LONDON TOPICS

Evening Star, Issue 23376, 20 September 1939, Page 11

LONDON TOPICS

A PRE-WAR BUDGET INDIAN DISTRESS [From Our Corresi’oxdext,] [By Air Mail.] August 24. Old-timers who have served in India are beginning to have some concern about the famine reports prevalent during the past fortnight. India between harvests always has some district betrayed by Nature so that it is near the distress lino. . But not for years do so many districts seem to have been effected. In the bad old days famine and plague were Nature’s methods of keeping down India’s population to tho level of India’s production, just as in China floods have been the immemorial method.- But British-rule has changed all that. In regard to famine there has been erected machinery, incorporated in a code as efficient and famous as India’s law codes, which has exorcised the evil spectre, so that not for over a generation has a famine of the old kind been experienced. In regard to disease there is not quite the same efficient record, but never, since the post-war influenza epidemic claimed 6,000,000 victims, has there been a universal plague. The result is that India’s population increases at the rate of 3.000,000 a year, and the fear is whether, in spite of all the British have done, this increase may not be more than Nature will tolerate until man has improved productive capacity and methods of distribution and changeSAILOR INVENTOR. The airman’s chief dread is fire. But great things are hoped of a new anti-fire device now standardised as part of all R.A.F. equipment. The inventor is a sailor, a retired officer of tjie Royal Indian Navy, who' had five years’ experience in clipper ships before entering that service. Captain Hubert Mackenzie Salmond, the individual in question, is the son of a former colonel of Royal Scots Fusiliers and cousin of Air-Marshal Salmond. His invention of this effective automatic extinguisher was due to an accident. His sister was involved in a car crash in which the vehicle was completely destroyed by fire, and Captain Salmond devoted seven years to perfecting an anti-fire device in consequence, Ho is now 65, and his sea experience includes suppression of tho gun-running traffic in the Persian Gulf,, service in the Great War which brought him medals with bars and three mentions in despatches, and two Royal Humane Society medals for lifesaving. Ho lives at Fareham and is a member of the Royal Societies Club. POET! The Registrar-General is the official figure in the limelight at the moment. Sir Sylvanus Vivian, tho official in question, is a Londoner by birth, and is now 58 years old.. He received his education at St. Paul’s School and St. John’s College, Oxford, before entering the Inland Revenue Department. His headquarters are in Somerset House, the handsomest and most fam'ous of all Government offices, and when he tackled the 1931 census he had a little staff of over 40,000 enumerators to assist him. In his younger official days Sir Sylvanus used to write poetry, but he seems to have abandoned that habit in recent years. But he has a number of highbrow works to his name, including editing an edition of Thomas Campion,, contributions to the British Encyclopaedia, the Cambridge History of English Literature, and a Dictionary of Literary Terms. His London address is Kensington, where ho first saw the light, but he has a pleasant country retreat at Cold Harbour—the Sussex, not the Surrey one. near Leith Hill. Sir Sylvanus did not meddle actively in the Great War. BIBLE MONOPOLY, Canada is making application to the King to be allowed to print the Bible. At present only four firms of printers are licensed, and they are all in the United Kingdom—three in England and one in Scotland. Whether or not this exclusiveness was justified, the busy Jap has now entered tho Bible market, as already he dxad entered the Scotch Whisky marked, and is flooding Canada and other countries with copies of the Authorised Version saleable at a few pence. The Canadians also have Bibles from the U.S.A., where the Royal license does not run. So, bombarded from south and west, and confined officially to a supply from the East which is not competitive in price, naturally Canadians think they can improve the situation if they are allowed to do their own production. - They will have their way, and so will the other dominions if they car© to apply. GAOL BREAKING. Britishers who read about American gaol escapades flatter themselves sucli things could not occur hero. They may have to alter that opinion. The prisoner who escaped from Lewes the other day, after coolly informing the governor of his intention, has made three other gaol breaks, including Arundel, Chelmsford, and Liverpool. A tall ex-soldier with handsome looks and a pleasing address, he is a genius at mechanics and a spendthrift with money. His weakness is a tendency to braggadocio, which has once or twice been his undoing. He has boasted that his unlawful proceeds, even after a liberal rake-off to “ fences,” brought him an income of £1,500 per annum, free of income tax! Such is his reputation at the Yard that a, special posse has been watching Holloway Gaol night and day to prevent him breaking in to rescue his wife, held with her baby on a charge of gliding her husband's escape. The lady is understood to pass the time reading crime novels. Can even America really beat this? DIPLOMAT’S HISTORIC HOME. Do expert cracksmen study the fashionable weeklies? This intriguing question is suggested by the fact that Sir Robert Vansittart’s beautiful old mansion in Bucks, Denham Place, has been the object of an attempt by car burglars pluckily foiled by a county constable. A few days before the attempted burglary an illustrated weekly published photographs of Denham Place, and gave some account of its historical associations. Denham Place dates back to Ulstan the Thane, who gifted it to his relative, Edward tho Confessor, “ to endow the new Abbey at Westminster ” ! In Domesday Book it was assessed as worth £7.. Of course, the mansion itself is much more modern than Domesday, but it is a magnificent old place in a perfect setting. Sir Robert, whom some people would much like to see at the Foreign Office helm again, is a poet and dramatist, and' had a new comedy

played, at the Malvern Festival. Lady Vansittart, who takes an active interest in Denham’s garden, and is a clever weaver of tapestries, is a daughter of Mr Herbert Ward. JUTLAND ADMIRALS. It is hoped that the Joint Trafalgar Square fountain memorials to Admirals Lord Jellicoe and Lord Beatty may bo ready for the ceremonial unveiling on October. 21. The figures of the two Jutland Admirals are even now being cast, and there Seems no reason why the whole thing should not be complete by the date named. The Royal Navy, which is the service chiefly interested, trusts that the unveiling may be a Royal one—if not by King George himself, then by a Royal Duke. But, as His Majesty is himself associated with the Silent Service, and served at Jutland, the possibility is that the King it will be. The date named, by the way, is most happy, inasmuch as it will be Trafalgar Day. With the Trafalgar Square fountains commemorating Jellicoe and Beatty, and Nelson towering above on his column, Cockspur street, home of the liner offices, will bo completely nautical. “ OUT 0’ CHELSEA.’' F.ven Fleet street has its occasional excitements, ns when a young Chelsea artist, boarded like the pard and attired in true romantic La Boheme atelier style, suddenly set up his easel and paint tubes beside a post pillar and leisurely proceeded to execute a masterpiece in oils of Lord Beaverbrook’s bizarre glass newspaper office, which irreverent laymen have described as in the tea caddy style of modern architecture. A crowd quickly assembled round the artist, as, seated on his folding chair, he plied his brushes. Even a navvy digging a slight hole is enough to attract a Fleet street crowd. How much more this Bohemian apparition in Zouave trousers and sports jacket? When messenger boys drew too close to a sensitive elbow, the painter waved them batik with an Olympian gesture. But a pretty flapper, who leaned against the post pillar, was genially tolerated. The artistic temperament is like that. A city bobby, anxious lest part of the crowd might bo juggernauted by a bus, was imperiously ignored. I must look out some old clothes and try a little nl fresco journalism.