SYRIAN ORPHANAGE IN JERUSALEM

To The Editor Of The Statesman

SIR, – In continuation of Mr. M.E. Forbes’s letter of appeal from Jerusalem for toys for the Armenian and Syrian orphans, will you kindly allow me a little space to appeal to the Armenian mothers and children of Calcutta, on behalf of these orphans. As it is customary, in a few days happy mothers in this city will be buying toys for their children for the coming Christmas. I appeal to them to think also of those who have no mothers, and no home, and, when buying toys for their dear ones, to purchase one in addition for the homeless orphans far away. Let them remember that those, now motherless, had their loving mothers once and were as happy in their homes as their children will be on Christmas morning. I ask the children to remember their little brothers and sisters, and to send them all their last year’s toys which are now old for them, yet new and good enough and the source of joy to the poor orphans.

JULFA BOY.

Calcutta.

MODEL SUBURBAN VILLAGES

To The Editor Of The Statesman

SIR, – I was an inhabitant of Bhowanipore for over twenty years, and although I now live in a suburban village I am sufficiently in touch with the conditions of the locality to be in a position to say, with confidence, that house rent in Bhowanipore has advanced by more than 100 per cent during the last eight or ten years. A similar – perhaps a larger – increase has, I understand, taken place in the northern quarter of the town. There may be a combination of causes at work and they will no doubt be fully investigated by the committee which has just been appointed by Government. But the fact cannot be denied by anyone, except the landlords, that Calcutta has become a very expensive place for persons of moderate means to live in; in many cases house rent absorbs between one-fourth to one-third of the income; and cases are not rare in which persons have to spend one-half of their income in rent.

S.C. ROY.

Naihati.

A TAXI-CAB NUISANCE IN CHOWRINGHEE

To The Editor Of The Statesman

SIR, – I draw the attention of the police and any other Calcutta authority who may be concerned, to the scandalous misuse made of their privileges by the motor taxi-cabs which are stationed in front of the Grand Hotel during the early hours of the morning? Nightly, between the hours of midnight and 2 A.M., sleep for some two hundred residents of the premier hotel of the East is made impossible by the chauffeurs, mostly Sikhs, of some six or eight taxis whose practice it is, apparently, to await the departure of some half a dozen strayed revellers who leave the premises during the small hours of the morning. The appearance on the pavement of one of these belated tipplers is the signal for all the taxis on the rank to start up their engines and commence in unison the raucous hooting of their horns. Apparently all that is at stake is a few fares of a few annas apiece.

LONG SUFFERER