The "Daily Telegraph" yesterday rather pointedly contradicted the fears which appear to have been felt that Japan's shipments. of gold to America—£70,000,000 since March 1937, including £21,000,000 in the past five months—would compel her to default pretty soon on foreign loans. The total service of the latter is stated to be only £5,000,000 a year, and more than half these loans are in Japanese hands. The "Daily Telegraph" estimates Japan's internal production of gold at about Y.24,000,000 a month, which is four millions more than I have ever heard before.
The Ministry of Health tells us in its report on 1937 that, in return for ihe: £147,300,000 it spends annually, "we are certainly growing healthier. Maternal mortality in England and Wales was 31 per 1000; infant mortality among live births 58 per 1,000; deaths from tuberculosis 695. The last two figures are an almost invisible shade above those for 1935, the lowest on record, maternal mortality was the lowest But to get the proper perspective one must go back to.1838, when the general death-rate was 22.4 per 1,000, compared. with 12 today; tubercules killed 4,480 per million against under 700 now, and 1,000 persons per million died of smallpox compared with not one last year. Like rabies, smallpox may be considered almost extinct in England now.
On the other hand the report stole 36 valuable miniatures. In February and again in May the home at Roehampton of Mr, Claude de Bernales, a company director, was plundered of £5,000 worth of art treasures. And, biggest raid of all, Sir Edmund Davis's mansion near Canterbury, Chilham Castle, was entered last November when a Rembrandt, two Gainsboroughs (these alone were recovered), a Van Dyck and a Reynolds, valued in all at £88,000 were carried off.
The difficulty in finding Lord Winterton's picture is that it has never been seen outside Shillinglee Park, But all known pictures by Reynolds are registered, and dealers and police in all countries will be on the look-out, One suspects, however, that orthodox dealers never get a chance of seeing these stolen sweets, whose purchasers were probably arranged long before the robbery.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.