TOPICS of the DAY.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVI, Issue 42, 18 February 1905, Page 9

TOPICS of the DAY.

(From Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, January 6, 1905. THE NEW YEAR. London stayed up late to see the New Tear in. and then Trent home to sleep off the effects. To all appearances it continued to sleep until the second day of 1905. I do not remember a duller New Year's Day. The quietness of the city was emphasised still more by contrast -with the uproarious scenes of the preceding night. On New Year's Eve the' streets were thronged with hilarious crowds, and thousands of people — chiefly youths and girls —assembled in front of St. Paul's Cathedral to shout the old year out. Horseplay seems to be the Cockney's .idea of humour, and it was a huge joke to collect a dozen kindred spirits, link amis, and charge headlong through the crowd! The tighter the squash the greater the enjoyment. St. Paul's Churchyard is to b$ the gathering place of the

Scotsmen in Loudon at midnight on New Year's Eve, but so far as 1 could see the crowd was chiefly juvenile London, and mostly "und-er the influence, 7 ' as the police would say. A strange scene, truly, for the stately towers of old St. Paul's to look down upon. The New Year was ushered in by the coldest day experienced this winter. Tlie temperature sank to six degrees of frost, and seldom throughout the day was it above freezing-point. In Scotland thir is the great day of the year, but south of the Tweed but little attention is paid to New Year's Day. The Sunday in London was even quieter than the usual Sunday, which is saying much: and business went on just as usual on the following day. only Scottish firms and Government offices closing their doors. The fact is, holidays in England at this time of year are aunost an embarrassment. What is to be done with them? It isn't like a colonial New Year, which yon can spend basking on some yellow beach beneath a summer sky, or in any other way that promises freedom, sunshine, and fresh air. New Year in England signifies mid-winter. The very thought of a beach—cold, grey, and desolate— I would make you shndder. There is no-

! thing to do but to spend the holiday 1 . indoors, according to taste and ter- i pemment. For the idlers it probably ; means ''booze' , in the East End, bridge ; in the West, and for both a day of domilonday. the second day of the year, would have been uneventful but for the news that Port Arthur had surrendered. Even that momentous announcement created little stir. The public had known, that the end was at hand, and that the triumph of ihe Japanese could 1 not be withheld for many more days. i There was more relief than excitement I in the feelings inspired by the tidings. ] It was quite pathetic to see how slender was the trust the newspapers reposed in the first press message concerning i the surrender, and how careful they; j were to explain that it was not '"ofii- | I cial." Of course once the nrws was eon- \ j firmed they let themselves go in the usual columns of ancient history about the siege and the lives of the leading figures—pages of print which no one ever reads, but which no self-respecting paper can seemingly afford to go without. The "Daily Telegraph'" on Tuesday, with its five pages of solid type and seyen column headings, all about Port

Arthur, was a sight for men and gcds! My sympathy, as well as my admiration, I goes out to the pressmen ■who had to i compile it; but still more do I pity the | wretched subscriber who feels it his duty I to read this monumental, awe-inspiring j record. 'i'H X PRESS AHT> I'HH i UNEMPLOYED. The newspapers have taken up the j question of aiding the London uncmplcy- j ed in a practical way, and subscriptions ! have been pouring , in for the relief of the | distress in the East End. The "Daily : Telegraph." which has taken the borough of West Ham under its wing, in the space of a week or two has collected nearly £1-2,000 in shilling subscriptions. -The : ''Daily Express," not to be outdone, open- ! ed a subscription for the relief of the starving poor in Tottenham, and the re- j sponse was again wonderfully generous and prompt. In West Ham "f4OOO has been spent in temporary relief, including f ISSS for dinners, soup, milk, etc., and £5000 has been allocated to the emigration of 150 families v> Canada, 'Tim}.

