Passing Pageant

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 33, 27 January 1939, Page 10

Passing

Pageant

by

Trevor

Lane

UITE apart from the fact that you might swallow them and cause all sorts of. unpleasant complications inside, the little doo-dahs that you find in Christmas puddings can prove the very antithesis of good fortune. The other evening I had dinner with some friends in Wellington, and they produced the last of their Christmas puddings. , In my portion was a small silver horse shoe, a lucky charm, a miniature money-bag and a threepence. If young 1939 had been launched: with a pottle ‘of champagne.

cracked over his posterior, the auguries couldn’t have been happier! sd , JHE pudding that I couldnt dislodge with my teeth I washed off under the bath-. room tap and went home With my silver trinkets care-

fully tucked in a waistcoat pocket. . But what little lying jades they were! For, while I had been sitting ‘congratulating myself on the coming fortune the Christmas pudding foretold, burglars had broken into my place, packed one of my bags with the few expensive ‘suits that I own, helped themselves to a selection of shoes, scarves, shirts, cardigans and sox, and departed into the night! * A POLICEMAN arrived, but you’d be amazed how hard it is to discover which of your possessions are missing when you start to make a survey. There are obvious things like suits and shoes, but when it comes to ties and sox, wellit’s difficult remembering whether you own green ones, pink ones or none at all! It all seemed rather hopeless, though. When next morning { looked across the rooftops of Wellington, looked at the surging crowds in the streets, andquite frankly-looked euriously at every suit and every tie that passed’ me, I wondered how the deuce I could expect to get anything back. * WHIcH proves that I knew nothing about the police. At the detective office my scepticism ruffled them a

little. Late in the afternoon I had another call, There were my shoes lying on a table in the detective’s room! They had been found in a pawnbroker’s less than 24 hours after the burglary. The next afternoon a man had been arrested and everythine found, right down to the last cuff link.

Smart work? I’ll say it was! I’ve a new respect for the men whose work I once thought consisted of flashing torches in doorways at midnight and being terse if you hadn’t finished your beer by six o’clock. * 3 detective who worked on the ease looked _ pleased, $00. ‘

"¥ don’t thmk you had much of an opinion of us,’’ he said to me, ‘‘and I wanted to prove you wrong. We’ve worked hard on this for the past thirty-six hours.’ He HAD hard-and so had a lot of people under him-and the quiet efficiency of the police force is something that has.won my admiration in

the past few days. ; One thing I have done. T’ve taken out a much more com-. prehensive insurance policy, protecting me against anything from civil commotion to

bombs dropped by enemy planes! And if a burglar should kill me in a seuffle, my beneficiaries receive the amount my property is insured for. * | HAD my fingerprints taken, too...a rather messy business which made me feel like someone out of a Dennis Wheatley thriller. Fingerprints are amazing things, aren’t they? When you think of the teeming millions all over the face of the earth and not two persons with fingerprints the same. But is it so remarkable? Because, after all, there are no two lives the same... some are born with the proverbial silver spoons, others ave born to be Chinese coolies and millionaires and Welsh coalmuners.

Some go through life with the wind set fair, while for others life is just "fone dam’ thing after another.’’ *« m 2 ONTHS before I ’& went to England I wrote about the keen eye and the

literary ability of Nesbitt Sellers, son of Roy Sellers, secretary of the New Zealand Racing Conference in’ Wellington. a Nesbitt Sellers has been in England for nearly eighteen months now and. has been working for Commander Stephen King-Hall for the best part of that time. He has broadcast from the BBC several times, has travelled over the face of Europe and has taken a lively interest in international affairs. The other, day I had a letter from him-parts of it are well worth reproducing. * NESBITT writes from Liverpool: The political situation continues to be under @ deep depression always approaching from Germany. There is not the slightest doubt that the public here is deeply divided on foreign policy. But what they are going to do about it.I don’t know. Probably go on being deeply divided until the bombs begin to drop-an old English custom. But, seriously, what they DON’T seem to realise is that Eng: land. is no longer an island, and that in the next war ‘they won’t have three years

In his..travels over. the face of Europe, Nesbitt Sellers, of Wellington, was snapped near the Cathedral at Cologne. "No ome seems to realise seriously that England is no longer an island," he says on this page to-day.

