THE MAILS" LETTER FROM LONDON

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIII, 24 July 1929, Page 8

THE MAILS" LETTER FROM LONDON

LONDON, 13th June. Mr J. H. Thomas's appointment as a special Minister of Unemployment is a depart ore from a- principle hitherto adopted by all Premiers. According to this rule the primary qualification which a candidate for ofllee should possess is that he must have no special knowledge of. or connection with, the affairs which the depift'tment he is to administrate deals with. , The observance of this procedure was very marked both in Mr MacDonald's first Government, and the Ministry which has just passed out of office. Examples which come vividly to recollection in the 1923 Government were the late Mr Stephen Walsh as Secretary of State few War, and Mr Shinwell as the Minister of Mines. "Little Ste," whose extensive knowledge of everything pertaining to mines was intimate and extensive, was ludicrously far from being an fail with matters military, while Mr Shinwell knows much more about a tailor's bench than he does about a pitshaft. In Mr Baldwin's Ministry, again ,though naval and military experts were plentiful, they were not chosen for the Admiralty or War Office, but put in charge of transport or industrial departments. MOBE HONOURS It is expected that the change of Government will be accomplished by another honours list, confined to politicians whose services their chief desires to recognise, and to Civil Servants whose parting principals feel grateful to them. A K.C.B. or a C.B. generally fails to the permanent heads of departments in duo course, but these distinctions, especially when they carry a title, are iiot always welcome. The wife of a former Civil Servant once complained to.me, with some bitterness, that when she became Lady Blank, her dressmakers' bills at once went up by 30 per cent. On .the other hand, a Civil Servant who refuses the customary distinction is in danger of being suspected of having been a failure, so that acceptance or refusal is almost equally embarrassing. MINISTERIAL BECBEATIONS Few members of the new Cabinet have found time to develop hobbies or recreations. The Prime Minister is a keen golfer and walker; Mr Thomas declines uu "interest in all outdoor sports"; Mr Buxton is a gardener and traveller; Si'' Charles Trovelyau admits an odd pecu pation for a pacifist—kriegspiel; Mr William Adainson loves a (Jay with a fishing-rod on some Highland stream; Lord Parmoor is a farmer: Mr Stanley Webb (scon to be Lord Webb) spends what time" he can spare from the com pi la t ion of statistics in walking; Lord. Thomson is a golfer. Most of (lie others take their pleasures sadly, but if they think they can combine Ministerial work with their accustomed amount of weekend work on the platform they will soon discover their mistake. AMERICA'S HELP Whatever Europeans may think about America's role in the war and the aftermath, the fact must not be lost sight of that two able Americans have, helped to solve our reparation problem. First. We had the Dawes scheme, when Germany looked like defaulting, and now we have the Young settlement, which ieiuoves a big embarrassment from the path of Europe's inarch towards peace and prosperity. For 37 years the Germans will, under this agreement, pay the'Allies £102,500,000, and after that £35,000,000 for another 21 years. Our share will cover our liability to the U.S.A., which varies from 33 to 38 millions ovei- a term that ends in 1904. The expectation amongst well-informed people, however, is that, long before that date, some scheme of mutual cancellation all round, on the lines of the Balfour Notes, will be forced on all the nations concerned by sheer weight of public opinion. AERIAL LANDMARKS There are to be celebrations in London on the occasion of two forthcoming important anniversaries in th,e history of flying. It was on 14th June, ten years ago, that the late Sir John Alcock and Sir Arthur Whitten Brown accomplished .the first Atlantic flight. . The machine in which these two intrepid pioneers achieved their feat was of a war-time type, and could not be compared with the more modern ones iu which subsequent Atlantic ventures have been , made with varying success. In those clays more depended on the pilot and far less on the machine than nowadays. The other anniversary is that of the first Channel flight, which took place on 25th July, twenty years ago. This event will be celebrated by the Royal Aeronautic eal Club, and it is hoped to have on view at the South Kensington Science Museum the identical old "bus" in which M. Bleriot made what seemed at! the time such a sensational flight. j

