Foreign News Notes, Nov. 22, 1926

Occupants of a new block of municipal flats erected by the London County Council discovered upon moving in last week, that they can rent for sixpence a week (12c) a “garage” large enough to house the most portly “pram” (peram-bulator).

Britons viewed with disquiet, last week, the announcement that 43,029 more British workers were unemployed than the 1,516,171 who were jobless during the week previous. (Coal or other strikers are not included in these figures.) Southern Irishmen dwell under a government picturesquely and adroitly named The Irish Free State. They are vexed because it “is not Irish, is not free and is not a state.”* They vent their spleen by constantly bedeviling the British Government. Last week the British mint refused to quote prices for minting a new series of Irish Free State coins from which the Irish designers had omitted the head of the King Emperor George V. which appears on all British and Dominion currency. The British mint authorities, suave, intimated that it might be difficult to circulate the coins among Empire citizens accustomed to accepting only the sovereign’s face at face value. Irish Free State Finance Minister Ernest Blythe, brusque, intimated that he might offer the U. S. mint the job of striking 100% Irish coins. Arlington Street is one of the shortest and most august in London’s West End. Every house on the street is the property of a peer or peeress. Last week Aimée Geraldine, Baroness Michelham, created a sensation by announcing that her residence at 20 Arlington Street is for sale. . . . Should some oleagenous nouveau riche purchase historic “Number 20” he will have as neighbors: Violet Manners, Duchess of Rutland (dilettante portrait painter) ; Ivor Churchill Guest, Viscount and Baron Wimborne (onetime [1915-18] Lord Lieutenant of Ireland); Lawrence Dundas, Marquess of Zetland, Baron Dundas (onetime [1889-92] Viceroy of Ireland); Alexander Henderson, Baron Faringdon (Chairman, Great Central Railway); Charles Alfred Worsley Anderson Pelham, Earl of Yarborough, Baron Worsley (owner of many a Rembrandt and Reynolds); James Edward Hubert Gascoyne Cecil, Marquess of Salisbury (conscientious high churchman). The King-Emperor George V. resumed a gracious custom inaugurated by his graceless predecessor George III. The custom consists in granting to some faithful servant of the Crown a life lease on White Lodge, the royal estate at Richmond Park. The faithful and sometimes quixotic public servant rewarded was Viscount Lee of Fareham, who had given his own estate, Chequers, to be used as a summer residence for British premiers.

* It is a part of the British Empire having neither more nor less than Dominion status.