LONDON TOPICS

Evening Star, Issue 19792, 16 February 1928, Page 2

LONDON TOPICS

WAR BLUFFS [From Oor Correspondent.] December 29. There is little ground to suppose that the Chinese Nationalists will be in any way perturbed by Chicherin’s threats of punishment for the recent “ slaughter of Soviet officials and sympathisers.” While the Chinese were under the impression that the Moscow mailed fist was as powerful as its appearance and rattle indicated, they took good care to treat its representatives with te greatest respect and decorum. No matter how oppressive and objectionable that fist might be, the Chinese would never have attempted to shake themselves loose from its grip so long as they felt it had the power to punish them for their insubordination. The Canton arrests and executions are not the outcome of an uprising against an unbearable oppression, but merely gestures of contempt for a bully who is no longer feared. The Chinese never start smiting any enemy until they believe he is irretrievably down and out. Sir Alfred Ewing’s revelations about Room 40 at the Admiralty and “ the best kept secret of the war ” have been promptly countered from Berlin. It seems that just as wo with comparative ease read all the German secret codes, whether written or wirelessed, so did the Germans read ours, and in their case, as in ours, the work was largely entrusted to university professors. Apparently decoding works out in the end to pure mathematics, and is quite infallible. We changed our secret codes, as did the Germans, daily and sometimes hourly, but the listeners had no difficulty in keping pace with all changes. I think, however, that Admiral Hall, who sold a German spy his famous plans of a purely imaginary Channel minefield as the best way of keeping enemy vessels away until we could really construct one, could tell some good stories of a subtle use of decoding. The issuing of misleading information under cover of code signals proved quite successful more than once. War is a thoroughly immoral game. BLUFF. But I think that the best bluff put up by anyone during the war—perhaps excepting lhat amazing fable about the Russians pouring through England for the Western front, which seriously affected German strategy during the Mons-Marne affair—was Earl Balfour’s. It was a cleverly arranged business, and Earl Balfour, then plain “A.J.8.” in the Commons and Mr Churchill’s Admiralty successor, played his part as to the manner born. One of our astounding weaknesses was that Rosyth, the great naval dockyard, was quite defenceless. So Mr Churchill got up _in the Commons and made a strong criticism of Admiralty policy, never mentioning Rosyth, however. Earl Balfour delivered a crushing rejoinder, in the course of which —and this was the real objective of the whole elaborate episode—he confronted his predecessor at the Admiralty and asked whether the House would credit that, until he himself took charge, Rosyth was entirely without essential defence works! THE WAR AND THE BOOK. If, as already seems likely, the bishops decide to persevere witli Revision, using the set-back in' the House of Commons as a challenge to remove antiquities from the Deposited Book, it is certain that the obligation to say prayers for the King will be made plain. In commending prayers for the dead as always implicit m the English Liturgy, the Archbishop of Canterbury has < quoted the war as bringing this requirement info the open. The same is true of prayers for the King. While the world crisis of 1914-18 robbed this country ol its insularity by sending millions our young men abroad, some of them to servo their country after peace had been declared, it also made them realise more than ever before that the Crown stands for the most precious possession they have. Their independence of thought and action, seen iji perspective thousands of miles from tne Home Country, were found to be bound up in this symbol of unity. And this, on reflection, is not least of the causes that brought about the recent happening in the Commons. AN HISTORIC TE DEUM. The “ Holy Year ” at York Minster, which began at midnight on December 31, 1926, closed on New Year’s Eve with a service on similar lines to those adopted at the beginning of the 1,300 th anniversary. But this time the Archbishop laid a commemoration stone in the nave, and 1928 was rung in by a rejuvenated Great Peter. The crowd was blessed from the minster doors by His Grace, and there was a “renewal of purpose ’ at a subsequent service conducted by the Dean, But before this Stanford’s 4 To Deum in B Flat ’ was sung, as it was sung a year ago, with trumpets and drums reinforcing the organ under Dr E. 0. Bairstow, who, after refusing the organistship of Westminster Abbey, signalised his devotion to his present, charge by writing a special anthem. The To Deum, however, is of historic interest, musically speaking. It was one of the earliest compositions of the composer, whose ashes now repose in the Abbey—written, in fact, while he was an undergraduate at Cambridge, but arranged for orchestra at the Coronation of King Edward and Queen Alexandra in 1902. ABOUT THE DOGS.

The inevitable semi-furtive agitation is already in progress against any interference with the new greyhoundracing craze. It is suggested that the urgent outcry against the thing is “ undemocratic,” and Communist orators are even'now contrasting the toleration of horse racing, the wealthy man’s sport, with the proposal at once to nip dog racing, the poor man’s game, in the bud. Another suggestion whispered, quite maliciously, is that the Jockey Club’s big social pull is all against the competing popular attraction now assuming such remarkable proportions. But the facts are, as I stated long before any word was heard of the Government stepping in, that an immense volume of complaints reaches the police about ruination due to gambling on “the dogs.” Pawnshops in doggy areas are stuffed with household goods and chattels, and thousands of homes are, simply because of the dog-gambling craze, being brought below subsistence level.

