GUR LONDON LETTER

Waikato Times, Volume 94, Issue 14769, 7 October 1921, Page 6

GUR LONDON LETTER

»■ NEW WORLD IN OLD EUROPE. POLITICAL, INDUSTRIAL, SOCIAL. LONDON, August 18. Transcending in interest everything else poUtical is the situation in Ireland. This is written at a period when Pail Eircann is in secret session, and the latest we know is that Mr Do Valera will not find himself in a position to make a definite reply lo the last letter of the Prime Minister —which leaves the way open for a modification of the non possumus attitude taken in the letter containing a refusal by Slim Fein of the British Government’s offer lo give Ireland Dominion status —before next week. So it is unlikely that Parliament will be prorogued, as had been Intended; the Houses will simply adjourn. at their rising to-morrow, until October 18, after passing resolutions which will enable them to be called together earlier if necessary. We arc sorry to say that in our view the necessity'will not arise. Siny Fein lias been rj;i j |e consistent. 1-Ton J the first it has claimed iho complete independence of Ireland, and some of us have wondered why any negotiations should have been commenced at all unless there was reason for the belief that something short of that would be accepted- On the oilier hand, so level-headed a man as General Smuts seems to have thought that it would be. His wonderful letter to Dc Valera —which has impressed everybody on this side, including the best* friends of Ireland —shows that. Further, the policy of the British Government was obviously to create an opportunity for asking that Dominion status offer so that all the outside sharply-criticising world might sec it clearly and understand it. So wo have had the truce superseded? The wish is, we arc afraid, father to Hie thought in the minds of those who say Dial this cannot tie possible, that brains must surelv tell and the voice of humanity he heard in Hie fight for “little systems" which “have their (lay and ccasi In he.” We wisn we could be sanguine, hut on Hie plain facts of the position we arc not. By Air to AustralasiaThere arc Hiosc oil this side who think that we did not lake a sufficiently hopeful view of Australasian air setvice prospects in our paragraph on the decision of the Imperial Conference in that regard. Let us trust tocy arc right. A very long experience of official shuntings and shelvings possible weighs 100 heavily un our memory. No satisfaction will be greater than ours if it should prove that the British Government is holding on to the excellent material available with a real, although not yet pronounced, intention of actually using it in Inc near future for Hie establishment of an aerial postal service between tins country and Australasia. The- whole subject is most interestingly discussed, in a\ press interview, by Mr HollThomas, who pioneered military aviation before the war and is Hie Blunder of the, London-Hinds Air Express. What amazed him'most is Hie fuel Unit after two years’ experience there is onlv one machine a day employed in the* London-Paris air service, described as the “first stage"—surely a tiny £i a g C in tho London-Mol bourneSydney- Wellington service wc should all like lo see, fully equipped and busy as it would lie. For such rapid and ’comfortable alternatives to air travel as one may get between London and Paris arc not available to Australasians who want to come or send here. In the course of his comments. Mr Holt-Thomns - iuLs a supposditous question and answers it in this wise: “Is thci'e anybody who has said; ‘Now, gentlemen, for two years we have had an aeroplane running with 9a per cent, efficiency, day after clay, notwithstanding the climatic conditions, at 10c miles an hour, between London and Paris. If under these very difficult climatic and cross-channel conditions it is possible to fly these 250 miles, why cannot wc fly at the some speed from London to Australia, in similar stages, in 100 hours, or slightly over four clays? Is it possible, and if it is possible, what is the cost?’ If anyone had asked me that question I could give them a very definite answer. Sir Boss Smith lias actually flown to Australia. Capetown has been reached by air. The Atlantic has been crossed. All by British pilots on British machines. All without organised assistance. I know what the aeroplane can do organisation, and from the evidence from first-class pilots who have flown in various parts of the Empire in tropical climates, I can say that the flying part of it is perfectly possible. There is not the slightest reason why the 250 miles slage between London and Paris should not be multiplied. Multiply it by 40, and wo have covered the 10,000 miles between London and Australia. It is perfectly inexplicable to me. that with evidence before us, with the knowledge that Australia can be brought within four or five days of London, with its enormous importance to Hie. Empire through which it passes, the scheme is not already adopted and running.” Then he goes into the cost figures, but considerations of space do not admit of our following him into the labyrinth. His conclusion is that the cost is not "appalling.” Most people who know how to look at public expenditure in its true perspective — counting what you are to get as well as what you arc to pay—will readily agree with him. In the Final Tost. That very good-natured writer, genially known ns “Plum” Warner, takes Armstrong lo task in the Morning Post for what may be called the policy of the Australian play in the last stage of the fifth test match. It was pretty certain on the last day that there could only he a draw, and after the Australians had got enough runs to save a follow-on their play was quite perfunctor. Armstrong did not attempt to prevent the Englishmen from having a good lime at the wickets, lie did not bowl himself, nor did lie put on his first-rate bowlers, and the question is: was this the sort of cricket the folks had come to see? Warner thinks not, so do a good many Australians who were present; but there is another view of the matter. What the visitors lost In excitement, they got in quantity always conceding the right of the Australian captain lo so play his game that when he could not, win he •would ensure a draw ral.lior than risk defeat. So the game went on, and the spectators saw some good English batting. It is cricket if it is not, magnificent, and the Australians have maintained an unbeaten record for 10 test matches in succession. According to some of the press accounts, there was a yen' serious disturbance at the Oval on Hie opening day of the concluding match, when play was delayed by rain. Pursuant to a bad rule, which leaves lo fhe two captains, instead of giving to I,lie umpires, the decision of whether the ground is fit for play, the captains inspected the ground after an afternoon stoppage. Armstrong was seen to put his hand on the pitch and then to wring it repeatedly as if to get rid of the water, whdp Tennyson, pipe in mouth, stood quietly by. It is known the English captain did not concur

in the view taken by Armstrong that the ground was unplayable, hut he yielded to Armstrong and did not insist on the matter being referred to the umpires, whose decision in such circumstances would be final. Ihe crowd did not actually know this, but deduced it from the attitude of the fcaptains while they were examining the ground, and something of a demonstration was made against ArmstrongThere were cat-calls and rough chaff and some crowding on to the playing ground—for the had Englisti rule is lo let spectators during intervals rove all over it, just outside the pitch. The police on duty made a way when the captains went again to an inspection of the ground, but the idea—suggested in some quarters—that this amounted to giving them “police protection” against violence is an exaggeration of Hie attitude of the crowd. There is a section of the Oval habitues who know how to be deuced nasty. They were not nice on Saturday, but that Hie mjich-liked Australian captain was at any time in danger of personal violence -—-such as was actually offered in Sydney on ,onc occasion In the polite Lord Harris— is not our view of what took place. Patient Travels by Air. It is now such a common thing lo find some Australian nr New Zealander taking the lead on this side of the world that new illustrations of the fact c'*asc to excite surprise, interesting as they map he. Sir Douglas Shields, a Melbourne surgeon who had made good here, controls the Harold Fink Nursing I[ nrnc —established as a memorial to her son hy an Australian woman—which is the most superb institution of the, kind, not only in fashionable Bark Lane, but in all London. The doctor got. an urgent message from Paris on Friday night. As a consequence he set off hy aeroplane Iho first Ihing on Saturday morning, and by halfpast nine lie was at the bedside of a patient, in the. French capital. The sufferer was Major Olticy, of the Foreign Office, who was in attendance on Ministers engaged at the meeting of the Supreme Council. The doctor -decided that, Hie patient, was fit to travel and should be brought to London. At four o’clock ihc same afternoon Hie pair embarked on a Handley Page machine, large enough to admit of a lied being fixed up for Major Ottlcy in