17 AUGUST 1934, Page 6

Mr. Hore-Belisha is likely to acquire new fame, or a

new kind of fame, over his controversy with the Thames Conservancy. On the face of it the connexion between the Ministry of Transport and what the daily papers decide with one accord to call (in their headlines) Bare Backs is not immediately obvious. But the Thames is a waterway on which transport, both of persons and of property, is carried on, and it falls to the Minister of Transport to approve—or, as in this case, disapprove— regulations tending to limit freedom of transport on the river. So that if the Conservancy objects to the trans- port through its locks of ladies with bare backs and gentlemen with bare chests (for bathing-costumes in boats are now habitual) Mr. Hore-Belisha is brought at once into the picture. On the whole I agree with him. A bare chest may be unlovely, but so are many faces I know, and no one suggests that they ought to be covered up. And to normal-minded people neither bare backs nor bare chests are suggestive or indecent. Whether it is worth while overruling the Conservancy on such a point is another matter.