ENGLAND'S CHRISTMAS.

Taranaki Daily News, 9 January 1920, Page 5

ENGLAND'S CHRISTMAS.

FIRST PEACE FESTIVAL. ORGY OB EXPENDITURE. London, Dec. 21. '•Daddy is home" is the Christmas keynote of all classes of society. In hundreds of thousands of cases it is the first Christmas the children have had with daddy for four years. Festivities will he on the grand scale. Old-time Yuletide functions are little changed, except that children's jazzing is replacing parlor games. Many writers call it the "ragtime Christmas," with ragtime music and ragtime expenditure. After long waits the queus in the overcrowded stores were forced to take ragtime food, for turkeys were scarce, and the supply was cornered at the controlled price of 2s Od per lb., ami many tasty makeshift dinners were usedThe expenditure, if judged by pre-war standards, has been prodigious. Shopkeepers admit that money melted as it never did before. The stores are satiated with selling, and are closing for four days from Tuesday. London's revels include special dinners and dance 9 at the hotels, a grown-up party round a 20ft Christmas tree at the Ritz, and a ball at the Albert Hall. The Court, including Queen Alexandra and the Prince of Wales, have gone to Sandringham. London is overcrowded, and rooms are unobtainable, but the city has maanged to absorb 10,000 sailors, who have been given special leave from the fleet for the first real peace Christmas.

Jewellers, furriers, and motor agents are doing enormous business. The favorite present in the West End, which, at theatre time, now presents the bewildering spectacle of a seemingly endless flow of luxurious limousines, is an order for a motor-car not yet built. The spectre behind the feast is the starvation of Austria and Russia. England's fund for Austrian children has reached £250,000. Holland's trade unions, which are entitled to two days' holiday, have decided to work one day, and devote their pay to Austria. A touching feature of the scene in London is the special pilgrimage to the cenotaph in Whitehall by a great numbers of country people.

These relatives of dead soldiers are taking the opportunity of the holiday to lay beautiful wreaths on the cenotaph, and an immense mass l of flowers is accumulating.