"Spectator's" Comment on Edward Thompson's Article ith the "Times": Calvin Coolidge as a Columnist What passes for history and truth about India in the United States has been drolly recounted in the "Times" by Mr. Edward Thompson, who knows India well besides being a distinguished man of letters here, says the "Spectator." It is too serious a matter for amusement, and we hope that arrangements have been made by which the gullible folk there may read the articles, We love American idealism and it grieves us to seo it distorted into preaching at faults of which we are not guilty in spheres which are quite closed to their knowledge. We are not innocent of gullibility here. Other English people have been silly since the Newcomes' guests fawned upon Rummun Loll. But interested persons have outrageously misled the generous Americans, much of where Press has been full of ridiculous stuff about India, With the calm courage of a Churchill or Lloyd George, Coolidge still wields the pen of a ready—or fat least remunerated—writer, point out "Truths" New York correspondent. As a columnist, he devotes each day to producing' the few simple words whereby. the morale of a great democracy, 30 severely tested by the painful vi situdes of Hoover's Presidency, may be upheld, at least for another twenty-four hours. The knowledge that the Coolidges have their binoculars steadily focused on the man at the wheel, and even the wheel itself, has enabled the nation, however depressed, to avoid panic, Moreover, the quiet regularity with which Mrs, John Coolidge, daughter-in-law of the ex-President, drives her young husband to the offices of the railroad where he works and alls for him at lunch, also polishing her farnitare with wax and her crockery with soap, is enabling the nation to bear with patience. the period that must elapse before the Convention is held at which Dwight, M, Morrow, by running against Hoover, will enable Coolidge to resume his task of preserving the the Conservative College at Aske ige Park—the—Hertfordshire sion which was presented the party in memory of Mr, Bonap Law, according to "Truth," small is the demand for education in the principles of the party tha the courses hitherto have been tended by only a third of the number of students for whom provision is made. The college is, in fact, proving a white elephant. Last week in an unsuccessful appeal fagcinst the assessment for rates it was stated thatthe running expenses of the college for the first Year were £15,667 and the receipts £6,565, making a loss of £9,102, What has been done in New York can be done—in fact, the engineering and technical problem is. sim pler—in London, in the view of the "Spectator." The first step, then, towards London betterment' on big scale must be the electrification of all trains entering or leaving the capital.
The next step must be the the open cuts through 8 pass to the termini of the various companies, all of which are situated at focal points in the life of London, Hardly a train should be seen, heard or felt in the London of the future, Every tone of them, should run decently underground or enclosed and with streets, houses and open spaces above them, ace As nearly as I can ascertain there are rather over: forty miles of open railway cuts within the boundaries of the capital. Drop steel stanchions between the rails as your foundations supports, and oon the area thus made available you could erect whatever you pleased, You could carve new thoroughfares, you could run up buildings of any and every size, you could lay out parks, T estimate that, if the open cuts were thus covered over, more than 350 acres of land would be ided to the productive usable area of London—350 acres that, at present are mere empty space.
The newspapers of Britain, considered as a whole and not judged by an excrescence here sand there, are actuated in the main in what they publish or in what they omit by what they conceive to be for the benefit, and not for the demoralization, of the public, in the opinion of the "Newspaper World." There may, perhaps, be a grain or two of applicability in what the authors of "Keeping It Dark" say about the local paper that ceased criticizing a railway company's services when it got the company's printing or about the disappearance from later editions of a city editor' reference to an investment as "speculative when it was found that the prospects was being advertised in the same issue, but here again one isolated lapse from grace, even if fully established, no mote proves a general practice than one swallow makes a spring or one woodcock a winter. article in this month's "Atlantic Monthly" on the future the American daily deserves be considered by English ronde because of the facts with which it deals, says the "Newspaper World." The writer, Mr. Win, P, Beazell, states that in che past five years 95 newspapers have passed from exist ence—one every 10 days. There are 70 fewer newspapers than there were in 1924. The mortality is great amongst morning newspaper There are now 881 morning papers, and 1,583 evening, and the evening Journals possess two-thirds of the gross circulation of 39,425,615. Of the total number $03 are now under the control of 57 groups with total capital of 600 million dollars, Criticising what it describes as the policy of deeming it better to sive one per cent. enjoyment to one Jhundred people than 100 per cent. enjoyment to one person, "Truth" remarks:—But Mr. Lansbury has Tt may be regarded as certain that in return for any compensation—even on an ex gratia footing—made in respect to Tsarist debts and expropriated holdings in the U.S.SR. the Soviet delegation will press foi some form of credits, states the "Beonomist." There is so little to be said at this time of day for refusing to seek a common sense compromise, and so much to be said for promoting trade between Russia and Great Britain, that all parties may be readier now than in 1924 to pocket their principles, and endeavour to find a give-and-take solution—agreeing on one side to write off what is obviously irrecoverable, and on the other to admit that simple repudiation is not a basis from which mutual confidence and financial relations can be resumed. But it would be idle to pretend that an accord palatable to opinion in both countries will be easy to find.
Mr, Neville Chamberlain's appeal for more students is a rather pathetic confession of the failure of forgotten that if there had been no gingerbread stalls there would be no railings. If he will consult his history, preferably in one of those handbooks of the Plebs League or in some other volume of Proleculture (for they tend to divell upon such things), he will see that had -tho people respected Covent Garden and St. James' Squave they would never have lost them. For the plain fact is that as yet the workers do not ce What is rural. At specified spots in Epping Forest or Burnham Beeches, and the length of the Brighton Road, Mr. Lansbury can study their reaction to the countryside, and from it he can deduce what they will make of London's squares if we pull down the railings. It is only subconsciously that our half-educated democracy enjoys an open space. It is only when it has lost the open space that the. subconsciousness ceases to be "sub."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.