Tuesday,
HONGKONG TELEGRAPH
May 14, 1940.
Ubery, Spremne Cour
MAGAZINE
PAGE
THERE'S A NEW OCCUPANT AT--
10
O
The
On Sunday Mr. Winston Churchill moved into No. 10 Downing Street, which was first occupied 202 years ago by Sir Robert Walpole. first Prime Minister to occupy No. 10 refused to accept the house as a personal gift from George IL, and it became the Prime Minister's
DOWNING STREET
chlef director in the affairs of the revenue would have had a com-'
anding and conspicuous situation. and. have been adorned with see emblema of our national greatness Or sune intimations
of our rank unong the nu- tlons of Europe."
But one's ex- pectations arc unrealised. There is a let-
ter box bearing
the Inscription, "First Lord of
are
the Treasury,"
and there three bells On the right, and there is nothing else of note. In- alde the door you pass under no scintillating chandelier but n 60-watt bulb (peart surface) in a lantern, and on your right you will be in- formed by a sunray clock, of the sort you sec in most French Jewellers, that you are two minutes later than you in fact are..
official residence. COMETIMES the starlings 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 #g tree, they are soon sprawling hysterically back again across the sky.
In the same way the sight- seer, conscious that he is approaching-one-of-the-most famous buildings 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 the knotted round the neck of a tramp.
AS a guide-book puts it:
"One would have thought that the offlelal residence of such a person as the first minister and
City Relies
On A Girl
I
con-
CONTINUANCE of a turies-old custom may, depend ол Murlel Blackburn, aged twelve, of King Edward-road, Ripon, Yorks.
She is deputy - horn-blower for the city of Ripon, where ́every night for more than 1,050 years a horn has been blown at each corner of the market cross, and three times la front of the home of the
succeeds deputy horn- blower Thomas Wright, who is in the Army,She handles the 191b. horn with apparenti euse, and 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 à picturesque fawn and blue coat and a three-cornered black silk hat
Muric! has had a liking for blow- ing the horn sinco aho was five, and when the deputy blower joined up her father trained her specially so that I he fell ill Muriel could take his place.
She will do the job all right," says Mr. Blackburn, "Bhe 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 Muriel
I am delerinde not to let down the people of Hipon," says Muriais
But all this, you realise, as you. penetrate deeper into the building past busts of Filt and Melbourne and down a long passage and a sharp turn to the left to the Cabinet room, all this is remarkc- ably like the British Constitution. It rambles, it twists round corners, it has a plece added here and un- other there.
The modest facude on Downing Street shields a very large build- ing indeed. It is like the shabby suit of clothes which the wealthy Englishman sometimes wears for his travels.
Nor has this carelessness of con- ventional opinion always been confined to the architecture of No, 10. The adventure which gave the starlings the worst shock that any bird can receive seems to prove
that even Mr. Gladstone sense of the pro-
could Jack a
prieties.
A distinguished visitor in 1872 was shown into the garden, where
found the Prime Minister in carnest conversation with the First Commissioner of Works and a gentleman called Sir Frederick
"Bourd of Works has done; they've put n 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 repeat: "Is that res¬ pectful?
ON the staircase which you have to climb to get to the dining- room 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 successore bave 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 fame which usually surrounds the victim of assassination passed him by.
It occurs to most of the sight- seers who linger to-day in front of No. 10 that there are still sur- prisingly few precautions taken against the political mudman. A policeman stands on the
ment 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 on the whole they seem less anxious than a ticket inspector at a rail- way station,
as
The atmosphere of No. 10 with its walls blackened by soot and its air of emphatic modesty, is Conservative as unything could be. No display of grandeur, it seems to imply, could enhance a dignity
AEROPLANE HELD FOR LAST WISH
To
10 fulßì a dying woman's wish that she be burled with her only child, a son killed in a motor-cycle Storks who had promised to de-neeldent, the body of Mrs. Ronald monstrate the possibilitles of "fell- ing trees noiselessly by means of
cotion."
gun co
The three were arguing round a sort of must which they had suc- ceeded in sinking into the ground. and the First Commissioner of Works was protesting to Mr. Gind- stone against the danger and ab- Un- surdity of the experiment. happily, Sir Frederick won the day. "No one." he assured the Prime Minister, "will be one penny the worse,"
This, he afterwards confessed to. be an exaggeration, for every window in the neighbourhood' was shattered by the explosion, and the distinguished · vísitor· · found himself in a shower of glass from the skylight.
among the
MR. Gladstone, was large number of Prime Ministers who disliked living at No. 10, and used it whenever possible for business only. Dareall, among the smaller group who loved it for tradition's sake, spent thousands, of pounds on redecoration. But.nel- ther was tho, lending exponent of their school of thought.
The Younger Pitt, in his seven- teen years of 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- ness when he was away from it.
An even more passionate
ondic case
of fidelity was that of Appleton, the most famous office-keeper of the nineteenth century, who
ly resigned when the Coat-h
fable had to be enlarged "Come
in høre, sir, it you plesso," he 'mid- [
Constantine was flown from Alder- ney, Channel Isier to Shoreham (Sussex)he first hundred miles of a three hundred mile Journey.
