Topics of the Day.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 17, 26 April 1911, Page 48

Topics of the Day.

By Our London Correspondent.

WINSTON S WILFUL WAY. LONDON, Mareh 10. /TA R- WINSTON CHURCHILL Ilk cannot be feeling particularly 21/ '-I'l'y i‘> l”" Home / Secretary, for his erratic actions of late have raised a hornet’s nest of ciitieisnis about his ears from friends and foes of the Government alike. No one will be very much surprised if he asks presently for a new post, and when Home Rule conies into the limelight we may expect to find Winston as Irish Secretary, booted and spurred for fresh adventures in the public eye. He has had plenty of publicity as Secretary, but a deal of it has hardly been of the kind he is supposed to hunger after. He made a good start when he succeeded Lord Gladstone. His new prison regulations were humane, sensible, and progressive reforms, and much was hoped from a young statesman who could take such modern and sympathetic views of the psychology of crime and punishment. But since then his conduct has been most erratic. One day he is distributing pardons and reprieves in the gram! manner of a oenevolent despot, and the next he is ordering forcible feeding, or refusing inquiries into scandals, quite in the old reactionary style. You never know what he will do next, or whether he will aet the “enlightened young statesman” or the red-tape bureaucrat.

His adventures in Sidney street under a hail of bullets and cameras brought him more ridicule than renown. The comedy of the old shepherd of Dartmoor, who disappeared the day after Mr. Churchill found him a job, anil who has not been seen since, is a topic on which the younger spirits of the Opposition are never tired of harrying the Home Secretary. They take an unholy joy in putting the most artfully ingenious questions to Mr. Churchill about that aged shepherd. Sidney-street and Dartmoor are about the only topics regarding which the young Home Secretary has been known to blush. He finds them ‘painful themes. His refusal to grant an inquiry into the conduct of the police during the Suffragist disturbances at Wstminster last November has disgusted many of the Government’s supporters and friends. Grave and specific charges were made of violent and, in some cases, indecent behaviour by policemen. Mr. Churchill sneered at the charges as “trumped up,” and insinuated that if the women had been roughly and indecently treated they had nobody but themselves to blame. “A more injudicial and offensive statement,” says this week's “Christian Commonwealth,” “was never made by a responsible Minister, and it gives one strong reason to doubt whether Mr. Winston Churchill has the gifts which fit a man for a position of such serious importance as the Secretary of State for Home Affairs.” The “Manchester Guardian,” one of the leading Liberal papers, declares that the Suffragettes had made out a sufficiently strong case for investigation, and that Mr Churchill's refusal will be received with regret. Charges of the most serious kind, made by responsible persons, made by 135 different persons, and corroborated by medical evidence, are dismissed with official flippancy by the Home Secretary. The hopes that reformers placed in Mr. Churchill when he entered the Home Office have, indeed, sustained some rude shocks since then. THE KING AND THE CHILDREN. A hundred thousand London school children will bo the guests of King George on dune 30, at the Festival of Empire. There is great joy and excitement in the Schools over the news this week, and there will be a good many heartburnings when the selection of the 100,000 comes to be made, for there are something like 800,000 children to select from, and they all want to go. However, the Festival Executive propose to entertain batches of 25,000 school children a day to free seats for the dress rehearsal of the Pageant of London, and as the rehearsals will last lor lilt era days, au-

other 375,000 school children will thus enjoy a free day at the Crystal Palace. This treat in store should mitigate the sorrows of not being selected for the King’s Fete.

King George’s 100,000 little guests would require about 300 trains to take them to the Crystal Palace. Allowing a 3-minutes’ service on the new electric railway, or twenty trains an hour, it would still take so many hours to transport the children out and baek that it seems clear the railways must be supplemented by road conveyances. On arrival the children will be marshalled in four huge divisions of 25,000 each. As soon as the monster “ party ” has been assembled, a special performance of the Pageant of Empire, lasting half an hour, will be held. Then the children will be taken in batches fur a trip round the British Empire, as seen in the Palace grounds, along the “ All Red Route ” of a mile and a half of electric railway. Finally, the King’s guests will be marched to the .Sports Ground, where a. monster tea will be provided, and each child is to carry away as a souvenir a Coronation mug, the gift of the King. His Majesty has supplied a portait of himself in Admiral’s uniform for reproduction in colours on each mug. The notion of entertaining this army of children is the King’s own, and a very popular one it is sure to prove.

LONDON'S CHILD STREET TRADERS.