closest scrutiny is promised by the fund i distributors in the selection of suitable j emigrants, and in every case the. final j decision will rest with an expert in cmi- s gration. There are in West Ham many 1 people who are country-bred. In those cases the effort will be made to. emigrate , them to districts in which their knowi ledge of country life will be o£ advantage. Skilled mechanics, on the other hand, will be sent to the towns, where i their abilities will have play. In this way it is hoped that the fund will give many deserving people a fresh start in | life without imposing an undesirable burden on Canada. The "Express" has no emigration scheme, but its measures for relieving the immediate distress in j Tottenham are on similar lines to those adopted in West Ham. There is, of jcourse, another side to this pleasing picture of benevolence and goodwill. What of the effect of all this charity upon the j poor ? Why should a man work when he j can get money for the asking ? And if West Ham and Tottenham are to have thousands of pounds placed at their disposal, why not East Ham and Leyton and JDeptford and half-a-dozen other borj onghs equally deserving and equally afflicted with poverty? They will all expect to be helped, and the inner boroughs which come under Mr. Walter Long's employment scheme will doubtless think themselves badly used in not being allowed to share in the newspaper funds. The metropolitan fund organised by Mr. Long only offers work tmder stringent condiMon3, and it appears from figures published that nearly a third of the men to whom work is offered already do not accept it. Drawing money from a news paper charity fund is mucn more to their taste. This side of the case is*ventilated in an article written by the special correspondent of the "Times." He maintains that it is humanly impossible to distribute relief on the scale attempted in West Ham and with this degree of publicity without causing certain evils. "I have seen," he continues, "the most earnest efforts made to do it in other cases, committees formed of all the best men in the place working with single-hearted devotion and with the most complete arrangements that could be devised. All appeared to be going on most satisfactorily, but months afterwards the air has been thick with scandals, which in some cases have come into court, or have been the subject of official inquiry, and have been proved. These things only come out afterwards. I would not undertake to administer such a fund if I had the Lord Chief Justice and the Bisliop of London to help mc. The mischief is not in the giving , of alms, but in the enormous publicity of this way of giving, in the large sums dangled before the ejes of the public and the large number of persons dealt with. Greed and cupidity are excited, the most pushing and the most artful come to the front, and power falls inta the hands of persons who cannot withstand the temptation of using it for their own benefit."' LOHDOITS CHANGING FACE. One hears a good deal just now about the rebuilding of London. It is a subject of perennial interest to the dwellers in the metropolis, and every now and then, as at present, the papers open their columns to discuss the improvement or the deterioration of London's changing face. On the whole, the changes are vastly for the better. Narrow thoroughfares are being widened, new boulevards constructed, grime and ugliness giving way to architecture more in keeping with the dignity of a great metropolis. In the last year or two rebuilding has quite altered the face of the Strand, and when the L.CC.'s new scheme is brought to completion this will be a splendid thoroughfare. At present, however, the northern side above the Law Court is disfigured by a wilderness of vacant sites, strewn with brick-bat 3 and debris from the ancient tenements which stood there until last year. The conditions under which L.C.C. are offering the sites to the public are so stringent that the "Island"— as the block is called—is still untenanted. Save for the stately pile of the newGaiety Theatre and Restaurant, no buildings have arisen to hide its ugliness. But in time, no doubt, present difficulties will be adjusted, and the scheme completed. A fine new thoroughfare, to be known as Kingsway, will run through from Holborn, handsome blocks will cover the barren waste of to-day, the approach to Waterloo Bridge will be widened and the fine lines of Somerset House revealed by pulling down some of the obstructing buildings-- and the locality will acquire a dignity of which at present we have little more than the promise. The new Savoy Hotel frontage, a strikingly picturesque building, adda much to the appearance of the Strand, and sets an example which private enterprise and municipal zeal may be expected to emulate as time goes on. Fleet-street, too, has seen great changes during the past year, and its re-building is proceeding in hot haste. But its ar-chitect-ore remains as picturesquely chaotic as ever; there is no general design in the transformation which is being so rapidly effected. There are so many freeholds in Fleet-street, and the frontiges are all so narrow that you get an immense variety of buildings. But the old dingy brick facades, so reminiscent of Dr. Johnson's day, are quickly disappearing, and aggressivelooking fronts of stone rise in their place. The old buildings were quiet in their ugliness: the new are for the most part ugly in an obtrusive kind of way. Quaint old Ludgate Hill still hides the majestic front of St.' Paul's by following | the crooked line it has adhered to from I earliest times. The widening of this i ancient thoroughfare is a scheme the city authorities have not yet taken in '■ hand, but doubtless it is bound to come I some day. Further west a striking transformation is advancing towards completion. The new Mall, widened to noble proportions, is being extended to reach Trafalgar Square, and with NelI son's Column, at one end and the new ' Victoria Memorial and Buckingham | Palace at the other, this stately boulevard will rank as one of the finest in the world. HORSE-DRAWN 'BUS DOOMED. ! Ever since the introduction o£ Ihu | pioneer self-propelled vehicles sanI guine motor enthusiasts have beea ! prone to setting a limit to the nionj archy of the horse-drawn bus in Lon- | dou. Ten years ago we were told that | as many years thence a couple of hoi- : sas vrould no longer be seen laboriously < towing 3i tons of vehecle and humanity ! up the slippery slope of Ludgate Hill j or Piccadilly, and that save for sleek, I high stepping quadrupeds drawing thei ! broughams and barouches of the wealthy in the parks the horse would be i seen no more in the Metropolis. The I bus-horse was to be the lirst to go. I But he is still with us in spite of all, j and to-day hundreds more horse-drawn I buses rage (at an average of four miles j an hour or thereabouts) through. Lou,i doA'A atteriea tbaa ia .the da£» wii«*,

