LONDON LIFE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 37, 6 October 1931, Page 5

LONDON LIFE

Geoffrey

Tebbutt.)

SWIFT POLITICS EXCITING DAYS AT DOWNING STREET DURING RECENT POHTICAL CRISIS. DEMOCRATIC KING ALFONSO. (Sriecially Written for the "Post"

by

LONDON, August 27. This August has been the most exciting since that fateful month of 1914, and England's topic of conversation has suddenly changed from a country-*vvide lament for the weatherruiried holidays to the swift-moving political drama which on Monday produced the National Emergency Government led by Mr. Ramsay MacDonald. Even yesterday, when the speculation on the eomposition of the new three-party Cahinet had been ended by the official annouiieement of the names of the new Ministerg, public curiosity regarding the personalities of the crisis had not been satisfied. I came into Downing Street opposite "Number Ten" through the Foreign Offiee quadrangle, and found a talkie motor-van and dozens of patient photographers waiting outside the Prime Minister's unimposing but eoveted residence, and, farther down the street; held back by equally-pa-tient polieemen, hundreds of idlers, tourists, and sightseers — a scene re miniscent — except for the talkie van — of War days. In the ordinary way, the little cul-de-sac off Whitehall that constitutes Downing Street is deserted except for a handful of passing tourists, Government messengers and the inevitable polieemen. This week, the size and curiosity of the crowds waiting to see the frequent com'ings and going to and from Number 10 would have done credit to a film star. As far as I could tell yesterday, the spectators for a long time ,got nothing for their trouble but the spectacle of a tall, elegant young man in frock coat and silk hat, leaving Number 10 to hail a taxi. He might have been a junior Minister. Nobody knew. But the sight of him seemed to convince the eurious that they had had some personal share in tackling the national crisis. Photographers' Sentry-Go. An acquaintance among the battery of Press photographers waiting outside Number 10 for something to turn up told me what a long and weary task they had had. The hours of boredom in waiting for some national figure t'o arrive at or emerge from the Prime Minister's home were so trying that the camera-men found more than once that when some desired "subject" did suddenly appear, they were not ready to "snap" him. Why a Minister of the Crown should look any different outside 10 Downing Street from anywhere else I have been unable to fathom; perhaps the photographers hoped to find the answer to the political riddles of the past week in the faces of their subjects. Now, of all the subjects which can effiectively be portrayed in picture as well as in print, I think a political crisis is one of the least f etching from a photographer's point of view, and the camera-men have been hard put to it to provide a fresh angle to the news in picture. There was a little comedy the other day attaching to theil -efforts. Mr. MacDonald, after a midnight Cabinet meeting and a hard and anxious day, was up as usual at six, and walking in St. James' Park with his daughter Sheila at seven, as is his wont when in Towh. My photographer acquaintance, alone and early off the mark, duly photographed the Prime Minister and his daughter on their constitutional. The next morning — the fall of the Labour Cabinet not having upset his routine in this respect — Mr. MacDonald and his daughter were out in the Park again at seven. This time, half a dozen photographers were waiting to get what proved, to all intents and purposes, to be the same picture! Mr. MacDonald genially sympathised with them for having dragged them out so early. No doubt he would have preferred his early morning walk without pictorial obligations. The photographers, who would certainly have preferred their beds, appreciated his pleasantry, even though the Prime Minister might inwardly believe with the picture-shy Bulgarian monarch, that "Photography is not a profession: it's a damned disease!" Sprightly King Alfonso. One of my friends is just back from a fortnight's cruise to the Baltic and Norwegian fjords in the P. and O. liner Yiceroy of India. He experienced all the good weather that we in England have been missing since the legend of St. Swithin's Day — that rain might fall for forty days after its celebration — has this year been proved a painful fact. Among the passengers were the Duke of Toledo — ap incognito which was but a poor disguise for deposed Alfonso : XIII of Spain — and his Chamberlain, the Duke of Miranda. My friend tells me that Alfonso's loss of his crown did not appear outwardly to have caused him much concern, for he was in excellent spirits throughout the voyage> mixing freely with some of the passengers, presiding over the ship's sports eommittee, playing games, and presenting prizes to the winners. Alfonso, appropriately enough, won the treasure hnnt aboard. The ex-King, as one might expect from a monarch who has spent so much of his time in England, speaks English fluently, but his accent is not so clear as that of the Duke of Miranda, who seems to be the embodiment of all the traditional .courtliness of Spain. While the exiled monarch was cruising in the peaceful northern waters, his compatriots in Madrid were contemplating bringing him to trial and accusing him of the responsibility for Spanish losses in Morocco during the long and unprofitable campaign against Abd-el-Krim and his rebels. There was no mention of how they intehded overcoming the extradition problem! The Un-Clannxsh Lohdoner. I have been talking with an old sea-captain who has dropped into most ports of any account. He himself is a Londoner, and yet one of the chief impressions he has gathered on his travels is of the aloofness from one another of exiled Londners. There is the classic of the two Scots

wrecked on a desert island, who f ormed a branch of the Caledonian Society; Irishmen abroad might cross de serts or swollen rivers to be with their own people on St. Patrick's Day; in most English-peaking quarters of the globe there are associations of Yorkshiremen, Kentish men, and Cornish men; far-flung eisteddfods bring exiled Welshmen together. And yet nowhere, in my sea-dog's experience, has he found any association of London men. He told me of the fact not with regret, but with an insular pride typical of the species, and with some of the disdain that the Londoner shows for the provincial. The first meeting of fellow-Englishmen in Currabubula or Kurdistan is apt to be a cold affair ! It is, I suppose, the natural outcome of the truism that the biggest city is the best hiding place, and that one might be more lonely in London than in the middle of the'Sahara. It is but another phase of the splendid isolation experienced by the Londoner when the morning paper shuts him off from the view. of the other occu7 pants of his railway carriage; and of the pride he feels in ilot knowing the names of his next-door neighbours.