Tuesday,
HONGKONG TE LEGRAPH.
MAGAZINE
May 14, 1940: Crary, Supreme Court'
PAGE
THERE'S A NEW OCCUPANT AT
KING
DOWNING STREET
On Sunday Mr. Winston ChurchillTM moved into No. 10 Downing Street, which was first occupied 202 years ago by Sir Robert Walpole. The
chief director in the affairs of the revenue would
have had a com- manding and conspicuous
situation. and have been adorned with Home emblems of our national greatness or
some intimations, of our runk among the tons of Europe."
nil-
But, one's ex- pectations are unrealised, There is, let- ter-box bearing the inscription, "First Lord of the Treasury." and there аге three bolls
on the right, and there is nothing cise of note, In- side the door NOU BSS under you pass no scintillating (peori-surface)-in-a-lantern,-and- on your right you will be In-- formed by a sunroy, clock, of the sort you
In SCC
most French Jewellers, that you are two minutes Juter than you in fact are.
first Prime Minister to occupy No. 10 refused to accept the house as a personal gift from George II, and it became the Prime Minister's official residence.
COMETIMES the starlings chandelier but n 60-watt. bulb D-wheel-out-in-a-ragged cloud from St. James' Park, and after a mad chase above the Horse. Guards descend on the trees in the garden of No. 10, Downing Street. But find- ing nothing of greater in-' terest there than an incon- gruous fig tree, they are soon aprawling hysterically back again across the sky..
In the same way the sight- seer, conscious that he is approaching-one-of-the-most- famous bulldings in the world, feels cheated when he finds himself standing in front of a modest town
house distin- guished only by a flag-pole on the roof. And the flag-pole. he has to admit, looks a little ridiculous, like an Old Etonian tle knotted round the neck of a tramp.
AS a guide-book puts it:
"One would have thought that the official residence of such a person as the Art minister and
City Relies On A Girl
cen-
CONTINUANCE of a turies-old custom may depend on Muriel Blackburn, aged twelve, of King Edward-road, Ripon, Yorks.
She is deputý horn-blower for the city of Ripon, where every night for more than 1.010 years a horn has been blown at each corner of the market cross, and three times in front of the home of the
Major
· Muriel -- succeeds... deputy, horri- blower Thomas Wright who is in the Army, She handle the 1915. horn with apparent ¿ense, atid ́ ́is taking her job seriously.
Family Tradition
Her father, Mr. Harold Blackburn, has been the city's horn-blower for | twenty-two years. Every night, he wears a picturesque fawn and blue cost and a three-cornered black silk kat.
Muriel has had liking for blow ing the horn since she was Ave, and when the deputy blower: joined up her father trained her specially no that if he fell ill Muriel could take his place,
"She will do the 'Job all
all right,” says Mr. Bisckburn. · ·"She can
blow a blast of twelve seconds
many a man cannot even do that. "My two sons, both now in the Army, have taken my place when I have been ill, and it looks as though the family tradition is, to be carried on by Murlei
"I am determinds not to let down the people of Ripon," says Muriel.
But all this, you realise, as you penetrate deeper into the building past busts of Pitt and Melbourne and down long passage and a the sharp turn to the left to Cabinet room, all this is remark- ably like the British Constitution. It rambles, it twists round corners. It has a plece added here and un- other there.
The modest faende on. Downing Street shields a very large build- ing indeed. It is like the shabby- sult of clothes which the wealthy Englishman sometimes wears his travels.
for
Nar has this carelessness of con- ventional opinion always berni confined to the architecture of No. 10. The udventure which
gave the starlings the worst shock that any
bird run receive seems to prove that, even Mr. Gladstone could lack a could
sense of the pro-
prieties.
A distinguished visitor in 1872
wns
shown into the garden, where
he found the Prime Minister In
Bourd of Werks has done; they've put a leaf made of deal in the middle of the mahogany-Is that respectful?"
Someone suggested that the green cloth would cover it, but Appleton could only repent: "Is that res- pectful?"
ON the staircase which you have to climb to get to the dining- roon on the first floor, hang the portraits of the Prime Ministers.
By Tangye Lean
Since Sir Robert Walpole first went into residence two hundred years ago, nearly forty successors have come and gone. But the public's memory is shorter for its Prime Ministers than its Kings, and it is doubtful whether most people could account for more than a dozen.