sheltering behind the Navy while they get properly ready at-home. As Stephen King-Hall is saying as loud and as often as he can, the first three weeks | he be vital, However, I say, that has not yet, and in the meantime the three months since the crisis have been practically wasted. In Liverpool, for instance, no one is any wiser as to what they would have to do in a war than they were at the end of September. ‘Bomb-proof shelters? A figmeit of the imagination, my dear sir! | HENCE you will be able 1 to.see . that, beeause my work brings "me into daily -discussions on political this and thats, Iam in ‘an almost 99 per cent. state of ‘gloomy foreboding. But when‘ever possible, I adopt the *"let’s"make merry’- while we’vestill time’’ attitude. So I look with pleasurable anticipation on three "weeks in’ London over Christmas and. New Year. -. The last time I was there was during the height of-.the crisis (the ‘September one, that is-in case there’s another by the time you get this). But there’s no need for me to tell you what it was like with the sacred squares being dug day and night for ‘trenches; with an ‘‘Evening Standard" bill-board one night saying "BE CALM AND DIG"’; with pitifully few antiaircraft guns’ poking their snouts to the sky; with the ner-

vous tension of wondering whether it was really real thatLondon MIGHT be devastated by bombs-London, centre of the world! Wz found the crisis very expensive. Whenever we . had no work to do and became )» too glum, we hied ourselves _ to the "‘local’? — generally with most effective results. One day we went to a little village about 20 miles out. Call it X. There the locals were saying, ‘‘Wot’s all this about these ’ere See-zecks, these ’ere Sudeneese, and this "ere *Itteler?’’ I really believe they thought the Sudetens were black. I have lately been again to ‘the same village. Now the ‘locals are saying, ** Aye, this "ere *Titeler-’e must be stopped. Bui ?OW?’’ So you see, England is awakening. APART from ‘the political and international situations -- if anything in life now can be

‘fapart’? from them-life pretty well as interesting as usual, I’ve given so many talks on New Zealand in the past few months that I’m becoming tho oughly tired of the place! And sometimes I feel. that I would like to return for a few days just to see if it really is as I think and say it is. I’ve more than a yague . suspicion that ‘‘absenee, ete.,’? MIGHT do what it is said to do! Perhaps you’ll enlighten meas to your ‘reactions now that -you’ve apparently settled in again. GINCE you ieft I’ve been moving about this ‘‘green and pleasant land’’ (is., the ‘part between those conglomerations.of smoke and slums’ called cities), sipping cider. _in ancient pubs in . Dorset (glorious county) in the South, and rambling over the hills of the Lake District in the North. Incidentally, at Coniston, ideal lake in the autumn goldén brown when the trippers have gone, I was strolling in a churchyard waiting. for. opening time when I nearly fell on Ruskin’s grave! . Incredible place, this EngJand! | 7 _, And there IS something about it, provided you. are not condemned for life to such horrors as Liverpool possesses with its sooty buildings, its empty buildings, its unfortunate unemployed, and its black grime. True,-Lon-don has ali those; but. then, London has so much else be-

sides, and London is London -the place where you feel that life is grand and full of elan. Is that not so? ¥* F course, apart from London, the chief joy of being here is that it’s so near the Continent. As you probably know, I had a perfectly wonderful 4000-mile trip through Ger-

many and Italy last August. Did you eall at Venice? There’s a place for you! For me the most beautiful city in the world. I could sit in the Piazza San Marco sipping wine in the sunshine and gazing at the crowds, the cathedral, the

campanile, the Doge’s Palace, and all the rest, for ever-pro-yided, that is, that Mussolini didn’t come along and east a shadow: on the gilories.: I nearly drowned in the warm waters of the Lido, partly because it WAS the Lido and partly because it was so marvellous to get some sea that was worth swimming in and didn’t look dirty and cold. ‘Incidentally, on that trip I swam'in the Danube, the Lido, Lake Garda and on the Italian Riviera. Not bad, eh? ‘The Rhine looked just a iittle too big. OR. eandour about F our own Royal Family one must look. to the Aniericans, whose newspapers have long regarded the

Crown as first-rate ‘eopy."? In. "Look"? I found the following: . King George has cast aside the do-nothing role his advisers designed for him and has taken a lead in affairs of -the Royal Family and the Empire without parallel since Victoria’s reign. His immediate. objectives already almost achieved are: (1) to. bring the Duke of Windsor back into the Royal fold and (2) to put all four Royal brothers, including himself and Edward, to work vigorously for the Empire.

EN he was enthroned twenty months ago, the new King was expected to be @ mere passive symbol of monarchy. The biggest Royal **build-up’’ in history was conducted to distract attention from Edward’s abdication and George VI’s supposed handicaps of health, speech and personality.

But in the troubled wake of the Munich crisis King George has shown a firm will and a thoughtful mind combined with smooth tact. OURT cireles know nobody else could have healed the Windsor breach, for it required delicate handling both of emotions within the Royal Family and of British political sentiment. They knew, too, that George VI impelled the sudden but well-planned programme of activity for the Royal Family. He will set the pace himself next summer with his trip to America. The Duke of Keni and the Duke of Gloucester will

be the next Governors-General of Australia and Canada. ND the Duke of Windsor, ace Empire ‘‘salesman,"’ will return to a role of Royal usefulness second only to. that of the King himself.

Nesbitt Sellers’s employer in England "is famous Commander Stephen King-Hall, writer, broadcaster and _ politician. When the "Record" once used one of King-Hall’s’ articles without his. authority he wrote a_ terse letter to the paper. Matters’ were — happily smoothed over by the gift of a case of New Zealand apples from the "Record" to the commander!