DR BELL'S CONFIRMATION' Though the confirmation of Dr. G. K. A. Bel! at Bow Church as Bishop-elect of Chichester passed off .so quietly the surprisingly few people who were there could congratulate themselves on having witnessed -{mother stage in a remarkable career. Five years as Dean of Canterbury have been sufficient to land this comparatively youthful dignitary on the Bench of Bishops, and many, who look ahead and remember his intimate relation to Archbishop Davidson, see nothing to stop his eventual succession to Lambeth. His ideas for the reunion of Christendom, so as to include Catholic-mind-ed Nonconformity, arc- certain to be tested at the Pun-Anglican Conference next year, but meanwhile the quaint formalities to-day, under Sir Lewis Dib diu, show that there are no objectors to this rapid advancement of one who not very long ago was no more—but no less—than curate of Leeds. BAPTISMAL TROUBLES • Lord KyLsant has taken the. line of least resistance, and chosen "Oceanic" as the name of the White gtar's new 1,000-foot Atlantic liner. There is only a limited number of words, ending in the traditional yellow-and-black-funnel "ic," suitable for a great ship, and the embarrassment is that so many of tho most obvious ours art! taboo." Public opinion might not. in our generation, take kindly lo either "Germanic" or "Teutonic." The fine ''Titanic" will, long after the animosities of the Great, War pale their ineffectual fires perhaps, have an ill-omened sound for Atlantic' seamen am! passengers. The work! has. heard few more thrilliog tragedies than i the tola! loss of tin: first White Star Titanic, wilh many well known people aboard, on her proud maiden-trip across. 1 R.M.S. Oceanic has no such tragic, aura, ami is a good enough name to bestow upon a polential oceap record-breaker. VESUVIUS Happily Hie preseul eruption of Mount \c-mius. though it ha? engulfed several

