A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

MRS. HELENA NORMANTON, who is a K.C., is scathing about the shortcomings of the women M.P.s. " A great disappointment. They come and they go, but what do they do ? " and so on ; Lady Astor deeply impressed (and depressed) by the degeneration since her day, corroborates. There is something in it, no doubt ; the women Members as a whole are not a particularly distinguished lot. But neither is an equal number of male M.P.s, taken at random, likely to be. And several women are well above the average. No one, for example, has ever doubted Dr. Edith Summerskill's ability ; she has demonstrated it too decisively as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food. Lady Megan Lloyd George never fails to secure the attention of the House and hold it to the end, partly because she is an extremely good speaker, and partly because she sticks to subjects on which she speaks with authority, like housing and Welsh affairs. Mrs. Castle is a little limited in freedom by being Parliamentary Private Secretary to the President of the Board of Trade, but the fact that she held that post throughout the last Parliament, and still more the fact that she was sent as Deputy- Delegate to the United Nations Assembly, is sufficient testimony to her ability. The names of Miss Herbison, Lady Tweedsmuir and Mrs. Manning all suggest themselves. No doubt Mrs. Normanton is badly needed in the House, but she would not find all her women colleagues contemptibly inferior if she got there.

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I showed a well-known advertisement-manager a full-page advertisement from a current periodical and asked him if he would have accepted it. I was glad to find he said No. The announcement runs in part :_

THE BOOK THEY TRIED TO STOP !

Although efforts were made to stop the sale of GERALD BYRNE'S

- biography of the fantastic John George HAIGH THE ACID BATH KILLER . ..

That is one book. Here is another:

THIS book by Haigh's last visitor in the condemned cell REVEALS ALL

Both advertisements are from The Boojcseller—of all papers

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The best comment on the final failure of Miss Arnot Robertson's appeal in her libel action against Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer is the Attorney-General's sound advice to resolve practically never to bring libel actions at all. The action of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in refusing Miss Robertson invitation to their films because they disliked her criticisms of them, and writing to the B.B.C. (whom she was then representing) to that effect, is to be condemned unreservedly. It is obviously an attempt to restrict freedom of criticism, such as theatres have sometimes attempted and usually repented of. But public opinion in such cases is always on the side of the critic, who will not secure more sympathy through bringing an action. The legal position, after the confirmation by the highest court in the land of the action of the Court of Appeal

in reversing the decision of the court of first instance, cannot be questioned. Miss Robertson has unfortunately suffered heavy financial loss through her determination to carry through to the end an action which the conceived to be in the public interest, and there will be much sympathy with her on that ground. Her reputa- tion as a critic is, of course, in no way prejudiced. Neither was it In the first instance by the M.G.M. letter. The public is quite capable of forming its own judgement in such a case. • * * *

Happening to be in Hove last week, I intended (but forgot) to ask my host whether he knew George Sampson, who lived there. The next day I saw in The Times that George Sampson had died. Probably not many readers of this column knew him personally. His health in recent years had been bad ; he had long periods of agonising sleeplessness ; and the Reform Club, which he used to frequent so regularly, saw little of him. He was a remarkable man, much more remarkable than was generally recognised, though any- one familiar with his almost indispensable Concise History of English Literature, will realise that no ordinary man could have produced that. Sampson spent his life, so far as formal occupation was concerned, as an elementary schoolmaster and then school inspector, but it is by his unofficial literary activities that he will be remembered. His English for the English, a plea for rational and humane teaching, particularly of the English language, is packed with sound sense and sardonic epigram ; but in my own view the best thing he ever produced was a lecture (to the British Academy) on the hymns of thb eighteenth century, under the title The Century of Divine Songs. It is reprinted in his volume, Seven Essays.

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Why the British Peace Committee should call itself British I don't know. No doubt such bodies can choose what names they will, but I wonder whether British interests are the first interests con- sidered by such members of its committee as Mr. Leslie Solley and Mr. Lester Hutchinson and Mr. Platts-Mills (all expelled from the Labour Party), Professor Bernal, Professor J. B. S. Haldane, the Dean of Canterbury and others. However that may be—and It may in fact be " Britain First " for all these gentlemen (and for the Treasurer, Mr. D. N. Pritf, expelled from the Labour Party)—what interests me is the announcement that the World Peace Committee has instituted three prizes of £5,000 each for " the best published works (books, films, &c.) which most effectively forward the cause of peace among the people of the world." Money clearly is not tight in these circles, whatever it may be elsewhere. But it would be interesting to know what the Dean of Canterbury's criteria in this field are as compared with, for example, the Archbishop's.

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A Cabinet Minister—I leave his identity to be divined—has a story which he has told repeatedly with great success in Lancashire.• When he tried it on an audience of five hundred women in London precisely two of them laughed. The Minister was visiting a Lan- cashire textile factory and discussing with a tattler (who, I gather, is a species of foreman) the workers and their output. " Which are the better," he asked, " the men or the women ?" " The women," he was told with decision. " And among the women which—the young, lively ones or the old hands ? " " The Wiling pieces every

time," came the completely serious answer. JANUS.