"Please laugh a bit quicker, ladies and gentlemen, because Tve got to be home by midnight." The speaker was Vic Oliver, the American son-inlaw of the Prime Minister and a popular stage, film and radio comedian. This plea, which he made to the audience ofa West-End music-hall the other night, was just another of his jokes. The midnight curfew applies to all aliens, (troops excepted), including Americans, but Vic Oliver has been granted an extension to 4. am.
Friendly aliens all realize the neces-* sity for these restrictions. Most of them who work on the stage or in restaurants have been given exempt tion when the home by midnight rule would have caused hardship.
Ben Lyon, another visiting American actor, is one of many who are allowed a little extra time, though he has had some visiting cards printed with the inscription: "At heme from Midnight to 6 a.m."
Most of the alien hotel and restaurant workers in London are Ita-lions, and few of them failed to get exemption from the midnight curfew. A number, of course, have been in England many years, and some are naturalized. All are apprehensive about the future. Sovrani, the owner of a well known London restaurant, is in a curious position. He is a citizen of San Marine, the tiny republic situated in Italy about 50 miles east of Florence and 15 miles from the coast.
San Marino—"the oldest, smallest, -|and happiest republic in the worl according to Sovrani, who is its Acting Consul-General in London—has a whatever Italy does. But this state within a state, which conferred a knighthood on King George V in 1935, signed a treaty of friendship with Mussolini last year.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.