A LETTER FROM LONDON

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19732, 29 December 1926, Page 3

A LETTER FROM LONDON

END OF COAL TROUBLE

SOME PERSONAL NOTES

(From Our Special Correspondent.—All Rights Reserved).

Petering Out. The coal strike is so obviously petering out in many cases that for those who take short views of big topics it may seem rather a trivial matter whether or not explicit terms of settlement are agreed upon. But statesmen must, to lx? worthy of their title look well ahead, and palpably it must be better not only for the coal industry but for the nation at large that the six months’ deadlock should end ou something like a compromise. So the Cabinet are insisting now that the miners’ leaders have at last consented to see reason and recognise facts, that compromise, shall enter into the final tableau. The owners have won the?r main points. They have secured dis ; trict agreements and torpedoed the Federation. It is meet then that they should concede such a moderate degree of “national principle as embodied in the Govenin> i nt’s plan for a temporary national board to deal with disputed points arising out of the local settlements.

A Bitter Meeting. I hear that the published figures of miners back at work so far from being exaggerated as the delegate extremists allege, are actually below the full totals. Owners whoso mines were being manned again have not been unduly anxious to advertise the fact, hence it was obvious that with the certainly that nearly half the, men will be back this week for whom employment is likely to be found under the post-strike regime what formal decision the district voting reached on the Government’s last settlement offer mattered little. The last delegate meeting in London was a bitter one, and Mr Cook was told bluntly by one who has been far from a moderate that it was now a choice between utter debacle and a bad settlement and that the wiser course was to accept the lesser evil. Yet there was grim hostility even then by extremists from South Wales and Yorkshire. Coalowners’ Choice. I believe that some of the younger leaders of the coal-owners are fully alive to the opportunity that will arise when the dispute is over to place the relations between employers and workmen on a more satisfactory basis. Like others, the coal trade' has its <4 hard faces,” who think their duty begins and ends with the production of coal cheaply and profitably, but even they are coming to recognise that a more personal touch with the men in tltair pits is essential. I believe that once they deem it certain that the power of the Miners’ Federation for mischief has been finally suppressed, the owners in most of the districts will endeavour to offer the best terms they can afford in excess of the stipulated minimum instead of as hereto the lowest that had a chance of acceptance. That spirit has already been expressed in the housing conditions which have been established at some of the new collieries. There are many other means that might bo adopted of making the men feel that their employers are as human as themselves. Mr. McKenna. Men in public life have to carry on with their duties however great their private anxieties may be, but it may be taken that Mr Reginald McKenna’s visit to France is of first-class international importance or it would never have been made. Mr McKenna at the moment is very anxious about the health of his wife. I hear she has been ordered complete rest in a nursing home extending over three months and that at the end of that period she is to undergo a very serious operation that may keep her in bed for an even I longer period. Mr McKenna, as all his . friends know, is devoted to his wife, who takes the keenest interest not only in his work but in a number of chariI ties for which she is most active. One ' of them is the Humane Slaughter of ! Animals Society. Before her marriage ; she was a daughter of Sir Herbert i Jekyll.

Primacy Rumours. Little attention need be paid at present to the renewal of the reports that Dr. Randall Davidson is about to resign the Archbishopric of Canterbury. Dr. Davidson has well-defined intentions on the subject, and, unless it should prove inconsistent with the interest of the Church, he proposes to remain at Lambeth Palace for some time longer. In any case the suggestion that Dr. Hensley Henson will succeed him is likely to prove wide of the mark. The mere fact that he is a man of the most decided views and can state them with the utmost trenchancy is a disqualification, for in modern times the aim has generally been to select a Primate who is a moderate and likely to hold the balance, as Dr. Davidson has so skilfully done, between rival schools of theology and Church politics. Dr Strong ,of Oxford, or Dr. Headlam, of Gloucester, are much more probable choices Most Tall Captains. Was it mere coincidence that caused Prince Henry, by far the tallest member of the Royal Family, to represent the Court of St. James at the wedding of the Duke of Brabant and Princess Astrid? At that splendid function in Brussels there were three of the tallest Kings who have worn crowns in Europe in modern times. King Albert of Belgium, though his Queen is neat and petite, is a veritable son of Anak, : and. neither the King of Norway nor the King of Sweden would be overshadowed in a company of Grenadiers. The late King Edward was sensitive about his shortness, which his girth tended to emphasise, and his tailor gave special attention to mitigating this lack of inches. His late Majesty once banned a press photograph of a shooting party because it * happened that the snapshot showed him next to a very commanding figure. Prince Henry. Not only is Prince Henry, the King’s ' cavalry son, the tallest of his family | by inches, but he is probably the most t robust. And though his elder brother, the Prince of Wales, is so passionately

I devoted to riding/ PrincK~Henry — certainly is the finest horseman of the Royal circle. But he not only has the right build, and good hands, but has gone through the severe mil] of a cavalry riding school. The Prince is a keen sportsman, likes polo, racing, and golf, but is seriously in love with soldiering too. He takes his regimental duties quite earnestly, swats at military text-books as well as drill manuals, and his ambition is to serve abroad. But for the Duke of York’s tour Down Under, this desire might have been gratified sooner. But when the Duke returns home from Australia it is likely that Prince Henry will be going to South Africa on the staff of his uncle, the Earl of Athlone.