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Email hamlets and almost surrounded one small town, is nothing like so serious as others have been. The last really ' had one was in 1072, but the worst of 1 all, of course , was that immortalised for English readers by Bulwer Lyttou, which buried Herculaneum and Pompeii, two flourishing Roman cities, 1,850 years ago. Vesuvius is only 4,160 feet high, i but, owing to its abrupt rise, looks far more impressive than Mount Etna, the Sicilian volcano, which has a height of i 11,000 feet, but so gradual a, slope that its base covers hundreds of square miles. Visitors lo Naples, where most i nights the. famous bay reflects the red gkiw of Vesuvius's eruler, always marvel that people- persist in dwelling right under its menace. "MORE THINGS, HORATIO" An arresting episode of the Vesuvian eruption has been Liu- intervention of the ecclesiastical arm. The Bishop of the diocese prayed on the verge of the flowing stream of lava, and even secular accounts agree that, whether by coincidence or otherwise, the dreaded invasion was held up. There is no reason why Anglicans, who offer prayers for rain, should deride this action by the Roman Church. But Italians view the matter with curiously differing outlooks. The simple /peasants and devout Catholics , accept the miracle. The secularists assert that the interventions are well ■ timed. When Palermo used to be visited by plague, the final act was to bring • forth, from the Monte Pelogrino Church, the image of St. Rosalie, who threw herself over the cliff lo drive it away in former days. ,Pt is easier, however, to • calculate when a plague is past its peak than lo judge when a volcano is really quietening down. - ' > NEW NAVAL MUSEUM A start has been, made ou the long projected museum in Portsmouth dockyard, which is to house the Nelson collection and general naval relics at present laid out in one of the stove rooms of that yard. The foundation stone of the new building—which will be of modest dimensions, and within a few yards of the dock wherein the Victory is berthed—has just been laid, the delay having been caused by lack of funds. The build, iiig is to be so constructed internally us as'represent one of the stern ports of Nelson's old flagship, from which A\w visitor will be able to view a panorama of the Battle of Trafalgar. This is to he painted and presented by Mr \V. L. Wyllie, R.A., the famous marine artist, and the canvas will be one of the longest of its kind in the world. If they . can obtain the necessary funds, rhe i Dockyard authorities intend to convert • a storehouse adjoining the new builJmg into- a dockyard museum. ATHLETES IN—AND OUT OFPARLIAMENT Among our new M.P's. are two who have won recent sporting renown, one . on 'he running track and the other at • Rugby. The former is P. J. Noel Baker, who captured Coventry for Labour, and the latter H. F. Owen, who sue-. ■ cessfully stormed a Tory stronghold at Herefqrd in the Liberal,interest. Baker, until recently a Professor at London University, won the half mile for Cambridge against Oxford in three successive years—l9lo-11-12—and the mile at the same sports in 1909 and 1911. He rah for Great Britain in the Olympic Games at Stockholm before the war, and also in. the first post-war Olympiad at Antwerp. PL F. Owen is another i Cambridge man, and must be one of the youngest' members of the Ijouse. He is 24, and it seems the other day that I first saw him, then a University Freshman, playing centre three-quarter for London Welsh. He did not get his Blue, but made several appearances in the ■Cambridge team, and also played for Newport. Viscount Knebworth, the young boxing itobleman, championed a forlorn Conservative hope in Shoreditch. M, D. Lyon, the Somerset cricketer, made a great fight for the Liberals in ; Bury St. Edmunds, where he was second on the .poll, and Geoffrey Craw-: shay, one-time Rugby footballer for the : Welsh Guards, President of London Welsh F.C.'and guide, philosopher i\nd • friend of all Welsh'rugger men, was second at Pontypool. FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH If the average small backer gets a hint from someone connected with a rac- ■ ing stable, he thinks he has practically backed the. winner in advance. So it may interest occasional punters to 1 now what Mr "Atty" Persse, the famous trainer] told me yesterday. Twenty-one > years ago he saddled four horses-for the Derby. Not one of them finished in the fit st six, and the 6i]e he "fancied" most was the last home in the whole field. . That confession is, I think, worth pondering when someone tolls you '.'a good thing.'-' ' SHOPPING AT SEA The real New Yorker, who sees himself as the glass of fashion, would never wear a shirt that was not London cut, but there jfte many hundreds of Americans who will not bother to make a special trip to London merely to buv shirts. To catch this trade a firm'of London outlitters is going to open a Men's Wear Store on Atlantic- liners, starting with the Aquitahia. The shop is to have a deck area'of over 350 feet, which is a good deal bigger than inanv Regent street shops. Hone of profit, no doubt, originated the idea, but it is really an act of charity to put it into operation. Hundreds of Americans mav thus be wived from appearing in those French' spotted and patterned shirts which onlv a Frenchman ought to wear. A 17th CENTURY CARD This week the Bod ley Head is nublishiii'g a new volume in "The Golden Hind Series" of biographies of the great explorers. This is •'William Dumpier'' by Clcnnell Wilkinson. Dumpier was otic of the most interesting characters of the 17th century, and his picturesque and varied career has never been' fully related. Buccaneer, explorer, hydrographer, friend of Pepys and Evelyn and of the leading scientists of his' day, as■sociate of some of t he most desperate villains who carried lire and sword up and down the Spanish Main, pilot who thrice circumnavigated the globe and was within an ace of anticipating Ccok, tra-vel-writer wht> was a "best seller" in his time—such 'was that strangely attractive puzzling character William' Dumpier. Mr Glmmcll Wiikinspn has, I heftv written i.'i)l only a fascinating story,'but a standard biography. The volume is illustrated from contemporary portraits. A SOOTHING OINTMENT' I'or all ciiis, bruise?, burns and sores use Bee Ointment—soothing and antiseptic. A rapid healer. Invaluable wherever I hero are children. Get a pot loilay, and keep it alwavg handv. Price 1/6. All chemists and stores. " I