A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK
THE five days between September 3rd, when Italy definitely surrendered, and September 8th, when the news was made known for the world, were an anxious period for the relatively few Allied soldiers and statesmen who had the momentous secret in their keeping. It was imperative, if possible, to keep the news from the Germans while the Allies made their new dispositions with, if not Italian connivance, at least the certainty that there would no Italian opposition. It was necessary to invade Italy, for Badoglio could hardly surrender his country before an Allied soldier had set fcot on its mainland. Actually the surrender and the invasion took place on the same day. Then fighting had to go on with sufficient vigour to avoid arousing German suspicions ; but I fancy the main concern of the Allied Air Forces in Calabria (Naples is another story, for other reasons) in these last days has been to harm as few Italians as possible. It seems hardly credible that the C-nmaris should not have realised what was happening ; but it looks as though that really was the case, largely no doubt because so many rumours were rife that there was no more reason for believin 3 the only true one than the many false. The actual announcement on Wednesday only came after various alarms and excursions. Mr. Eden imparted the news that afternoon to M. Ma sky and Dr. Wellington Koo, as representing the major Allied Powers, and then to the representatives of the other Allied nations, among whom it is a peculiar satisfaction to mention specially the Ethiopian Minister Belata Ayela Gabri. The release to the Press, fixed for 5.3o, was jumped by the New York Radio, which had sent out the news before five. Anxiety about a last-moment hitch prevailed up to the zero hour, and it was not till the B.B.C. monitoring service reported that they were listening to General Eisenhower giving the news himself from Algiers that it was certain that everything had gone well.
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The Prime Minister in his Harvard address has put Basic English full on the map. Nothing certainly in that movement's thirty-year career has given it such a stimulus as the announcement that a Committee of Ministers had been appointed to study its possibilities, and the fact of its being recommended by the Prime Minister himself not only to his own country but to the United States as the future medium of world-communication. That so great a master of style as the Prime Minister should have sponsored an improvisation which confines itself to some 85o basic words, thus sacrificing all hope of flexibility and refinement of expression (imagine one of Mr. Church Ill's own sentences—e.g., " Even elderly Parliamentarians like myself are forced to acquire a high degree of mobility "—in Basic English), may at first sight seem surprising, but actually. the weak- ness of Basic English may turn out in this connexion to be its strength. An attempt to impose the English language in its normal plenitude on the world might well provoke quite intelligible opposi- tion. But elementary English, quite undisguisedly designed for strictly practical purpoies of inter-communication on the basic affairs of daily life, is another matter. Basic English has suffered a little (here I know I express a controversial view) through the " translation " of the New Testament into it, for the contrast between language hallowed by long familiarity and religious associations, and, a strange paraphrase which has often to be a periphrassis necessarily tells against it. All the same, nearly ninety thousand copies of the B ts'c New Testament have been sold since it first appeared in 1941. The founder of Basic English, Mr. C. K. Ogden, must be a happy man. The broadcast talk given last Friday by Learie Constantine, the West Indian cricketer, will not soon fade from the memory of any- one who heard it. Whether it fell by chance when it did, or whether the B.B.C. is to be congratulated on this notable sequel to the request made to Mr. Constantine to leave a London hotel on account of his colour, I do not know. (The hotel, the Imperial in Russell Square, deserves mention ; in rase the Office of Works is taking over any more of such buildings for public purposes, I should like to draw attention to the convenience of situation and range of ameni- ties which this hostelry enjoys.) In any case, the talk was one of the most impressive and effective ever from Broadcasting House. The first four words, " My grandparents were slaves," by their sim- plicity and poignancy riveted attention from the outset, and the dignity with which, in a rich musical voice, the speaker told, dis- passionately, without a word of bitterness, of the treatment he and his family had received in different places in England in a period of years on account of their colour was calculated to evoke shame and sympathy in equal volume. I doubt if Mr. Constantine himself realises what his talk will have done for his people. It is something to have made several millions of listeners resolve that their story shall be different in the future.
* * * * The freedom of the Press has the same importance, and must be defended as resolutely, whether the attack comes from a Government or a large advertiser or the Trades Union Congress. So outrageous, indeed, is the pretension put forward by the latter body that it can only be assumed that a resolution carried apparently without dis- cussion was also carried without a moment's thought. That jour- nalists should organise is no doubt desirable ; whether, having organised, they should affiliate with the Trades Union Congress—as one of their principal bodies, the National Union of Journalists, has done—is more arguable. That this particular body, having thus affiliated, should move and carry a resolution that at meetings of the T.U.C. and affiliated bodies only journalists belonging to its own ranks should be admitted—to the exclusion of those belonging to the important Institute of Journalists or to no professional organi- sation at all—is .quite intolerable. The attempt represents pure Fascism. It is a bitter irony that such a blow at journalistic freedom should be struck in the name of the working journalists in whom freedom should find its most impassioned defenders.
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The Times, enterprising journal that it is, very rightly concerns itself with the latest news. On Wednesday, discussing the average man, it observed regarding his normal loquacity that " the latest news is that he speaks for a cool matter of 216,000 words a day." This has impressed me very much—and plunged me into perplexing cal- culations. A good speaking speed is 120 words a minute. On that basis my arithmetic (which I always distrust) leads me to conclude that to reach 216,000 words a day this average human being must be talking—ceaselessly ; no meals, no breathing-space—for 3o hours out of every 24. It sounds a more than average achievement. Cole- ridge could no doubt have done it—the American captain who took him away from Italy in i8o6 said he had experienced nothing like it since he last saw Niagara—but the average man? I question it.
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A week or two ago I spoke of the difficulties that had been placed in the way of Dr. Benes's projected visit to Moscow. I am glad to learn that these have now largely been dispelled and that the visit will take place shortly. Of its opportuneness there can be
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