No. 60, Saviors, Sharks

No. 60, Saviors, Sharks

Several of His Majesty's ministers and a sprinkling of potent financiers had gathered in David Lloyd George's library, for what reason none of them knew. Drawing out his watch, stepping over to the tall casement window, the spry Welshman dramatically flung the window wide. "I am going to count three," said he with his eye on the second hand. "After the third count listen, listen for all you're worth!" One, two, three--straining ears caught from far away, from a battlefield on the other side of the English channel, a faint sound pitched awesomely deep. "That, gentlemen," said the Prime Minister, "was Hill No. 60. Within a few minutes I think we shall have it." Captured twice by Germans, thrice by Britons, famed Hill No. 60, scene of the bitterest fighting in the Ypres Salient, was sapped and mined before the last successful British attack, blown up on April 17, 1915 by one of the most titanic explosions ever loosed by man in war. Last week British Brewer John J. Calder, who bought Hill No. 60 in 1920 for patriotic reasons, announced that he had finally perfected arrangements whereby the Imperial War Graves Commission will guard and protect it forever as a national monument. Sadly Donor Calder admitted that in the intervening years tourists have snitched from Hill No. 60 nearly everything snitchable. Meanwhile what was David Lloyd George doing last week? Age cannot sap his energy nor custom stem the torrent of his words and plans. In London he went to his barber, emerged in a new and startling nakedness shingled & shorn of the traditional Lloyd Georgian mop. Spruce as ever he addressed a Liberal rally at Stowmarket--nothing special, just all in the year's work. It so happened that British unemployment came up another 120,000 this month to 2,139,000, but any number over 1,000,000 would have served as well. "There has been nothing comparable to the present position since the darkest hours of the War!" cried Mr. Lloyd George. "Unemployment is growing, not by battalions but by divisions, week by week, and I cannot see the end of it. We are not passing through but passing into a crisis!" This was old stuff, but of the same quality that won 5,000,000 Liberal votes at the last election. What was new came next. Earlier in the week, Sir William Philip Morris, famed small-motor-car tycoon, had drummed up another committee of "foremost British industrialists," including Jewish Baron Melchett to try again to save the Empire from "economic ruin" and its "muddling politicians." Poking fun at the "Industrialists," Politician Lloyd George remarked that "Great Britain is the most overindustrialized country in the world. Only 7% of our people are on the soil! At present the industries of the country are a leaning tower. Statesmanship must give them a broader base upon the soil!" Winding up his speech with a twit at the higher tariff schemes with which so many British statesmen are now toying, both in England and overseas (see Canada), stanch free-trader Lloyd George concluded wittily: "A drowning man should not clutch at straws--or at sharks! No doubt many capitalists would make larger profits out of the new system of tariffs, but we have got to think of the 45,000,000 people who have got to live. Therefore, look out for sharks! I could name a few of them."

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