their doom was so confidently pronounced by motor experts and enthusiasts. The first attempts to introduce self-propelled vehicles designed to oust ■the penny bus were, however, fearful failures. The new style of bus usually came out of its yard, and pursued for ai brief space its shivering, stinking, rattling career, and then struck work. it 3 journey siableward being generally made with the assistance of a horse. From time to time improvements were made, and several years ago motor buses were running, as unostentatiously as they could, in various part 3g£ London. But as a rule they were small affairs, carrying a maximum of perhaps a dozen passengers, and they were patronised chiefly on account of. their novelty. Even these- miniature buses, however, betrayed such a tendency to frequent "jibbings" that the public refused to put any faitii in them, and the directors of our great bus companies -were content to leave it to their eontempciaries in provincial (.owns to try to find a suitable self-propelled vehicle to take the place of the ordinary bus. At length it seems a mechan-ically-driven car with good claims to supersede the cumbrous "twelve-inside-fourteen-out" car that now so seriously assists in the congestion of ouc main thoroughfare traffic has been discovered. The directors of the London Road Car Company—a concern employing 466 buses and a stud of 5,500 horses, have already made arrangements for the gradual replacing of their present vehicles with self-propelled cars. They have been running a few of the new buses on trial in the West End for some months, and have come to the conclusion that their general adoption will make for economy, greater speed, and greater comfort for passengers. Some two score of the new vehicles are to be placed on our streets in the course of the next month or so, and within six months no less than 700 of their present stud of horses will find fresh occupations. Each motor bu3 will, it is said, do the work of fifteen or sixteen horses, and their introduction will, it is anticipated, enable them to increase the mileage of each car from 70 to over 90 miles a day, thus allowing the company to considerably increase the radius of its operations. The Managing Director of the R. C. Company is so confident of the success that will attend the mechanically driven Tjus that he does not hesitate to express - the opinion that 10 years hence the horse-drawn omnibus will have completely disappeared from the streets of the metropolis. So mote ib be. The new buses axe a tremendous advance on anything we have seen before in London in the shape of mechanic-ally-driven, cars." They shake not, neither do they stink; indeed the noise of their progression is far less than tha clatter made by the horse-drawn vehicle, and as regards seating accomodation and. ventilation they are a very long way ahead of the old-fashioned! -'bus. That they will materially assist in easing the congestion of the traffic is certain. They can be started and stopped far quicker than a pair-horse vehicle, and are in all respects more completely under the control of the driver than the bus of to-day. Their general use moreover must make for more cleanly streets and for the longer life of our various styles of carriageway pavement. VAZEC REGKETS. Even perceiving, as one does, the manifold advantages presented by the motor-bus over its doomed rival, it is difficult to repress a feeling of sorrow that the march of progress should involve the extinction of that very distinct species of humanity, the London 'bus-driver. The conductor also used to be a distinct species, but the introduction of the ticket system killed oil most of the "born conductors" and filled their places with creatures who are on iT " "conductors" by courtesy, and may j accurately be denominated "ticket-punchers." But the 'bus Jehu — "the man in front"—has preserved a very large proportion of his ancient individuality, in spite of the abolition of "the knifeboard." As a rule he is still an inexhaustible mine of information, . and a fathomless artesian well of ripe badinage, delicate sarcasm, ready repartee, and anecdote. Also, he has still a keen nose for the cigar you have ready for him in your breast pocket, and possesses the same objection to being poked in the back with a gamp ss a signal to stop. And, like his forbears, he prefers to be addressed a3 "coachman" rather than "driver." He has, of course, many grievances to air should lie light upon a sympathetic individual who lays himself open to a tale of woe. They are genuine enough, these grievances, consisting as they do of terribly long hours, stoppages for the moat trivial offences against rules that are certainly not framed on equitable terms as between employer and employed, "sacking" at a moment's notice, undue harshness on the part of the police towards licensed drivers, and a host of minor evils peculiar to the work of a 'busman. Withal he is, perhaps, the most cheerful soul you meet with in a day"s march. He will spice even his pathetic tale of sixteen hours a day for seven days a week with a humorous yarn. One day, for example, I was questioning a driver on his road experiences. ""Yes," said he, "I've been at it 23 years come Easter, and for the last seven haven't known what it's like to be on less than 12 hours a day. Why, I don't hardly know my own kid by sight. . . Fact! T'other day going up Gray's Innroad a little nipper gets up and takes the near side" seat and gives my ear alittle twitch. I turns round and sees him laughing right into my face. I gave him a lecture stern-like for being saucy to his elders, more in fun than, anything, when the kid pipes his eye and says, 'I didn't fink you'd mind, dad.' Blow mc if it wasn't my own little Benny, an* I didn't know him!" Perhaps the look of sympathy 1 tried to impart to my countenance smacked more of incredulity, for Jehu hastened to add: "Course I knew him right enough when I come to have a good look at him, but I'd never really seen, him togged up, him always being abed, and asleep when I get home, and not getting up till after I goes in the morning." Yes. we Londoners will miss our 'busdrivers, for even those of them who find employment under the new regime will lose their individuality. They "will no longer be available for passengers to talk to, and, for some reason 1 cannot fathom, a man who becomes closely associated with machinery of any sort generally seems to lose more or less of his conversational powers. I have yet to meet a chaffeur who could hold hia own with a London 'bus-driver, and who has ever come across an engine-drivee