From Shoreham the coffin was taken by train to London and then to Bradford, Yorks, for the funeral Hipporholme, near Halifax.
ot It was there that her son lan, aged ineteen, was buried after being killed near Bradford a year ago..
Mrs. Contiantine was heartbroken nt the news of her son's death, for she was devoted to him. Before Christmas her doctors said that she showed no desire to live, and. was just pining away-grieved as the loss of her son.
Since then her husband; Mr. Ronald Constantine, has kept a specially chartered plane standing by ready to full her wish for burial at Ilipperhotmis, an sirways official sale Never Recovered".
Mrs. Constantino died at Alderney one Sunday. There was nothing, or- Kanically wrong, but she became ill ahortly after her son was killed.
The son left home two years ago to work in a bank at Bradford. While ho was there ho lived with his cousin,
Mr. G. C. West, of Springfield; Hip- perholme,
Mr. Went said: “Mrs. Constantino was very unhappy when lan, eszno to Bradford. He was an only child, and they were both very much at- tached to him. When he died. I think. It broke his mother's heart and she never recovered, cre "She was not really fit to make the
could persvade her not to do so.
to Lord Welby. The table had to. Journey to his funeral, but nobody
-bo-enlarged and 100 what the
which
18 already infinite. Piti lived here, ond Dlamáli lived here, and the greatness of these men, the stability of the parliamentary. system they helped to form, con- not be expressed in terms of gilt engles and resplendent:guards.
And you have to admit, as you walk of. inte the roar of the buses In Whitehall, that a flock of start- ings and a pair of British policemen can be quite effective in their senti- mental way,
Spotting the Rank
this
BRIGADIER
During the 1914-1918 war rank was known AB Brigadier-General.
A Briga- dier com- mands an in- fantry or cavalry bri- gado or
an
o qui va -
font for mation of soverat units of othor arms. Cortain special staff appoint- monts are hold by officors of this rank.
They are specially selected for this command from offi- COST who have commanded battalions or units.
Pay: Brigadier Administra- tivo, £1,527 a your for mar- ried man; £1,471 for singla man. Brigadier ordinary, £1,- 436 married man and £1,379 single man,
GRIN AND BEAR IT
1155
By Lichty
"Dora and I had such a nice comfy chat! We both hate Estolle!”!
How to
SEE
THE
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 starsÝ
Well, nearly all the stars you set in the night skies are also suns, like our own, only some of them are very much larger, and are also very much hotter.
BOITIG
com-
The apparent difference in sizo between our own sun and these other auns is amply a matter of distance, for, while our own sun is, astronomically speaking, paratively near to us, the next nearest stin is at the stupendous distance of twenty-five millions of millions of milein other words,' it is nearly three million times as far away!
No wonder thee other suns only appear to us de small points of light. But when we talk about millions of miles we are usizıg figures which are only under- standable to a Chancellor of the Exchequer.
STARS
Astronomers use a different kind of tape measure, pamely, "light years," and a "ght year" Is the distance that light will travel in ar year at the speed of light, which is about 180,000 miles per second,
To reach the earth the light from the sun occupied-about eight and a half minutes, but the light from the next nearest sun takes over four years to get here. -
From some of the more-dlatant suns it takes hundreds and even thousands of years for their light to reach us.
+
Aun
Our solar system comprises the ond his une planets, which are Mercury, The Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and Venus, which comes nearer to the earth than any other planet.
Jupiter is 1 very conspicuous object, though just at present it is too low down in the Western sky to be seen at its best. It is 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, 1
very near neighbour, being only a small matter of about 239,000 villes away, and Its craters and mountain ranges can be seen through a pair of
fleld good glasses.
One at the most familiar objects, in the sky is the meteor, or so called "shooting-star," which can be seen on any clear night,
Shooting-stars are not store at all, but simply small pieces 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 caused by their passage through that atmosphere.
The majority of them are very small bodies, possibly no larger than a walnut or even smaller. Occasionally, however, a large one pays tis-a-visit, and In some cases these larger ones have managed to reach the earth before being en- tirely burned up during thete sage through the nir.
There a 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 We can: actually handle and examine at our leisure.
Yes-Bero is qu
quite a lot to be seen in the skies during the black- out, and a few hours spent in be coming acquainted with some of these splendours of the heavens might well recompenso us for 128 ... Inconveniences,
When I said that nearly all the stars are suns, i was excopting a very small number of apparent stars, which are not stars at all, but worlds, or planets, to give them their proper name, and a planet is a world which revolves round a sur..
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RETURN OF OLD FAVOURITES
R2322 Forget me not.
Valse Triste,
R2600 Rhapsody in blue
R2633 One day when we were young
Sweethearts.—Waltz,--
R2715 Heil Hitler Ja. Ja, Ja.
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The French girls have got something.
B2364 Let us dream
For you only
R2656 Acceleration (Strauss)
Budapest Wallz.
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Manna Loa
R1995 Bolero (Ravel)
#1268 She does'ni only get you with her beauly
You've got to pay for everything you get. R-070 Blue Danube
Last drops
曲
12063 I'm terribly terribly British
Chinese nights,
B2288
O sole mio
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