Sovereignty of the Air. Are eagles bent on disputing with man their once proud dominion of the air? It really looks like it, and some pilots take the question quite seriously. Those using the aerodrome near Athens are warned to beware of the big Im perial eagles which have been attacking airmen in the mountains. Not long ago one of these birds, whose swoop makes a sound like a nine-inch shell, attacked an aeroplane, brought it dowm, and the pilot was killed. Now one of the American trans-Continental air mails has been similarly attacked. A big eagle deliberately dashed into the machine, smashed one of the struts, and caused a forced landing. The eagle was killed by the impact. During the war one of our pilots was brought down in Scotland by an eagle that flew at the machine and smashed its propeller. Recently a well-known British pilot, flying after being warned over the mountains near Athens, with a single passenger, was startled by an eagle that flew alongside, apparently conning the stranger trespassing on its realm. The pilot grasped his only' weapon —a Verey pistol —but the bird did not close. Subsidy Houses. There must be hundreds of firms of small builders whose future largely turns on the question whether the Government means to continue the building subsidy at its present level of £75 a house. With the small house the subsidy is the means by which the builder makes his profit. I know of one firm which is erecting bungalows at a total cost to the purchaser, including the price of the land, of £450. The actual cost to the builder is about £5 over the. sale price, but the Government subsidy converts what would otherwise be a loss into a profit of £7O or about 15 per cent, on cost. It may be that those who pay £450 could afford just as well to pay £520, but the small builder believes that even £25 is enough to put a house out of the reach of a large class of possible buyers. Park Lane.

London is a place of ceaseless change; but it comes with something of a shock to find that Park Lane has shed most of its precious traditions under our very eyes, and nobody has made, a sign. The fact that the famous Stanhope House has just been sold tn a building society is only the latest manifestation of la change that must have been going on for a long time. Walking down Park to-day I noted one bank, one public house, on firm of estate agents; two osteopaths, one neuropath, one vencriologist, two hospitals; two motor-car firms; one motor engineer; one garage; three wine merchants. And all this in addition to a block of flats which seems to be peopled largely by dentists. Park Lane is no longer Park Lane. It is no use mourning the change as an approaching doom; it seems to be an accomplished fact. American Nights. Devonshire House, with its “super” flats, is now ready to begin its new life. Londoners are already falling in love with the outside of Professor Reilly’s masterpiece, which blends so well with its surroundings, and seems to express the very spirit of modern London. Professor Reilly has spent all his life preaching the gospel that a building is only beautiful when it lives at perfect peace with its neighbours, and, given this great chance to put his theory into practice, he has most skilfully succeeded. The tales of the luxury of these flats, which arc like suites for princes, leave one gasping. For instance, there is a contraption by means of which letters posted in your own flat are carried into the postbox at the main entrance, every kitchen has ventilation bv mechanism, which eliminates *all cooking smells. And one must not forget the restaurant for the residents on the ground floor, which is going to be one of the sights of London. Altogether Devonshire House sounds like an American Arabian Night. Father Hugh Byrne. Dockland mourns to-day, with u fected grief, a great Irishman. Father Hugh Byrne, who has just died in a nursing home at the age of 72, was a Wicklow man, who became a Catholic priest in America, and in Ohio and Textts ruled parishes bigger than England. Later he went to Mexico, where he started the first English-speaking school. Twenty-two years ago he came to the East End of London, where he showed himself one of the most remarkable characters, land the finest parish priest this city ever knew. He tos a passionate philanthropist of the best sort. He started the dockers’ university, waged fierce war agtainst the money lenders, and ran a social ami sporting club where shag tobacco and, grim poverty rubbed shoulders with fervent Christianity. His moncylending agency started to kill the professional usuror, had a turnover of £lO,OOO per annum. Prime Ministers came at his beck to debate with the dockers at his club. Father Byrne was a household niame where the London poor live, and no living man wielded at the East such a benevolent dictatorship. His person was sacred to the worst criminals, and his word was law unto the roughest outdasts. ‘ ‘ Our Mr. Shaw. ’ ’ The award of the Nobel Prize to Mr. Bernard Shaw is surprising only from

one standpoint—that such blue ribbon recognition has been so long delayed. Particularly so in view of the tremendous vogue “GJB.S.’’ enjoys among the literary highbrows of most of the Continental nations. Our professional critics were years behind their Continental compeers, as were our deplorable dramatic critics, too, in realising the outstanding genius of Air. Shaw. But nothing is more stPange that the suspicion of anything like frolic humour among our highbrows, notwithstanding that, as Shakespeare taught us when he created Sir Jnhn Falstaff, and the domestic side of the Great War proved incontestably, we are the world’s great’ humorists. An eminent Italian statesman remarked to me in November, 1918,. that, of all nations engaged in the wtar,, he most admired the English —because, they alone “saw its humorous side!” St. Paul’s in Damger. “St. Paul’s may Mst another 50 to--100 years; it may not.” This somewhat startling opinion of the editor of “Architecture’’ has aroused the wrath of Dean Inge, but it has also sefared a great many people, who feel that there is some danger in a conflict of evidence between experts in so urgent a case. When one feels such a great regard for tho patient, it is disturbing to find the doctors quarrelling over his bed. The measures now being taken to preserve the cathedral are so much waste of time. So one set of experts seem to say. They add that nothing can done till the most elaborate calculations have been made as to the exact manner in which the building vibrates, for only hope that the authorities can produce a sufficient answer, and justify their methods of attacking the problem.