A LETTER FROM LONDON

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19768, 16 February 1927, Page 8

A LETTER FROM LONDON

[ From the '‘"Chronicle’s ” Special Correspondent. ] LONDON, January 13. Slump in Houses! It has been apparent for some time t that if house building continues at its I present rapid rate there must soon be ii a surplus if not an actual glut of o houses in what is known as the London area. It is no exaggeration to y say that in the outer suburbs of the C metropolis vast new towns are spring- p ing up. What were golf courses or o green, fields twelve months ago have p totally disappeared, and in their places J 1 have sprung up line upon line of “de- i sirable villas,” all boasting the latest t labour saving appliances. It is to be t feared that many of these houses are of the jerry-built type and from the p aesthetic point of view the best that 1 can be hoped for th(*n is that in a few d years time they will become ancient i ruins. In any case there will soon be i more houses than the population needs and a fall in prices will be the inevit- s able consequence. A very eminent sur- s veyor, who looks after the interests of 1 one of the greatest corporations in the 1 country tells me that the slump has already commenced. Increasing diffieul- < ty is being experienced in selling houses, and he predicts that it will < very soon be as easy to rent a house as it was in the days before tho war. Embryo Waiters. I had lunch the other day in the restaurant attached to the London County Council School for waiters. A meal Cooked by embryo chefs and served by embryo waiters sounds something of an adventure, but it turned out to be a very pleasant experience. The school is part of the Westminster Technical Institute' where almost anything from sculpture to plumbing is taught. On one of the upper floors is a full-dress restaurant, whore the waiters learn to (wait and incidentally put what they have learned to practical test by providing a lunch for members of the Institute staff. The menu was elaborate; every conceivable kind of dish was to i bo obtained. The menu itself was t couched in irreproachable French; one ate a meal which would grace the Manj sion House, and paid something like i two shillings for it. The School is, I ‘ am told, the only one’ of its kind in the United Kingdom. Although started as an experiment before the war, it has only been placed on a permanent basis this winter. j Lord Lyveden. But for the decision of his granduncle, the first peer to adopt bis - mother’s name in substitution for his father’s, Lord Lyveden, whose death is announced, would have teen called , Smith. The first baron was a nephew c of Sydney Smith, the famous wit and ’ Canon of St. Paul’s, who once sug--3 gested that the Dean and Chapter 3 should find the wood then ne’eded for ? the repair of the Cathedral, by “put- - ting their heads together.” The late , peer was an illustration of how great s a white elephant a hereditary title can be. He was a genial old fellow, who s had tried many vocations without being much of a success in any of them, and ho would have been much happier living quietly in a surburban villa 0 than attempting to keep up the position of a peer without the means to 3 do so. At one time he used to attend tho House of Lords fairly regularly, ’ but, a Radical in political views, he ( did not find the atmosphere congenial. Titled Actors. J' Considering how popular amateur t theatricals have always been with big society folks, very few peeresses have gone on lhe stage professionally. Those 3 peeresses who have done so were usu--1 ally not born in the purple, but in the buskin, and were actresses before they wedded into Debrctt. Of titled actors * I can recall only Lord Lyveden, now dead, Lord Cowley, and Lord Rosslyn. L Lord Cowley has acted pretty regularly on the West End stage in more or less small parts, and is now on an American tour. Lord Rosslyn, under the stage 1 alias of Janies Erskine, which names ; were after all among his real baptismal ones, played several West End parts, notably the jeuness dore in “Trelawny of the Wells.” He had a handsome presence and a fine’ manner. Lord Lyveden played all sorts of parts. I Ho has been a stage peer and a stage i butler, and in both roles displayed 5 equal “touch.” Sea-Birds as Land Feeders. An inquiry conducted under the aus pices of the Carnegie Trustees hay t made' some unexpected disclosures as to r the food of sea-birds. Farmers have been disposed to view with dislike : what seems the growing tendency on . the part of sea-gulls to invade their . fields, but it is now found that they r should be •welcomed rather than feared, r Only to a small extent do they regard fish as a food. An examination of a . large number of dead birds showed - that their diet consisted to a large cxtent of grubs and other insects which ! destroy crops and hardly at all of vege- * table matter. It would seem, therefore, that the farmer should encourage . the gulls as allies. Too often in the past farmers have been disposed to treat most birds as their enemies, and some years ago one district paid a heavy penalty for a campaign organised against owls. In consequence it was over-run by rats and mice. Inter- ’ fcrence with the economy of nature has to be carefully made, or the last ? state' may be worse than the first. Tut Tut! ' There arc no Die Hards like the Old J Guards of the fighting services. And c at their favourite dug-outs in Pall Mall ’ and Piccadilly they make no pretence 1 of approving certain modern newfangled ways. There was a deep-toned I chorus of “Tut tut!” from the Colonel Ne'weomes when it was officially intij mated the other day that safety-razors ? would in future be issued to recruits. But even more disgruntled exclamations resound, over the' news that the t War Office is now insisting on more rer gulation air-space for soldiers in barracks, and particularly in their dormi- ? tories, while at the same time the Army’s milk supply must be either boiled or pasteurised, and. unkindest cut of rtll to the virile Old Guard, strict precautions enforced in barracks t against damp and draught. These obvious precautions strike the Old Timers as being namby-pamby, but they are in t reality impelled by fears about “iu--9 fantile paralysis” in the Army, an exi planation in itself not exactly calcur lated to sooth the offended virility of the Old Guard. 5 1 Odds On! a Those who arc above vulgar superstition, and refuse to listen even to the

oldest' established prophets, may yet feel their flesh creep a little when they read Old Moore’s almanac for 1927. The' old gentleman, who must by now be getting rather antique, is in his most inspirated mood of pessimism this time. Mr. Pickwick’s Fat Boy is a regular Mark Tapley compared with him. We are to have a thoroughly unpleasant twelve' months of it, between epidemics, strikes, earthquakes, and riots, at all of which, he hints in that disturbing Delphic manner of his. Now all this has its logical raison d’etre. Like most tipsters, Old Moore is given to backing the' odds-on chance. Which means that our post-war luck is so clean out that no self-respecting pro-1 phet dare risk being optimistic. But, as racing men know, occasionally the rank outsider docs come home at long odds, and maybe' 1927 will, after all, not prove quite such a selling-plater as Old Moore thinks. At any rate, there is an excellent Spanish proverb about not saying “Good-day” to the Devil till you meet him. The Weenie-Teenie. London has caught the Little Theatre craze. New York has had it for some time and little theatres have been multiplying there almost like sands of the sea. As yet in London there is only one, but I hear that in the second week of the New Year another is going to be opened. This one'—Playroom Six, which is at number 6 New Compton Street—is being opened by six young actors and actresses as “a protest against the gloom of the highbrows.” The Little Theatre, originally the home of intelligent plays, has become, they maintain, tho homo of gloomy plays, and they are out to readjust the balance. They have completed their plans for a three months season of six plays —each of which will be performed every night for a fortnight—and are opening with Goldoni’s comedy, “Tho Fathe'r of a Family,” with Mr. Ernest Thesiger as producer. I called at Playroom Six and found tho six founders busy painting tho walls and erecting the stage. It is really a Little Theatre, for it sc'ats only two hundred people.