Bedfordshire Archives Service Catalogue
  • Reference
    Z439/91
  • Title
    Letter from William Panton from 2/5 Lansdowne Road.
  • Date free text
    March and April 1924
  • Production date
    From: 1924 To: 1924
  • Scope and Content
    Wired home last week that Colin must proceed to Glenalmond or similar Scots boarding school immediately . . . . . . I feel he has never had to pull his weight in Herne Bay. . . . . . .Ian will go to King’s, Canterbury, of which I know nothing, but is of good report. Is off to the coalfields for 48 hours, where a bad cholera epidemic has broken out due to excessive heat and dearth of water. “For Easter I’m going up to the sugar plantations and factory. I’ve been very successful in this venture”. Wild life. He is looking forward to Christmas, his first at home for 23 years. Regards to Miss Reid. “That is a cardinal error our new Government have committed in discarding Singapore as a naval base. Why tis one in the first three component links which bind the Empire. How my suave cunning Jap will be rubbing his hands and scheming already, while honest inscrutable John Chinaman will sit nodding murmuring “China will always be China”. That is a great Nation, Joan. They will rule the world one day, but Japan will never be more than a disturber of the peace. Of course they have many splendid points in their character, and I’m not sure are today what Britain was in about the 15th century. They are good sailors, hardy and hardworking, also like the British extremely arrogant, but unlike Britain, polite always, with a deep low cunning”. Gratitude is unknown to them. “I look for a young virile nation (it can only be Canada) to come forward and put and put a brake on all this folly and needless expenditure . . . There are gangs of Americans floating about the East just now, tourists, old, middle aged, a few young, spoiling years of hard economic working in a few months through sheer ignorance and filthy lucre. I feel I would not carry them on a ship as ballast, straw hats, bandanna belts and all. Things want to be equalised a great deal . . . .In fact I would not be surprised if there was another war . . . .
  • Level of description
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