DEAR LONDON!

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8178, 3 May 1919, Page 1 (Supplement)

DEAR LONDON!

By A NEW ZEALANDER. All Dominions men come here with i the idea that living is cheap in England. They have heard now men could marry j and raise fmilies on incomes of from 1 18s. to 25s a week and manage well, j and as the unskilled labourer in New Zealand has for years received a minimum wage of Bs. a day it is obvious that < the cost of necessaries must he less in ? Devonshire than in Auckland. And so, j a’though lie realises that the war has ] put everything up by 50 per cent., lie finds it hard to account' for London ’ prices. Take whisky, for instance (all Colon- j ia'ls do). The price of a bottle is be. i Hi is works out .T something less than i 6d. a tot. He is charged 2s. for tlr.t quantity. He probably informs the jj waiter that there is some mistake, that B ho is not buying the hotel. Something j is duo. no doubt, to rent and profit, but not throe times ihc value of the drink. • In the next war, he decides, he will keep an hotel. This is by no means an isolated in- j stance. At an officers’ depot in Franco j ho has seer. Military Cross ribbon sold \ for 3d a foot. At his tailor’s in Regent- i street lie is charged G 4 an inch*. Ho reminds the tailor that his price is bigger than the Government s by 2,400 per cent. The tai’or smiles indulgently and ; kindly explains that he is selling the \ ribbon almost at a loss. He stocks it only to oblige his customers. Very well, then, who does make the ’ money? The New Zealander scratches his hea l. Perhaps it woyld be bcAte*, ] after all, to be a tailor in the next war. 1 It is quite true that at one time the ! rapacity of restaurant proprietors was l bridled bv a maximum price for a meal purchased by a soldier. but now this j beneficent restriction stems to have- I been relaxed, and a diner now has to I pay almost ?s much for his vegetables as lie previously paid for his whole table j d’hote. After all, a man usually values most what cost's him most. Perhaps that is Londoti’s charm. Certainly the New J Zealander loves the grand o'd city with j its dim streets, its teeming theatres Is mad taxicabs, and its imperturbable j joliee . Ah! that reminds him. There is something lie hopes to get for nothing some day—even in London. When pence is declared lie will “celebrate ’’appropriately, and if be doesn’t wander hack to his hotel at the close of the prooeedingvs the proud possessor of a policeman’s helmet—well, he will consider that the war has been a fail- i