It may be that we shall have legislation on the subject. It may even happen that such legislation will be of an extended nature, and will embrace other growing forms of gambling, not excluding football betting. Private _ wagers will never be made illegal ; but, if necessary, strong measures will have to ensue against exploitation of poor human credulity by professional bookmakers and the closely allied order of unofficial money-lenders. But a hint reaches me from a reliable quarter that the existing Jaw will be tested first. And the best legal opinion is that it will prove quite inadequate to gtop the evil. At any rate, the New Year is likely to see the question tried out, even unto the House of Lords in its appeal capacity, whether betting at an enclosed urban dog track, where there is no other draw, is on the same footing as on a more or less open racecourse, where the social and equine features of the gathering are the main thing and the bookies merely a raucous sideshow. VISCOUNT HALDANE. Now that ho is no longer fit "for the long tramps he used to take, Loi'd Haldane spends most of his leisure at Clean, his pleasant residence in Central Perthshire, and he leaves for there this week. His leisure is scanty, for though over seventy, he is one of the most gss&uous members of .the House of

Lords Appeal Committee and of the Privy Council Judicial Committee. Besides he is still a member of the various committees connected with Imperial defence, a matter on which no layman can speak with greater authority. Lord Haldane entered the House of Commons before ho was thirty, so that his career as a legislator covers over forty years. He still dabbles in German philosophy, which he first imbibed as a student at Gottingen more than half a century ago, and there is hardly a subject on which ho does not speak learnedly. He has lost some of the old fluency with which he used to address the Chancery Court and the House of Commons, but to take a full note of him is still a good test for any shorthand writer. His enthusiasm for education is now one of the few topics that induce him to mount the platform.

SOCIALIST ROYAL COMMISSIONERS. I was surprised to see that of the five peers bearing the commission of the King to read his speech in Parliament two were Socialists—of a sort, at any rate—Lord Muir Mackenzie and Lord Thomson. Usually his party in power calls upon its own supporters to take part in this picture.‘*iue ceremonial. Rut Socialist peers, even more than others, like to dress themselves up in scarlet and ermine and see the Commons bowing to them. The House of Lords’ ceremonies seem to have a great attraction for Labor members from the other House, and they are always well represented on those occasions. No man living is more familiar with such proceedings than Lord Muir Mackenzie, seeing that for thirty-five years, as Clerk to the Crown and Lord Chancellor’s secretary, ho took part in most of them. I doubt whether he and Lord Thomson, any more than Lord Haldane, would come well out of a test in Collectivist orthodoxy. TOBACCO WAR. The first guns have been fired this Christmas in a new trade war, which will open in real earnest in the new year. It is in the tobacco trade, where an entirely British concern, with its own tobacco estates within the dominions and its own factory for the treatment of the leaf, is entering the lists against the great tobacco companies, with their interests in the U.S. and their enormous resources. It is claimed that an Empire tobacco has been produced that has the flavor and other qualities of a traditional Virginian leaf, and can bo sold at a price which will be most acceptable to smokers. LAST OF THE LINE.

Lord Burnham’s disappearance from Fleet street, on the sale of the ‘ Daily Telegraph’ to the omniverous Berry Syndicate that seems to be cornering journalism in this country much as the Hirst Syndicate has in America, means that the last individual newspaper owner lias gone from Fleet street. Whether this & a good or a bad feature may be a moot point with outsiders, but journalists have very decided views on the subject. They prefer to deal with a man rather than a trust. The old ‘ D.T.,’ which will probably now blossom forth as a penny paper on the typical up-to-date plan, may have been a trifle sleepy, but it has always been a newspaper, free from nts and coloration, and _it has a glorious,past. Bennet Burleigh, G. A. Sala, Arnold, Clement Scott are cnlv a few of the big men, Bohemians with brains, who helped in other days to make it a live organ. MECHANISING TERRITORIAL GUNS. The policy of mechanising the artillery of the Territorial Army is steadily expanding. At \ the last annual trainings twenty-two completely and twentyone partially mechanised brigades were under canvas, and those numbers will be considerably increased next August. Expense of equipping Territorial gunners with the Regular’s “ Dragon ” being prohibitive, the six-wheel lorry is generally accepted as the next best thing to supersede the horse, and several Territorial county associations are seeking War Office authority _to purchase a number of these machines outright. By hiring them out for commercial purposes, when not required for military use, a large proportion of the initial cost will be recovered. Further, there will be a great economy in personnel. of which a mechanised > battery requires 40 per cent, less than if horses are used for draft. DOG MONEY-MAKER.

A retired gamekeeper, v’ was forced to give up his calling after a shooting accident, does not agree that greyhounds are the only profitable dogs to own. He possesses a setter named Bess, which he claims earns a steady £2 a week, sometimes much larger sums. He and bis dog live in an outer suburb of London, and they have established local renown as discoverers of lost property. If a woman drops her handbag or a man loses his latchkey, Bess is called in. She and her owner walk over the ground where the article was dropped, and Bess quarters her ground exactly as though she were searching for game. She brings to her master anything that carries the peculiarly .pungent smell of a human being. If the approximate area is known, Bess never fails. Last week she found a wallet containing a large sum of money, although the owner of it could only sa that he roust have dropped it somewhere in a wood which covers an area of nearly forty acres. It took Bess three hours to do it, but at the end of that time she brought the wallet to her master, with hardly a tooth mark on it. .