(Editor "North-China Daily News," 1911-1930)
London, Apr. 29. HIS week has been so full of thrills that we are all a little unhinged. It is a sign of the times that the Budget for all its colossal figures has fallen quite flat.
Relieved of fears about income-tax most of us bothered little about further details.
But Sir John Simon has for once achieved popularity.
It is agreed all round that he has spread the burdens fairly.
Even the Socialists had but little to say, beyond a perfunctory demand for more direct taxation, Sir Archibald Sinclair, leader of the Opposition Liberals, called it a "pedestrian Budget."
To which Captain Crookshank wittily replied that in dealing with astronomical figures it was best to keep one's feet on the ground instead of soaring into the stratosphere.
The extra tax on tobacco raises a problem of which the Treasury never thought—not that it would have cared, if it had. It is easy enough to charge 7d. for a 6d. and 1d, but this would mean scrapping all the old machines, with heavy loss. Probably the packets will be made up with fewer cigarettes in them. But the tax has indirectly throwm a vivid light on the enormous increase of smoking. Over 500 brands of cigarettes and tobacco are affected by it.
A friend who has been doing business with Italy on rather a big scale for 20 years and knows the Italians intimately, is just back from three weeks in Rome and the north, and he tells me that the Italians are becoming more and more dissatisfied with the Duce's foreign policy.
This feeling is by no means confined to the ordinary public. An official of pretty high position said to my friend "We copy the Germans in everything now; we copied their uniforms, we copied three goosestep, we copied their anti-Jewish policy, and now we have copied them in invading a helpless country and seizing it. We don't like this sort pao Three times in the past few months it has been announced that the Duce was going to Turin to speak and each time the fixture was cancelled for fear of a hostile demonstration. Meanwhile he is surrounded by a London area. Half of it, cut off by the Bath Road has long been swallowed up by London. The remainder contains a picturesque High Street, an ancient Church (part of it Saxon) and the loveliest 15th century rectory. The church is spared, but most of the rest is going, together with some of the finest agricultural land in Middlesex because the Air Ministry (which seems to have a genius for pitching on the best farm lands for its aerodromes) wants the ground for the enlargement of Heston airport. The demands of the air must one supposes be regarded as paramount nowadays.
But new motor roads, nine times out of ten, are merely a sacrifice is the demon speed. And as soon as they are made, houses are crowded along them, and their only excuse disappears.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.