11 FEBRUARY 1944, Page 4

A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK

IN reprinting a letter cabled to The Times from Moscow by the commanders of the Lithuanian and Estonian Divisions in the Red Army The Daily Worker describes the document as "remarkable." It is. It purports to give the facts about the union of the three B3Itic Republics with Soviet Russia in 1940, and declares that the Baltic peoples will never abandon "the path they have freely selected." I have begn refreshing my memory regarding this freedom of selection, by reference to that objective record of con- temporary history, The Annual Register, checked by other similar publications. In 1939 Russia demanded from each of the three republ cs, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, naval and other bases, and goi them. In May each republic was required by Moscow to set up a government more favourable to Moscow. All three complied, establishing Socialist administrations, which at once legalised the Communist parties and created workers' soviets and collective farms. In July a general election was held in each State. Only candidates of one party, the newly-formed Working People's Union, were put forward ; voting was compulsory and it was not secret, every elector's vote being stamped on his passport. In such circum- stances the Working People's Union secured over 90 per cent, of the possible votes. The new Parliaments, thus elected, voted at their first meetings a week later for incorporation in the Soviet Union. I am not criticising this procedure. Russia had her own security to think of. And I take it for granted that the Baltic States will continue to be incorporated in the Soviet Union. But inaccurate history is a treacherous basis for arguments and conclusions, so it is as well to recall the facts about the declaration of the Baltic States for the Soviet Union.

The controversy between Mr. H. G. Wells and Professor Brogan in the Sunday Express has certain points of interest. Mr. Wells, apropos, apparently of nothing, launched—I will not say a violent, but a petulant—attack on that striking book, Leopold Schwarzschild's World in Trance, which he described as "superficially intelligent and massively stupid," and on a preface to the book by Professor Brogan. Why Professor Brogan has irritated Mr. Wells so much is hard to say, nor does the column or so of denigration by a Wells who wields a strangely spluttering pen compared with the author of Mankind in the Making and Ann Veronica and Mr. Britling Sees It Through, provide any answer to that question. But it was not really prudent to draw Professor Brogan into the lists. One sentence in his rejoinder goes deep through the joints of Mr. Wells's armour: "It is an error to assume that if you are not being listened to enough the first time it is necessarily wise to scream." Mr. Wells, I am afraid, is suffering from the conviction that he is not being listened to enough. As for World in Trance, some of the best judges both of literature and of politics in this country have declared themselves profoundly impressed by it. They may all be wrong and Mr. Wells right, but I think it unlikely.

* * I doubt whether the average citizen realises quite how zealous the Government is to increase his knowledge about its manifold activities. For that purpose it employs—that is to say its various administrative departments do—Public Relations Officers to tell the public, mainly through the Press. This is an admirable departure when pursued with moderation. How far moderation is being observed the average citizen can decide for himself on the basis of a reply to a question in Parliament last week. Unfortunately, the statistician who drafted the reply omitted to add up the items, and the calculation is beyond my limited capacity. It is a pity, for the total would be impressive. The Admiralty has a Public Relations Staff of 115, the War Office of 530, the Air Ministry of 371 ; but in the two latter cases a lot of people are for some reason included who are not doing what normally ranks as Public Relations work at all. The only other department to reach three figures is the Ministry of Supply, with 136, but the National Savings Committee comes near it with 98. The other end of the scale is interesting. The Treasury runs to one, and he, I fancy, is not concerned with ordinary Treasury business as such. Inland Revenue, with two, practises almost equal reticence, and so, surprisingly, does the Ministry of Pensions, also with a mere brace. Here is the one case where I should have thought an increase might be justified. Could not the Minister of Supply spare Sir Walter Womersley, say, a pair of brace—or is it braces?

The death of Raymond Clapper in an aeroplane accident in the Pacific has deprived American journalism and American radio of one of its most remarkable servants. Servants, not ornaments. For first among Clapper's qualities was the complete absence in him of the prima donna temperament. He did not become a great national figure by any short cut, by any cultivation of personality. by any parade of discretion or of indiscretion. He rose steadily because he was a reporter, quick, acute, accurate and honest. More and more people came to read him, not because they agreed with what he said all the time or even most of the time, but because there must be something in it if Clapper saw it that way. In his syndicated column and on the air he spent a lot of time making-up and changing his own mind. He was a most genuinely modest man and under-estimated the value of his own untutored judgement. But he was right in avoiding the snap verdicts affected by many of his colleagues, for in his career as an informer and maker of American opinion he did nothing more useful than teach by example that this is not a simple world to be set right by simple formulas— and that if you are on the side of the angels, as Clapper most certainly was, there is all the more reason for seeing what the othei side have in the way of ideas, prejudices, resources.

Cornwall, to my great personal regret, is as good as obliterated It is become as Latvia, it is even as Estonia. The author of Tudor Cornwall and A Cornish Childhood has cast it off for ever (with a slight loophole for subsequent recantation). Invited recently tc give an address before the Youth Club at St. Austell, where he was born and brought up, Mr. A. L. Rowse has thus replied: " WhenI gave up being a political candidate in Cornwall, I made up my mind not to waste my time speaking to people in Cornwall who failed to take their opportunity in the past to years. It is just as well that that should be generally known—that I have a general principle against speaking in Cornwall (though I may occasional], make an exception) since it will save me a good deal of trouble in replying to people. I am sorry for you—since it is not the fault of you young men. I should have quite liked to have come and spoken to you. But as things are I only do that kind of thing outside Cornwall nowadays. You may communicate that to the Press."

So that—with great finality—is that.

Thebes did his green, unknowing youth engage

He stamps upon it in his riper age. lotus.