LONDON LIFE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 61, 3 November 1931, Page 4

LONDON LIFE

r Geoffrey

Tebbntt.

GANDHI'S GOAT POLITICAL CONSCIENCES AROUSED. "THE ENGLISH: ARE THEY HUMAN?"

By

LONDON, Sept. 24, 1931 Mr. Gandhi, his goat's mdlk, his Day of Silence, loineloth, and his devotion to making himself uncomfortable have given place in the news to Great Britain's dramatic slide off the gold standard. But the-Holy Man had a hectic week of publicity, His appearance, his clothes (or lack of them), his Eeastern ways, his lightest remarks, were dealt with in the papers at a length which even Charles Chaplin failed to command. And, as for the cartoonists, Gandhi was a godsend. The weightier journals deprecate all this, but, heing human, and being a journalist, my sympathy is on the side of those who wrote about Gandhi the Holy Man, Gandhi "the naked fakir" (as Mr. Winstori Churchill called him), and those who caricatured his landing from the steamer Ieading an imaginary and very disdain-ful-looking goat, rather than Gandhi the politieian who wants to liberate India from British tyranny. Let the "Week-end Review" present the other side of the picture: — "The unfamiliarity to Western ideas of Mr. Gandhi's clothes and customs offer a temptation to the more vulgar of our cartoonists and journalists which they will find hard to resist. For them to treat Mr. Gandhi, with his loin cloth and goat's milk and days of silence as though he were a music hall turn might do irreparable harm in India and round the conference table." Upon this, I can add only the eomment of the hard-boiled journalist who asked. "Will the 'more vulgar' among us please note?" The In^ccessible Commons.

To the average man, the meaning of the gold standard is about as clear as that of the theory of relativitly or the differential calculus. The politica] personalities around whom the diseussions on Britain's departure from the gold standard are, however, of supreme interest, and it is a long while since the Palace of Westminster has been so highly regarded as a source of instructxon or entertainment as in these critical weeks of the special sitting of the House of Commons. It is a great pity that there are so many difficulties in the way of anyone not connected with the House who wants to hear an important debate. The Houses of Parliament, Big Ben towering over them, cover a huge area, the uninitiated visualise the Chamber itself as occupying a considerable proportion of the Palace. But it is, actually, quite a small place, and the public galleries quite inadequate for the number of people who wish to occupy them. On Monday night, when the Gold Standard Bill was being rushed through, I notieed quite two hundred people — many of them interested foreigners — waiting for room in the member's gallery, which holds not many more than a hundred. Some had been sitting in the rather chilly hall for hours, and looked likely to be sitting there for hours longer, entering the gallery as the few departing speetators made room for more. The chief hope of the waiting crowd was that a sudden lull in the debate might have emptied the gallery . But the students of politics fortunate enough to be onlookers at one of the most momentous of recent Commons debates showed little sign of retreating from positions won, in their turn, by patience. I was one of those who waited. But hope and the mural paintings of famous scenes in English history satisfied me for only ten minutes. Then I went home to dinner. Cricket's Last Rites.

I looked in at the Oval the other day to join some thousands of others mourning for the passing of the 1931 cricket season. It went out in a blaze of sunshine that county secretaries, harassed by washed-out matches and poor "gates," and the unfortunate New Zealanders, with their many rain-ruined games, must have wished for many times during the months of summer proper. The pavilion seats looked shaded and chilly, and I went into the open area to enjoy the sunshine and' to watch W. E. Bowes, a Yorkshire professional who pounds them down at well over medium pace, and who seems to he one of the coming bowlers, for he has improved greatly in the past season. That, at anyrate, was my impression, and I had not seen him in action for more than twelve months. It takes a good man to bowl Walter Hammond neck-and-crop when he is well set, and that was one of the concrete performances Bowes achieved in this match — Champion County v. The Rest of England. "The English: Are They Human?" was the title of a recent hook by a foreigner, and this rather devastating question .eame to my mind at the match as I reflected that , whatever they may he elsewhere, the English are definitely humanised by a cricket miatch. My neighbour on one side asks me, 8with as much trustfulness as if [ were the Governor of the Bank of England, to mind his bag while he fights his way to a Bass in the refreshment booth. A complete stranger on my other hand waxes intimate Dver the details of an innings played fcen years ago, and is prepared to iccept the common ground of interest in cricket as a guarantee of good faith and most of the virtues. It is L'emarkable "what cricket does for the English. There must be something in it, after all. Channel Swlmming. The conquest of the English Chanael looked, a few yeas ago, as though it would become a relatively easy ;ask for any swimmer with courage mdurance, and judgment, and a pilot vise in the lore of currents. • But ;his year, although quite fifteen 5wimmers — men and women — had amfitions to perform the feat, not one

of the three who actually started ever looked like getting across. Miss Lily Copplestone, the New Zealand girl, who was one of the "hopefuls," has been telling me of the difficulties — most of them connected, of course, with the weather. The English Channel is never a warm stretch of water, and this year it has been consistently cold. One by one the batch of swimmers quartered at the village of Cape Grisnez gave it up as hopeless. The last but one to go was -Miss Copplestone, and she is determined to try again next year. This in spite of the three setbacks she experienced during her two months of training and waiting on the French coast. Thrice she stood shivering on the beach in the darkness of early morning, braced up for the attempt. The first time the pilot-boat arrived two hours late, missing a favourable tide; on another oeeasion it failed to arrive at all; 'and, early this month, when the prospects looked reasonably good, up came a storm as she was ready to enter the water. The inartyrdom of a, Channel swim malces no appeal to me. I think enduranee swimming is one of the Ieast pleasant of pastimes. And in these days when such spectacular feats as flying across the Atlantic Ocean and exploring the Polar regions have lost much of their earlier glamour, I cannot see how a professional swimimer can hope to turn her skill and courage into sufficient cash to make the chilly sport of swimming from France to England worth while. Miss Copplestone may have different views. She is a determined and clear-headed young woman, and her pluck and persistence deserves better fortune. Police Court Gem. I should like to know the journalist who first hit upon the idea of extracting from long, dreary, and unimportant - proceedings .in small police eourts the little dialogues between magistrate. and policeman, witness and solicitor, which are so: frequently rich in wit or unconsciousi humour. This one, from a London suburban court, is a gem: Police witness: Defendant' struck a fighting attitude, and said he did not care for a thousand policemen. Magistrate:; What did he say when you arrested him? Police witness: He said: "I will go quietly."