Even Spencer Perceval. who held office for three years at the height of Napoleon's triumph, is generally forgotten. He was shot dead by a madman in the lobby of the House_of_Commons, but the fome which usually surrounds the victim of assassination passed him by.
puve-
It occurs to most of the sight- scers who linger to-day, in front. of No. 10 that there are still sur- prisingly few precautions taken against the political madman. A policeman stands on the inent opposite and another strolls up and down behind the garden wall on the Horse Guards Parade. But they will not stop you if you care to ring the doorbell, and en the whole they seem less anxious than a ticket Inspector at a rali- way station
as
The atmosphere of No. 10 with Its walls blackened by soot and its air of emphalic modesty, Is Conservative as anything could be. No display of grandeur, it seems to Imply, could enhance a dignity
AEROPLANE HELD FOR LAST WISH
TO
earnest conversation with the First full a dying woman's wish that Commissioner ot Works and a
she be burled with her only Kentleman called Sir Frederick child, a soc killed in a motor-cycle Storks who had promised to de-accident, the body of Mrs. Ronald monstrate the passibilities of "fell- ing trees noiselessly by means of gun cotton."
The thres were arguing round a sort of mast which they had suc- cceded in sinking into the ground, and the First Commissioner of Works was protesting to Mr. Glad- stone against the danger and ab- Burdity of the experiment. Un- happily, Sir Frederick won the day. No one," he assured the Prime Minister, will be one penny the worse."
an
This, he afterwards: confessed ́to be
exaggeration, for every window in the neighbourhood was. shattered, by the explosion, and the distinguished visitor found himself in a shower of glass from the skylight.
MR. Gladstone was among the large number of Prime Ministers who disliked living at No. 10, and used it whenever possible for business only: Disrabli, among the smaller group who loved it for tradition's sake, spent thousands of pounds on redecoration.
But nol- ther was the leading exponent of their school of thought.
The Younger Pitt, in his seven- teen years pf
office," became so devoted to the house from which he had conducted the early years of the war against Napoleon that he, used to complain of sleepless- ncas when he was away from it.
An even more. passionato caso of fidelity was that of the most famous office-keeper of the nineteenth century, who near ly resigned when the Cabinet- table had to be enlarged. "Come in here, sir, if you please,” he said to Lord Welby, "The table had to be enlarged and see what the
Appleton
Constantine was flown from Alder- ney, Channel Isles, to Shoreham (Sussex)-the first hundred miles of: a three hundred mile journey.
From Shorehnin the coffin taken, by train to London and then to Bradford, Yorks, for the funeral at
neur Hipperholme,
Halifax.
We
It was there that her son Ian, aged ineteen, was buried after being killed near Bradford a year ago.
Before
Mrs. Constantine was heartbroken at the news of her son's death, for she was devoted to him. Christmas her doctors said that shie showed no desire to live, and was just pining owoy-grieved at the loss of her son.
Since then her husband, Mr. Ronald Constantine, has kept a specially chartered, plane standing by ready to fall her wish for burial si Hiperkulino, án airways oficial mild.
"Never Recovered".
Mrs. Constantine died at Alderney one Sunday. There was nothing or- ganically wrong,' but she became ill, shortly after hir son was killed.
The son left bao two years ago to work in a bank at Bradford.), White he was there he lived with his cousin, Mr. G. C. West, of Springfell, Hip- perholme,
1.
Mr.: West, said: “Mrs. Constantina was very unhappy when Fan dame to Bradford. Ha was an only child, and they were both very much at- tached him. When he died. I think broke his mother's hemat and she never, reoqvered..
"She was not reslly fit, to make the journey to his funeral, but nobody could persuade her, not to do, so.
which is already infinite. Pitt lived here, and Distuell lived here. and the greatness of these men, the stability of the parliamentary system they helped to form, can- not be expressed in terms of gilt
eugies and resplendent guarda.
And you have to admit, as you walk off into the roar of the buses in Whitehall, that a flock of startl- ings and a pair of British policemen can be quite effective in their senti- mental way.
Spotting the Rank
BRIGADIER
During the 1914-1918 war rank was known 3)
this
Brigadier-General.
