museum of his father’s letters and papers, now stored at St Deiniols, Hawarden, is not to be estimated by its mere bulk. That is enormous, but there must be a great deal of material that is not of first-class historical or national importance. Mr Gladstone’s correspondents were legion, and when Lord Morley wrote the “ Life ” of his leader he estimated that between 200,000 and 300,000 papers “of one sort or another" must have come under his review.

The papers were stowed away with extraordinary neatness in the muniment room which Gladstone built at Hawarden some thirty years ago, and there must have been at least 100,000 letters in the collection. These include copies of his own letters made by his private secretaries, and of course there are many other documents of great interest.

Although much of the correspondence that reached Mr Gladstone was described by himself as “ rubbish ’’ it was not without significance for him, because he regarded it as an indication of the drift of public opinion and of the questions on which the attention of the country was fixed at the moment. There have been very few statesmen so industrious and methodical as the great man who was born 120 years ago, and none whose public life covered such a period of change as that from the time of the first Reform Bill to the appearance in Parliament of the organiser of the Independent Labour Party-.

Sir Frederick Kenyon, the director of the British Museum, states:—“The collection fills over 500 portfolios. How many will come to us I do not know, because some will be retained by the family. The letters are of great historical importance, because they throw light on many interesting incidents in Mr Gladstone’s life.”

Britain's Speed Records. For the first time this country holds the world’s speed land, sea, and air, and numerous motoring records of speed and endurance have also been achieved in the past year in all parts of the world by British drivers. The most important records are the epoch-making achievements of Sir Henry Seagrave, who drove his Golden Arrow car at 231 miles an hour on Daytona Beach, and broke the motor-boat record of over ninety miles an hour in Miss England, and the achievement of Flight-Lieutenant Waghorn, who won the Schneider trophy for Britain at a speed of 328 miles an hour.

Another triumph for British pluck and motor-engineering skill was when Captain Malcolm Campbell drove his Blue Bird car at an average of 211 miles an hour for five miles, thus securing another world’s record fot Britain. The two hundred miles world record was captured by Kaye Don, driving a British car, on Brooklands Track, at the remarkable speed of 115 miles an hour. The British cars had a wonderful success in the classic twenty-four-hour road race at Le Mans, gaining first, second, third and fourth places, the winner averaging seventythree miles an hour.

Women, too, have played a part in British record-breaking during the year. Mrs Victor Bruce performing a great feat of endurance by driving for twenty-four hours on Montlhery track at an average speed of eighty-nine miles an hour. Two English girls were the first women to travel round the world unaccompanied by a man. They were Miss Gladys de Haviland and Miss Mona Eley, who completed the journey in a British 7 h.p. car without one serious breakdown.

Records been broken by British motor manufacturers, who estimate that their production during the year will total 245,500 cars, compared with 211,877 for 1928. Employment figures are estimated to be maintained at the new high level for 1929 of 271,325 workers engaged in the industry.

Canada’s Roll of Honour. By the bestowal of her name on a mountain peak Miss Ishbel MacDonald now joins the roll of famous men and women who have received this honour from Canada. Many notable people are already identified with the mountains, rivers, lakes and towns. Mr Stanley Baldwin’s memorial towers eleven thousand feet near the Yellow Pass. Not far away is an even higher mountain named after Nurse Edith Cavell, while quite recently Mr Amery scaled a peak in the Rockies which bears his name.

The Prince of Wales is commemorated by a fifty-five-mile road running from Prescott towards Ottawa, while the mountain named after his grandfather, Edward VII., is one of the noblest heights in the Rockies. Canada is by no means unmindful of her own countrymen. In the Rockies the peaks bear the names of all the Prime Ministers of Canada since the Confederation, and heroes in the world of aviation have received a full meed of recognition. Newly-discovered lakes in. Northern Ontario have been named after Canadian,, British and United States aviators who perished in their various attempts to fly the Atlantic. So one finds Lakes Tully, Metcalfe, Princess Lowenstein, Mechen, Hamilton, Bertraud, Payne, and also one to commemorate the Canadian girl, Mildred Doran, who lost her life in the Pacific on a Honolulu flight. It is a pity that the idea cannot be be adopted here, for it would perhaps save us much statuary. Our unnamed mountains are to seek, but we might christen the new arterial roads!

Trans-Atlantic Telephone. Considerable developments of the Atlantic wireless telephone service are contemplated in the New Year. The service between London and New York has become self-supporting this year, and at times the facilities have been insufficient to cope with the public demand. This was especially felt during the Wall Street financial crisis, when the service was in operation day and night. The first improvement w’ill be the installation of additional circuits to en 7 able four conversations to take place at the same time. The Post Office has advanced cautiously in matters involving fresh capital expenditure, but the state of traffic now is held to warrant the additional plant for these facilities. A day and night service throughout the twenty-four hours is likely to become a permanent feature. Present experience is that the growth of wireless telephony has not been made at the expense of other forms of communication, mainly, no doubt, because the rates are not competitive. It goes to show that there is a great scope for the development of communications between Great Britain and the United States. Another entirely new service now in the experimental stage is wireless telephony to ships at sea. The liner Berengaria is being equipped with apparatus for the first public experiments through the Post Office in a few weeks’ time. The scope for this ship service may not be so great as that before the London-New York link, but it, too, will be “ new business,” and therefore worth