DEAR LONDON.

Taranaki Daily News, 12 May 1919, Page 5

DEAR LONDON.

(By a New Zealander) All Dominion men come here with the idea that living is cheap in England. They have heard how men could marry and raise families on incomes of from l«s to 25s a week and manage well, and as the unskilled laborer in New Zealand has for years received a minimum wage of 8s a. day it is obvious that the cost of necessaries must be lea's in Devonshire than in Auckland. And so, although he realises that the war has put everything up by 50 per cent., he findß it hard to account for London prices. Take whisky, for instance (all Colonials do). The price of a bottle is 9s. This works out at something less than fld a tot. He is charged 2s for that quantity. He proba/bly informs the waiter that there is some mistake, that he is not buying the hotel. Something is due, no doubt, to rent and profit, but not>-tbeee times the value of the drink. In the next war, he decides, he will keep I a btftel.

TSris is by no means an isolated instance. At an officers' depot in France •he has seen Military Cross ribbon sold ifor 3d a foot. At his tailor's in Regent Istreet he is- charged 6d an inch. He reminds the tailor that his price is bigger than the Government's by 2,400 per cent The tailor smiles indulgently and kindK explains that he is selling the ribbon almost at a loss- He stocks it only to obfiga his customers. Very well then, who does make the money? The New Zealander scratches his head. Perhaps it would be better, after all, to be a tailor in the next war.

It is quite true that at. one time the rapacity of restaurant proprietors was bridled by a maximum price for a meal .purchased by a soldier; but now this beneficent restriction seems to have been relaxed, and, a dhier now has to pay almost as much for Ms vegetables as he (previously paid for his whole table d'hote. After all, a man usually values most what eosts him most. Perhaps that ia, London's charm. Certainly the New Zealander loves the grand old city with its dim streetg, its teeming theatres, ftß mad taxicabs, and its imperturbable police. Ah! that reminds him. Thero is something he hopes to get for nothing some day—even in London. When peace is declared he will "celebrate" appropriately, and if he doesn't wander back to his hotel at the close of the proceedings the-proud possessor of a 'policgjnan'a helmet—well, he will con-