nom Our Own Connesronoent London Jan, 14.
The floods have preoccupied the newspapers throughout the whole of the week. They were particularly dad up to Saturday. and when Meteorlogical Office announced that! there would probably be rain during! people began to be Fortunately however, the weather forecast as usual] proved entirely incorrect and we have ad no rain to speak of for the last four or five days. As a result, the rivers, including the Thames, have fallen' rapidly and it is hoped that} we shall be back again to normality' im the near future. Of course all the dwellings in the low-lying districts have suffered very seriously] and the little bungalow colonies along the rivers, notably at Sunbury and Shepperton have been completely isolated for days, The whole trict, near Boultor's Lock at Maidenhead has been under water for nearly a fortnight and there was one wide lake all the way from Maidenhead to Cookham.
Probably agriculturists will also feel the effects of the sodden land for a very long time to come, although the Minister of Agriculture, reviewing the severe weather early in December regarded it as_beneficial to the coming crops. By that time, however, he had not to take into consideration the serious floods which followed.
We never, however, get through the winter without inundations of this nature and all we can hope is that for the rest of the year we ehall escape another visitation, "Classics and the Plain Man"
If it has not been for the floods] we should have had a relatively uneventful week, All politicians are holiday making and the only one to make a speech was Mr. Baldwin, the Prime Minister, who gave one of the most delightful addresses 1 have heard for a long time on "The Study of Classics and the Plain Man,"—Without mentioning names told the assembly how, when he was fighting Kidderminster in 1906; it used to irk his soul to have 0 to so many Smoking Concerts and. to. orgies in the numerous to regain his moral balance he used to retire to his room and study his favourite author, both Greek and Latin,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.