All the big dinners are now as refined and as
elevating and the dinner speeches as long and as informal as
they are in New York or Toronto. The other night at a dinner
at the White Friars Club I heard Sir Owen Seaman speaking,
not in that light futile way that he used to have, but quite
differently. He talked for over an hour and a half on the
State ownership of the Chinese Railway System, and I almost
fancied myself back in Boston.
And the working class too. It is just wonderful how
prohibition has increased their efficiency. In the old days
they used to drop their work the moment the hour struck. Now
they simply refuse to do so. I noticed yesterday a foreman
in charge of a building operation vainly trying to call the
bricklayers down. "Come, come, gentlemen," he shouted, "I
must insist on your stopping for the night." But they just
went on laying bricks faster than ever.
Of course, as yet there are a few slight difficulties and
deficiencies, just as there are with us in America. We have
had the same trouble with wood-alcohol (they call it
methylated spirit here), with the same deplorable results.
On some days the list of deaths is very serious, and in some
cases we are losing men we can hardly spare. A great many of
our leading actors--in fact, most of them--are dead.
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