A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
THE return of Sir Samuel Hoare to the Cabinet sooner or later—preferably sooner rather than later—was a foregone conclusion, but it cannot reasonably bear the construction put on it by a good many commentators at home and abroad. Sir Samuel resigned because of a faux pas committed when he was a sick and worn-out man, and converted from a mistake into a disaster by a leakage for which he bore no responsibility. He has come back now to an administrative office which gives him no more say than any other Cabinet Minister in the formulation of foreign policy, and there are two good reasons for his return. One is his prominence in the Conservative Party and his unwavering loyalty to Mr, Baldwin ; the other the soundness of his record at the Air Ministry, and still more at the India Office. There is not the smallest ground • for assuming that his recall Is the result of a change of Government policy on sanc- tions, though no doubt the. First • Lord will be found among the anti-sanctionists. • It may be a slight dis- comfort to Mr. Eden to have three former Foreign Ministers among his Cabinet colleagues, but none of them would be more scrupulously resolute to avoid embar- rassing him than his immediate predecessor.
No two people could have been more dissimilar than Dame Henrietta Barnett and the " little pale clergyman " whom she married, but no union could have been happier or - richer in results for humanity. -Dame Henrietta's energy was immense. Her personality was vigorous to the point of being arbitrary, as residents in the Hampstead Garden Suburb, which together with Toynbee Hall and the Children's Country Holiday Fund form three great memorials to her activity, sometimes realised. She 'was on numberless committees in her time, and generally she was the committee. For months before her death on Wednesday she had been confined to her bed, but she had her telephone at her side and it was constantly in action. She kept in touch through it with her friends and told them she was " old and very tired." Rest has never been better deserved. She wrote an admirable life of her husband, in which her own irrepress- ible personality figured largely. The late Lord Gladstone, to whom she gave a copy. once observed to me benevolently that he thought it ought to have been called not " The Life of Canon Barnett " but " The Wife of Canon Barnett."
* * * The great railways of this country receive deserved eulogies for their handling of long-distance traffic, but very different language is called for when their treatment of the millions of suburban workers 'whom they carry to and from work is in question. One evening this week 1 was carried by the Southern Railway from Waterloo to Dorking—which is reputed to suffer from a worse train service than any other town of its size within a 25-mile radius of London. We left Waterloo with 17 in the compartment. At Clapham Junction we were increased by two. At Wimbledon we effected some- exchanges and got away with 18. At Raynes Park still 18. Motspur Park 18 still. Stonebridge Park presumably has attractions (certainly not visible from the line), and there we actually got down to below 10. This was an ordinary train on an ordinary evening, and I was paying lid. a mile. The railways may contend that this is what rush-hour means, but they know when rush-hour is coming, and if the directors can't cope with it the railways had better be nationalised and run on Post Office lines.
The strictures passed by The Times on Lord Cecil last Monday were marked by a vehemence unusual in a journal accustomed, to weigh its adjectives before flinging them about. Fortunately in addition to condemning " the frantic appeal " issued by Lord Cecil to League of Nations Union branches The Times published the text of the appeal on another page. What its writer pointed out was that an obligation rested on all members of the League under Article X of the Covenant to maintain the inde- pendence of Abyssinia, that this country ought to insist that the terms of peace be approved by the League Council, and that League supporters in this country should take the approved democratic course of urging this course on the Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary and their local M.P.s. This is " frantic " ; and " fran- tic," according-- to the Oxford Dictionary, is "wildly excited ; beside oneself with rage, pain, grief, &c. ; show- ing frenzy ; uncontrolled." I should like to see. Low depict Lord Cecil showing frenzy. *. * I find surprise and disappointment expressed at the non-appearance of Mrs. Dugdale's long-expected biography of her uncle, Lord Balfour. Extracts from the book have appeared in the Daily Telegraph and excited very general interest. The assumption was that at any rate the first volume of the biography Would 'follow immediately. But there is no news of it yet, though the last extract was published on May 12th, and I even hear a rumour that it may not be out till September, when Parliament will be in recess and political interest dead. The publishers may be supposed to know their own business best—but I wonder. Nobody always knows best.
* * * * The reference in this column last week to Samuel Johnson, the American author of the hymn " City of God, how broad and far," brings the suggestion that Samuel Johnson, who wrote Elementa Philosophise in 1752, and after graduating at Yale came to England and became the friend and disciple of Bishop Berkeley, was not a Unitarian. " Did Canon Dearmer really say he was? " I am asked. "Or was there another American of the same- name? " There was ; at least one. The writer of the hymn lived from 1822 to 1882.
JANUS.
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