A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK A S a bicyclist, I am disappointed by
the great number of private cars still left in the London streets ; they stood all about the parks on Sunday, and in rows outside the shops on Monday and Tuesday. Many, no doubt, are using up their June basic ration in preference to getting their tax refunded ; what proportion of them are doing this, August will show. We shall know then how many private cars have been given petrol for getting about London, a city not devoid of "alternative means of transport," which was alleged to be the condition for such grants.
Another car question: what does the label "Priority " mean, and what advantages does it confer? Having long wondered about this, I lately asked a policeman (a) what are the qualifications for using it? (b) what does it entitle those who use it to do? He replied that it meant (a) that they claimed, rightly or wrongly, to be ministers of the Crown, judges, or other high-up officials, and (b) that they hoped the police would look the other way when they did what they shouldn't in the streets. What happened to thero, I enquired, when their claim was seen through, and .did the police look the other way in the street? The officer replied to both ques- tions, " Ah." And added, " There's many that have been sorry they ever took up with Priorority. But there's no law to stop you having it on your bicycle." This seems a good suggestion. As to that, there is no law to stop pedestrians having it, either ; it would presumably entitle them to go to the head of cinema, bus and shop queues, and perhaps to cause obstructions in the street.
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Is there anything to be said for the smug, pompous and tedious clichés which most of our public speakers drop about like worn coins whenever they speak? There are some phrases whose reitera- tion becomes nauseating : among them are " The freedom-loving nations," " the common people of Britain " (sometimes varied by " the common people everywhere"), " retribution," and . . . but I cannot reiterate them here ; for a practically complete list, see Mr. Ernest Bevin's last wireless speech. One of their charac- teristics is that they cannot, it appears, be uttered except in a smug voice. Who enjoys them? The speaker (whose private conversa- tion may in many cases be sardonically agreeable), or what section of his hearers? I wish a concerted effort -could be made to lift public speaking out of the dreary bog of platitude and sentimentality in which much of it languishes, to something nearer the level of intelligent conversation. I cannot think there is a large public for solemn bunk ; though, if there is really one for crooners and cinema organs, one must believe certain sections capable de tout. If any- thing can make the horrors of war more shocking than they must be, it is this heavily noble tone.
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Here are a few more sayings that struck me as odd. (So many sayings do.) Dr. Joad, in a Brains Trust session, said that many people who were great readers for pleasure after the age of twenty had not read for pleasure before they were fourteen. Can this be true? I should have guessed, on the other hand, that those who do not read for pleasure in childhood (given access to books) will never do so. Most children are voracious readers, when they can get hold of suitable, or even unsuitable, books ; from eight to four- teen is, for many, the most reading age of their lives. Possibly girls read more than boys, on the whole. Another educationist, speaking about the same time, said tha children leaving school at fourteen have usually learnt no more except about their particular job, by the time they are forty. A odd picture of those twenty-six assimilative years. The remed suggested was that the school-leaving age should be raised to fifte But would this one year add much. to the store of knowledge a forty. If school knowledge is really to last people through life they had better stoke it in till at least seventeen.
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Some of the utterances of our statesmen seem designed rathe to balance one another than to convey a definite meaning or inters tion. A clause in the Anglo-Russian Treaty stated that no inter ference with the internal affairs of other countries was contem plated. On the other hand, we are often told, with the utmost firm ness, that we must utterly destroy the Nazi regime in Germany Which is it to be? Make up your minds, statesmen. The secon seems the best guess.
The Soviet celebration at Earl's Court the other day, to corn memorate Hitler's attack on a friendly Russia a year ago, was great success, though the speeches took so long that many peopl. could not stay for the pageant and ballet which they had corn• (mainly) to see. One reason why the speeches took so long wa that the speakers kept mentioning the second front, and wheneve these magic words were uttered the audience held up the proceed ings by prolonged cheering. It is a useful tip for those who wan a minute or two in which to think what to say next, but retarding. Sir Stafford Cripps spoke, as usual, admirably to the point. The Bishop of Chelmsford said that we were " fighting for political and religious liberty, for the right to think and speak and write as we like." Not, perhaps, precisely the most tactful moment for this cri de coeur of a British democrat, and His Excellency the Scvie Ambassador looked a little bored at the suggestion of such a non sensical bourgeois motive for battle. Speak for yourselves one could imagine that he was thinking ; and by all means fight for political and religious liberty if you like such toys ; my countrymen are fighting to push those damned Germans out of Russia.
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We are being told again, as we were told in the last war, that our enemies (and in particular the Italians) " don't like cold steel." Does anyone like steel, either cold or hot, when it is plunged into them without (or even with) anaesthetics? This kind of exultant taunt seems to add an. edge of 'barbarity to the accounts of the assaults of painful weapons of war on agonised human flesh and blood. The one thing that lifts such assaults out of the realm of sheer Grand Guignol horror is the magnificent courage shown, as a rule, by the human spirit in facing them. To point out that this or that section of unfortunate combatants in this awful arena " don't like it" seems painfully cruel and superfluous. War cannot be humanised or civil- ised (without thereby becoming so ineffective that it would not be worth waging) ; it can, however, be further brutalised, and is always sentimentalised. There is a horrid intoxication into which nations a: war may sink ; happy contemplation of the agony and terror of their enemies is one of its less agreeable symptoms. There are some things which perhaps only those engaged in the actual fighting
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