its eaiiin. Just after seven Hie Croydon aerodrome was reached: a waiting motorcar did the rest, and the patient, none the worse for Hie journey, was soon comfortably installed in the Park Lane hospital, in readiness for an operation for —it is understood —appendicitis. No half-measures about the Australian doctor, you will sec. “If it were done, when’t is done, then ’t were well it were done quickly"—if wo may be permitted lo dislocate a passage from Macbeth —is his motto, and he loses no lime when a patient's life is in peril. So far ns we know, he has pioneered an idea, practical application of which was illustrated hy the successful conveyance, with Hie leasl amount of shaking, of an Englishman who, having fallen ill in Paris, preferred lo be treated in London and could afford to pay for his preference. Picturesque Bathing. Britons find serious preoccupation these days in considering whether at lasi an answer is to be found to Hie long unanswered Irish Question, wheIher wo can preserve the entente with France without helping Germans in Silesia, whether reform of Hie House of Lords is really possible, vhelher no better way can lie found of getting the Poplar Councillors to strike a rate which they dislike Ilian by sending the good gentlemen lo gaol—and in much else of Hie sort. Bui in one district of Hie great metropolis Ihese questions burn hut. feebly in comparison with the blaze mi Hie subject of whether local and oilier Indies shall no longer be permitted lo appear in coloured bathing things. Kensal-risc is the, locale, for there Hie WillcscSen Council has set up a very fine open-air public bath, in a shady pari of King Edward's Park. Mixed balliing lias therefore become- a joy dear to the hearts of youths and maidens of (he neighbourhood and to those who journey thither to join in the daily water carnival, and it also, let it he added, much favoured hy reputable eilizens who have passed I lie slage of life which (he (erni youths and maidens usually connotes. So greal was Hie rush during last rimn I h 11 1 • I Hie Council doubled Ihc fees, without, however, any perceptible effect on Hie volume of the crowd, and the cry is si ill. “ I'hey come.” Owing, do you Hunk, to a passion: for balliing. for the delights of breasting the surges—shall we call them?-—of the waveless artificial sen? Perhaps, but not wholly. It is more than suggested by smiie of Hie very sedate habitues, daily asserted by churlish outsiders. Dial Hie joy of some of the ladies is chiefly found in (he display of pretty balliing toilels, while nobody disputes that not Ihe least attraction to met al Kensal-risc is, or rather has been, seeing Hie girls in their amazing concoctions of manycoloured Untiling robes. On the greasy slopes of the hath as well as in the water did the fair nymphs disport themselves, never dreaming for a moment that all the lime Hie censorious eyes of Hie municipal Council were also upon them. So like a thunderbolt came. Hie intimation, last, week, that new regulations had been issued forbidding all “colour schemes” *nd ordaining that Ihe dress of a bather.-male or female, young or old. must lie “either black or very dark blue." The rule is already operative and lynx-eyed attendants carefully scan all costumes before passing Hin wearers into Hie battling enrlosirre. No wonder Horn that, there is a crisis in balliing circles at Willesden. At a meeting of bathers, where Ihe new regulations were condemned as nn impertinent interference with the constitutional rights of His Majesty’s loyal battling subjects, some re 7 sourceful person suggested that the bathers, clad in their bright attire — if you can so call any bathing dress — should wait as a deputation upon the Council and insist that the inartistic veto on bright colours should lie withdrawn. But the Council was 100 wary for that. Immediately it passed the regulations, it, incontinently fled —that is to say on pretext that it wanted a holiday, skeedadled, every' man of it, till ihc end of September, by which time open-air bathing in Merry England will cease to have charms, 70 ACRES RFEEHOLD AT PUTARURU, £25. Within two miles of progressive Putaruru with a big road frontage, Ibis little farm is bound to beeomc very valuable for cutting into smaller areas in the near future when further improved and developed. Meantime there are. 30 acres of new grass and 20 acres lying fallow for turniping (his coming season. The deposit required is only £2OO, balance remains for lliree years at C per cent. Price £25 per acre. Idle Freehold. For inspection of Hiis very desirable iillle property wrile, wire, or 'phone to It. Alcorn, authorised agent, Putaruru.