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Yarmouth's Shells. Savoy Hotel, U.S A. Yet Another Appeal.
By the Extractor.
War Items.
Lord Guernsey, a captain in the Irish Guards and a director of Commercial Car Hirers, Ltd., has been shot through the head at Soissons.
Three directors of Commercial Car Hirers, Ltd. are on active service and five directors of Mann, Egerton and Co., Ltd., of Norwich and London.
Yarmouth is naturally still excited over the German incursion into their waters. It is said up there that German shells would have reached the town but the buoys had been recently altered and the marksmen were misled. The enemy knew the exact channel by which to retire, and rumour has it that local fishermen have sold information. A searching inquiry is in progress, and one of our ship's officers will have to explain some apparent slackness.
The Disappearance of the Horse.
Sometimes I wonder if users and manufacturers realize what a gigantic demand there is going to be for commercial vehicles and their concomitants when the war is over, or even before. I have formed the opinion that the war has helped on the businessvehicle movement as much as ten years. The horse, except for hunting, and for mighty endeavours to convey a passenger in a coloured jacket first past a particular post, has finished. What do we hear of the horse in connection with the War ? Nothing ! We do not associate the horse with the fighting as we did in former battles. It is the likelihood of the enemy's petrol running short that excites us. It is petrol, petrol everywhere, and the battle against the use of horses is practically over. When normal business resumes then, and the lessons of the War are before us, the horse users will plump for petrol to a man. We must be ready to meet this demand. Newcomers will be found in the commercial-vehicle industry: there are signs already of an American invasion. It is, intfaet, here ; the invasion. Savoy Hotel is full of Americans ready to sell trucks and vowing to stay here two years if need be. British makers must retain their paramountcy, and this leads me to introduce a subject which I seldom touch upon in these columns, although it looms very large in the make-up of a journal such as this, in which, as many people aver, the publicity
c20 announcements teem with interest. Those with goods to sell are mainly, at the moment, so overwhelmed with work that advertising would appear to be superfluous, but those who look well ahead realize that the goodwill of past advertising must be maintained against the period when orders will have again to be sought. Otherwise the buying public will have forgotten and the established concern will only start on the same mark, to use a sporting expression, as the newcomer, "which," as a gentleman named Euclid once remarked, " is absurd."
"The Benevolent."
It may be remembered that last year many of us devoted a day to collecting on behalf of the Motor Trade Benevolent Fund with considerable success. This year the usual banquet at which many donations were secured has gone by the board, but an appeal for donations and fresh subscribers has been made spec-Ally by Mr. H. Smith, of the Rover Motor Co., Ltd., from which I give an extract at the foot of this paragraph. Cheques may be sent to the Hon. Sec., of the Fund, Mr. A. J. Wilson, Theobald's Road, E.C.
" Never in the history of our Fund did it stand so much in need of your wholehearted and generous support as it does at present. The amount of distress caused by unemployment increases every day ; the Executive Committee have taken adequate steps to cope with it, but in the battle against poverty and want, more perhaps than in any other sort of warfare, it, is the long purse that counts, and I feel that I can confidently call on all our supporters to strengthen the hands of our honorary workers by supplying them liberally with funds for distribution among those of our brothers who are in want.
"Apart from this overshadowing menace of war,. the ordinary, unobtrusive., every-day benevolence of the Fund has gone on uninterruptedly since our last: banquet ; I trust, therefore, that all those who have the interests of our allied trades at heart, will generously continue to support to the best of their ability the noble work performed by the Fund. I am aware that there are many calls on one's generosity just now, but this particular appeal on behalf of our less fortunate fellow-workers is one which I trust will not be made in vain."