The proposal of the London County Council to abolish street trading by children is one that has the warm approval of all who have had the opportunity to watch its ill effects. The dangers of street trading are numerous. Apart from its ill effects on health and moral character, it leaves the children stranded in later years and entirely unfitted for any respectable occupation. As street traders, children seldom learn anything useful. They get their wits sharpened, but there is no real intellectual development, and the result is that in many eases they drift, sooner or later, into the class which fills our gaols. At the present time there are in London nearly 14.000 boys and over a thousand girls under the age of 10 hawking newspapers, matches, flowers, penny toys, playing, singing, shoeblacking. In a vast number of cases —especially among the match and Hower sellers—“ trading ” is a mere euphemism for begging. Some of these juvenile hawkers are mites of 0 or 7, who fill in the time they do not spend at school in going the rounds of local piiidivhouses with perhaps only a single box of matches as their nytire stock-in-trade. A number of them are undoubtea]y parentally educated up to the begging business, and it is quite certain that the home curriculum includes more subjects than the gentle art of begging. And as linguists some of these wizened little •street hawkers would give points to a Dublin fishwife or a back-block bullock puncher in the matter of luridity ami obscenity./ If the proposals of the L.f'.C. become law, a certain amount of hardship must

be inflicted on scores of hardworking widows and others who cannot keep the home together unless assisted by their children. But the parents to whom the banning of child street trading will mean real hardship are in a great minority. By far the greater number of the children engaged in street hawking are the children of people with little or no sense-of parental responsibility, and to whom their children's earnings are only important because they give them more money to spend in self-indulgence.

There can, however, be np question that juvenile street trading, as at present carried on, is a social evil requiring drastic remedies. A few may suffer by its suppression, but in the long run the State at large must benefit providing a scheme can be devised whereby the children thrown out of employment are enabled to turn their spare time to good account in other directions.

Mr. Mundella, vice-chairman of the Committee on Wage-Earning Children, who is entirely in agreement with the London County Council proposal, believes that the solution of the problem should be found in a system of trade classes for children combined with the old system of apprenticeship run on modern lines. He thinks that if more advantage were taken by the trade schools which exist at present all over the country, children would learn Something useful which would stand them in good stead for the rest of their lives.

This might be brought about by a law compelling parents to send their children to a certain number of trade classes each week until they reached the age of fifteen or sixteen. Pressure would, of

course, have to be brought to bear also on employers to see that children had the opportunity of attending these classes. A PEER’S FARTHING DAMAGES. One farthing is the amount which a jury estimated yesterday as the damage sustained by Lord Howard de Walden through libel on the part of his tenants, Mr. John Lewis, silk mercer, of Oxfcrdstreet. Lord How'ard de Walden is one of London’s feudal lords—one of the great ground-landlords who fatten on the growth of the community. He owns 292 acres between Oxford-street and St. John’s Wood, yielding an annual rent of something like £24)00,000. He is one of a group of tw'elve ground-landlords who take £20.000,000 a year between them from the Londoners. The defendant, Mr. Lewis, has been a tenant on the Howard de*Walden estate for nearly 50 years. He built up a great drapery business in Oxfordstreet, and from time to time has taken over the leases of adjoining buildings in order to extend his business. It was stated in Court that he had sjient in all about £130,000 on buildings—all of which revert to the ground landlord when the leases expire. Mr. Lewis held in particular the leases of two houses round the corner, Nos. 10 and 17 Hoilesstreet. There was a covenant in the lease that they should be maintained as private residences, but he had an understanding with the late surveyor of the estate that leave would be given to convert the houses into shops. But when ho wished so to convert them, first the trustees of the estate, and then Lord Howard de Walden, wheu he came of

age, refused to consent, although erety other building in Ilollea-street had cea»ed to be residential and became a plac< of business.

Finally, in September, 1909, the des fondant put up two boards, one facing Oxford-street, and one facing Hollesstreet, on which were painted statements as follows:—

“16, 17, Holles-street —Lord Howard de Walden’s Monument of Iniquity,” anil “In the Holles-street Drama the young baron is discovered behind the curtain pulling )'<e wires for the imprisonment? of his <jld tenant.” The defendant was asked to removal those boards and to apologize, but ha refused to do either, and the plaintiff then brought this action for libel in respect of the statements which appeared on them.

It was pointed out in Court that Mr. Lewis had been allowed to spend £2,000 on the, two houses in question, in the supposition that they could be used aS business premises. Lord Howard da Walden refused his consent on the plea that it would interfere with the residential amenities of Cavendish Square close by, but as all the other houses in Holles-street had ceased to be residential this sounded rather thin. Moreover, there was no evidence that the residents of Cavendish Square objected. In tho course of the litigation, which extended over years, Mr. Lewis went to prison as a protest against the land laws, rather than obey an order of the Court. As for Lord Howard de Walden, though’ willing to press the case in the Courts, his interest never took him even so far as to go and inspect the nature of his tenant’s grievance for himself. Legally, Mr. Lewis had put himself in the wrong, and the judge summed up against him. But the jury marked their sense of the grotesque and iniquitous character of the land laws which made! such a situation possible by returning X verdict for one-farthing damages. So much for feudalism in the twentieth century. The lesson for Lord Howard de Walden and his advisers is that property has its duties as well as ■ its privileges. This case will not add to the popularity of the peers. .