LONDON LIFE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 74, 18 November 1931, Page 6

LONDON LIFE

Geoffrey Tebbutt)

THE DEAD HAND ANCIENT MONUMENTS FRAY MODERN TEMPERS A WONDER ENGINE (Speeially written for the "Post" by

LONDON, October 8. London's most pressing domestic problem at the moment is how to make the ever-increasing traffic run swiftly and smoothly along streets which, for the most part, were not designed, but just grew up, and which had their origin in days when "traffic" consisted of saddle-horses and sedan chairs. Police and motor authorities confer and produce traffic roundabouts, traffic circuses, picturesque coloured lights for the guidance of drivers and pedestrians, "Look Left" and "Look Right" signs painted on the roadAvays, metal arrows and white-gloved "cops" to make everything delightfully safe and simple — in theory. But they cannot keep pace with the growing traffic, and the loss of life and time is appalling, for we of the petrol age must live and move in streets where formerly the climax of traffic terror was produced by a coach-and-four exceeding the speed limit. The authorities will sooner or later have to wring the neck of sentiment and tradition in the attempt to make the streets clearer for traffic. I refer to the monuments and statues — some beautiful, some ugly, some positively laughable — which clutter the streets of London. I look down into Ludgate Circus from my window in Fleet Street where the traffic pours down the hill from St. Paul's, and see two obelisks — miniature Cleopatra's Needles — enthusiastically and posthumoiisly erected by their friends to citizens of London who may, in some .clistant year, have been notable, but whose names nobody now knows, and whose memory nobody nowadays cherishes. They help to obstruct the view, and, in their small way — repeated a thousand times over in other ..•arts of London — to block the groaning traffic. Sentiinent and Speed Forgotten field-marshals prance in the middle of Whitehall on granite war-horses; grimy statesmen flourish everlasting documents in the faces of exasperated >'bus drivers; and kings of old who then, as now, could do no wrong, all, in various thoroughfares,

c-onspire to make the typists of Tooting and the rest of us late for our jobs. The kangaroo, as the late Lord Dewar said, is Nature's attempt to create the perfect pedestrian, and Londoners who have become used to eaping for their lives in the streets have probably acquired some of the nimbleness of their jungle forbears. That helps, and the coloured lights and the tireless policemen help, but we seem to be getting deeper and de.eper into the tangie of traffic. There does not seem to be much hope of an improvement until the arrival of a Wellsian world where the streets are platforms moving on the principle of escalators. But before that day, there is a bad t.'me coming for those street statues. The Unobstructed Skyway And now for a phase of transport that has, as yet, no problem of traffic •ongestion, and which, emphatically, does not care if it rains statues into the streets. Analysis in cold figures of the racing seaplanes which secured Great Brita n permanent possession of the Schneider trophy and far surpassed all pre.vious speed records destroys nothing of the glamour surrounding hese nr'racles of engineering. The idea alone is stupendous. A winged projectile with just sufficient space nside its shell to seat one man is to be pulled along the surface of the water at twice the speed of an express train, lifted into the air, and shot through space at more than six miles a minute! Every ten seconds the machine, a stream-lined case enclosing a myriad complex mechanical devices, must fly a little more. than one mile. Between the ticks of a clock the racer must move forward more than 500 feet. The man in the machine sits comfortably, his head protected from the hammer-rush of air moving at nearly 400 miles an hour by a long, low wmdscreen designed to blend into the lines of the slim fuselage. His feet rest on the rudder bar. Between his knees is the control lever, actuating the delicate movements of the ailerons and elevators that swing the racer over into a vertical bank or bring it back to a level keel. Before his eyes are the many instruments which enable him to watch the pulserate and temperature of the engine, the silvery pointers on the dials giving him from second to second instant diagnosis of the state of the mechanism roaring its song of power just in front of him. "Blacking Out" As he persuades the racer into a steep turn he feels the centrifugal force — perhaps five or six times the force of gravity at the. speed he is moving — pressing him hard down into the seat. For those moments his apparent weight is increased several times. The turn may be "tight" enough, or, in other words, of sufficiently small radius, to draw momentarily the blood from his .brain. He "blacks out"; for an instant a grey mist swirls before his eyes. A slight easing off the turn and the mist is gone. A little more movement of the rudder bar and the control lever and the machine is level once more, tearing at full throttle. Now that the need for secrecy is gone sornething of the. arithmetic of the miracle may be disclosed. We 'earn that the Rolls-Royce engine developed this year for use in the. con.test produces 2,300 horse-power at an engine speed of 3,200 revoluD'ons a minute and on the test bench held 2,350 h.p. during an hour's non--top run. This titanic force is gencrated by a unit weighing only 1,630 b ounds. Each horse-power is produced by seven-tenths of a pound of eunningly contrived and arranged metal. A space less than a walnut in size g:ves energy sufficient to lift 33,000 pounds one foot each minute of time! , A Joke From Geneva It is not often that a funny story

comes from the heavy deliberations of the many commissions and committees of the League of Nations, so there is the more reason for retailing one told to me by Sir Thomas Wilford, High Commissioner for New Zealand, who has recently returned -from Geneva. Mr. Hugh Guthrie, one of the Canadian delegates, noted for the. clarity of his utterances, went to the platform in one of the commissions to deliver his address, and had only just commenced when he saw in front of him a note in French which meant the equivalent of: "For' Heaven's sake lift your head up and shout!" The delegate bowed gratefully to the chairman, and delivered the. remainder of his speech in a voice like thunder. In answer to his innocent inquiries afterwards, he was told that the note had been sent up to the previous occupant of the platform — a meek-voiced interpreter who had been translating into his moustache!