AN INTERESTING TRIP.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 24, 18 June 1914, Page 4

AN INTERESTING TRIP.

SIDELIGHTS ON ENGLAND.

BY RETURNED NEW ZEALANDER.

Mr. S. Percy Smith has just returned from an extended trip to England and •the Continent, and a Daily News representative last night had an interesting chat with him, in which he threw some sidelights on questions of interest in ■England.

VARIOUS RAMBLES. Mr Smith, with his daughter, left Auckland on March 14, and on the way to Australia met many New Zealand trippers. He landed at Plymouth on May 1, after a magnificent passage. Hie sea, he remarked, could almost have been negotiated in an open boat, except for about four hours just off Fremantlc. This was Mr. Smith's first visit to England for sixty-three years, and though his memory of London waß Bomewhat youthful, he was able to detect many great changes. Holborn Hill and its neighborhood, which in former years were especially familiar to him, had altered considerably. The hill itself had disappeared to give place to a viaduct.l There was a wonderful number of new streets in London, he remarked. After a month in the metropolis, he went to Norfolk and Suffolk, and then up the east coast as far as Inverness, where, in company with Mr. M. Frascr.he visited the famous Culloden field. He worked his way to Lancashire, and then on to Birmingham, where he attended the annual meeting of the British Association for tire Advancement of Science, which will hold its next meeting in Australia. After visiting Stratford-on-Avon, he returned to London, and paid a visit to Cambridge. He passed the winter at Torquay, which he a climate like a New Zealand winter, and is, by the way, built on seven hills. On returning again to London, he saw Dr. Leatham and his family. He was also much interested in a visit to Lowestoft, where he saw the curing and packing of fish for export, an industry which called for thirteen special trains for the workers and streets of crates for packing. After finally leaving London he went to Paris and Biarritz (the celebrated water-ing-place at the foot of the Pyrenees mountains in the Basque country), and crossed to Marseilles, where he took a P. and 0. boat for Wellington, arriving there on April 10. LONDON'S TRAFFIC.

After remarking on the excellence of the English roads—on the country roads old men are constantly employed in sweeping up the leaves—and on the great beauty of England's wooded country, Mr. Smith continued: "The magnitude of London's traffic, and the excellent way in whicli it. is handled by the police, struck me anost forcibly, as it strikes every newcomer to the world's metropolis. The motor 'bus is making enormous strides, and its constant traffic puts such a polish on the streets that at night they gleam as though wet. So greatly is this class of traffic expanding that it is seriously affecting the city and suburban railways, for the 'buses run distances, of thirty or forty miles out of London. Taxi-cabs, too, are everywhere, and the horse-drawn vehicle is so nearly extinct that I rode in one once merely, for the sake of its novelty. In one very quiet street 1 struck an average, throughout several days, of 1800 taxi-cabs in a twelve-hour day." ENGLISH AGRICULTURE.

Agriculture in England, said Mr. Smith, is in many respects behind that of New Zealand. 'Dairy factories are practically unknown, almost every fanner taking his own 'butter to market. The country js cl6sely subdivided, and one seldom sees a paddock bigger than twenty acres. "I ought to say," Jie continued, before I go any further, how courteously I was treated by the High Commissioner, who Becms to go out of his way to help any New Zealamler who takes tho trouble to call on him." THE SUFFRAGETTES.

Mr. Smith left England before the latest suffragette excitement began, but he saw something of the would-be voters just tho same. He spoke of the immense crowd whicb gathered to see the funeral of Miss Davidson, who attempted to stop the King's horse at the last Derby, and noticed vendors of suffragette literature everywhere. "The great body of suffragettes," he remarked, "work in a -quiet way, and little notice, is taken of them, even in the newspapers. They complain that the press of England ignores them, and in this respect I think they have a grievance, for one never sees adequate report* of their meetings in any of the papers. The apathy of the Englishman, which has so often been commented on, was particularly noticeable in this respect .when I was there. The people would greet suffragette outrages with the remark that 'they have been at it again.'"

A BURNING QUESTION. Home Eulc, Mr. Smith remarked, was a burning question in England. "One hears it discussed on all sides, and .whether it was due to the fact that most of the people T met were strong Unionists I don't know, but the fact remains that I never heard but once an advocate of Home Rule. I should say that, generally speaking, there is strong sympathy with Ulster. My own is that matters have reached a crisis, and I believe that if it comes to strife, Ulster will get a largo number of English volunteers to aid her." Mr. Smith left England just befoe the Army crisis.