A Briga- dior com- mands an in- fantry or cavalry bri- gado or an equiva- lent for- mation o f Loveral units of other arms, Certain special staff appoint. ments are held by officers of this rank.
They are specially selected for this command from offi cors who have commanded ́ battalions or units.
Pay: Brigadier Administra tivo, £1,527 a year for mar- ried man; £1,471 for single man, Brigadier ordinary, £1,- 436 married man and £1,379, single man,
GRIN AND BEAR IT
135
By Lichty
"Dora and I had such a nice comfy chat! We both hate Estello!”
How to
SEE STARS
HE number of stars visible
To the naked eye at any one time under good cond!- _tions_is_only_about_3,000!
And what are these points of light which we call the stora
Well, nearly all the stars you see in the night skles are also kuns,. like our own, only some of them are very much larger, and some are also very much hotter,
The apparent difference in sizu between our own sun and these. other suns is simply a matter of distance, for, while our own sun fs, astronomically speaking, com- paratively near to us, the next nearest sun is at the stupendous distance of twenty-five millions of millions of miles in other words, it is nearly three million times ns fur bwoy!
No wonder, these other suns only appear to us as small points of light. But when we talk about millions of miles we are using ́figures, which are only under- standable to a Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Astronomers use a different kind of tape measure, namely, "light years," and a "light year" is the distance, that light will travel in a
year at the speed of light, which Is about 180,000 miles per eccond.
To reach the earth the light from the sun.occupied about eight: and a half minutes, but the light from the next nearest mun lakes. over four years to get here, /*
From some of the more-distant suns it takes hundreds and von thousands of years for their 'ght to reach us.
When I sald that nearly all the stars are suns, I was excepting o
very abil number of apparent stars, which are not stars at all. but worlds, or planets, to give them thoir proper. «name, and a planet in a world which revolves round a sun
Our solar systein comprises the Sun and his nine planets, which are Mercury, The Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and Venus, which comes ngarer to the earth than any other planet.
Jupiter is a very conspicuous object, though just at present it is too low down in the Western sky to be seen at its best. It la the largest planet in our system, having a diameter of over, eleven times that of the earth!
Our old friend the moon is, of course, " very near neighbour, being only a small matter of about 230,000 milles away, and its craters and mountain ranges can be seen through a pair of good feld glassca...
One of the most familiar objects in the sky is the meteor, or so called "shooting-star," which con' be seen on any clear night.
Shooting-stars are not stars at all, but simply small pleces of rock or stone, and in some cases metal, which do not become visible until they have the misfortune to en- counter the earth's atmosphere, when they become incandescent through friction esused by their passage through that atmosphere.
small bodies, possibly no larger The majority of them are very
than a walnut or even smaller. Occasionally, however, a large one: paya tus a visit, and in some cases these larger ones have managed to reach the earth before being en« tirely burned up during their pas- sage through the air.
There is quite a good collection of them in the South Kensington Natural History “Museum, Their interest lies in the fact that they are the only visitors from outside space which
wa
can actually handle and examine at our leisure. Yes-there is quite a lot to be seen. In the skies during the black- out,
and
few hours spent in be coming acquainted with some of these splendours of the heavens" might well recomponse ús for its Inconveniences, an
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PARLOPHONE
RETURN OF OLD FAVOURITES
R2322 Forget me not
Valse Triste.
R2668 Rhapsody in bine
B2653 One day, when we were young
„Sweethearts. ___Walix.:
12715 Hell Hitler Ja, Ja, Ja,
The French girls have got something.
R2354 Let us dream
For you only
R3058 Acceleration (Stransa)
R1002
Budapest Waltz,
Aloha beloved
Mauna Loa ...
R1895 Bolero (Ravel)
George Boulanger & vrch..
Orchestre Georges Tzipine.
Millicent Phillips.
„Ronald Frankau.
„George Boulanger & orch,
|n1268 - Sho does'nt only get you with her beauly
You've got to pay for everything you get. R 070 Blue Danube
Lust drops
12063 I'm lerribly terribly Brilish
Chinese nights.
12288
O sole mio
La Paloma
Orchestre Mascotte.
.Kamul de Lula, ....Hawalian novelty
„Grand symphony orch.
....Ronald Frankan..
-Magyari Imre & Gipsy orch.
................Honsid Frankau
„Magyari Imre & Gipsy orch.
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