Notes

One afternoon last week, Grenville Collins, producer of Sun-Up, Lula Vollmer's play of the Carolina Mountains which has an all-American cast,, was called to the telephone by the Lord Chamberlain's Department and asked to provide boxes for the King and Queen that evening. Shortly before the curtain rang up, their Majesties, accompanied by an ample suite, entered the theatre, occupied three left-hand boxes. They stayed to the end of the performance* joined in the ovation given to Miss Lucille Laverne, who played the leading role, made a quiet exit as the audience was kept at attention by the national anthem.

The grouse season came round once more. Trains bound for the country were packed with shooters leaving London. Those for Scotland were running in three parts to supply the demand. The King and Queen visited Princess Mary and Viscount Lascelles, her husband, at Goldsborough Hall in Yorkshire en route for Balmoral, the King's private residence in Scotland. Before leaving the metropolis, which was several days after the shooting began, Their Majesties received a gift of several brace "to comfort them for not being among the grouse-shooting sportsmen." The Maharaja of Patiala, who is stopping in London in royal state (TIME, Aug. 10), received a present of 100 brace.

Arrived in Montevideo, capital of Uruguay, H. R. H. The Prince of Wales. Foreign Minister Blanco boarded the cruiser Curlew to extend the Prince a welcome in the name of the nation. On landing, he was received by President Jose Serrato, the Cabinet and many other dignitaries. At an Anglo-Uruguayan luncheon, the Prince responded to a toast in Spanish, saying: "Muchas gracias por esta linda fiesta. Vive el Uruguay (Thank you for this good feast. Long live Uruguay).

At Newport in his native Wales, James J. Davis, U. S. Secretary of Labor, visited an iron foundry, grabbed a pair of tongs, "performed expertly a small job." The men, informed that Mr. Davis had been an ironworker before he became Secretary of Labor, cheered lustily.

Prof. John Maynard Keynes, world famed economist who recently espoused the equally famed Russian dancer, Mile. Lydia Lopokova (TIME, Aug. 17, MILESTONES), came forward with a plan to resuscitate the Liberal Party. He suggested that it mix politics with sex questions ; more specifically, to include birth control, economic freedom of women and reform of the marriage laws in its party program. Said he in part: The questions which I group together as sex questions have not been party questions in the past. . . . There now are no subjects in which the big general public is more interested. Birth control, marriage laws, the economic position of women, the economic position of the family--in all these matters the existing state of the law and of orthodoxy still are mediaeval and altogether out of touch with civilized opinion and practice, and with what individuals, educated and uneducated alike, say to each other in private.

Let no one deceive himself that the change of opinion on these matters is one which affects only a small educated class. Let no one suppose that it is the working class which is going to be shocked with the idea of birth control or marriage reform. For them, these suggest new liberty and emancipation from the most intolerable of tyrannies.

These things should lie discussed at party meetings. A party which did so openly and wisely would discover a new and living interest in the electroate, for then politics would be dealing once more with matters about which everyone wants to know and which deeply affect everyone's life.

The Government should take up birth control. It touches on the one side the liberties of women and on the other side the duty of the state to concern itself with the size of its population just as much as with the size of its army or the amount of the budget. With the use of one of the famed floating docks surrendered by Germany to Britain after the War, the 17th destroyer scuttled at Scapa Flow in June, 1919, by the Germans, was last week raised.

Through the good offices of the Government, a textile strike, three weeks old, was ended. Under the terms of the agreement, the workers went back to the mills at the old scale of wages, pending an inquiry which is to recommend a new wage agreement. The strike was caused by the mill owners' announcement of an 8% reduction in wage.

The Stepney Borough Council (London) decided that certain Limehouse slums must go. The Condemnation Commissioner went to have a look at the squalor-stricken old houses, where finnan haddie has been smoked for the past 150 years. He was met with a storm of opposition. Nobody wanted nice, new, sanitary homes, not even the large families sleeping six and more in a bedroom. "How would our homer pigeons find their way back?" they asked. "Could fish be cured on stone landings ?" "Could wireless aerials be strung across asphalt courtyards?" Limehouse now has its blues.

Shapurji Saklatvala, M.P., sole Communist member, announced his intention of being present at this year's Inter-parliamentary Union Conference, to be held in Washington next month. He was asked if he thought the U. S. authorities would let it stand. After saying that he had two brothers who are U. S. "subjects," and that he will be paying them his first visit in 15 years, he added: "I don't for a moment expect the United States Government will be so childish as to interfere."

*The King and Queen often leave a performance before it is over in order to avoid being caught in an exit crowd or to avoid causing inconvenience to the audience by requiring them to wait until they have departed.