A Spectator's Notebook

Some two years ago! suggested in the House of Lords that we should have a National Government. It was at the time when the government were having their first tangle with the miners and were later extracted from their difficulties by Lord • Wilberforce. I returned to the subject in this year's Queen's Speech debate, when we were just emerging from the three-day week. I suppose that when things get really serious we will have one — if it is not too late.

Meanwhile it is always interesting to see what happened on a previous occasion, and for this we could do worse than consult the recent biography of Lord Baldwin by H. Montgomery Hyde. Baldwin had reluctantly returned from a holiday in France and that August evening gave his Shadow Cabinet colleagues, Chamberlain and Hoare, a strong impression that he would refuse to enter a coalition government. He reminded them that he was responsible for terminating the Lloyd George coalition, and that he did not wish to enter another one. However, by this time MacDonald, the Prime Minister, was convinced that he could no longer carry on with a divided Cabinet and a divided party. The following morning Baldwin, who was staying with his faithful friends the Davidsons, rang up Geoffrey Dawson, the editor of the Times, and then proceeded to go round to his house. He only told the Davidsons that he would be lunching at his club with Hoare. The Palace rang to say that the King would like to see him at 12.30 p.m., but no one knew where he was. Instead the King, understandably impa tient, sent for the Liberal leader, Herbert Samuel. It was he who advised the King that if a Coalition were to be set up MacDonald must remain Prime Minister. It is quite possible that had Baldwin not got lost that morning the King would have asked him to form a government of some kind.

Baldwin eventually arrived at his club and found a message asking him to be at the Palace at 3 p.m. Quite forgetting what he had said the previous evening to his closest colleagues, he immediately agreed to the King's suggestion that he should serve in a coalition government under Ramsay MacDonald.

History seldom repeats itself exactly, and personalities change, but there is one point of constitutional interest when one is comparing the situation in 1931 with that which exists today in 1974. Could the Crown exert the same influence now as it did then? The ghost of Ramsay MacDonald haunts the Labour Party today, but must it permanently silence the large number of social democrats who must still be a majority both among Labour voters and the Parliamentary Labour Party, or can they be

persuaded, in a moment of crisis, to put country before party? They may well be faced with this difficult situation before the end of the year.

American aecent

About ten years ago my wife and I paid an official visit to Williamsburg, Virginia. Reconstructed by the Rockefeller Foundation, endless trouble has been taken to make it authentic

and quite a lot of the buildings are original in any case.

Like other guests our first visit was to a film, where the young revolutionary, Patrick Henry, was shown speaking in an American accent, while his mother was depicted as an oldfashioned person speaking with an English accent. Consternation was created when I sug

gested that in fact the 'Oxford accent' was not introduced to England until about 1850. My mother always told me that when she was young her elderly relatives spoke with a drawl. Her grandmother, who was a daughter of the then Duke of Somerset, said `yalla' instead of 'yellow' and 'cawfie' instead of 'coffee'; while as children we were sternly admonished if we said 'cough' instead of 'cave br 'salt' instead of `sorlt.' The only words I refused to pronounce in the 'old way' were ;Idundry' and 'launch.' I could not bring myself to say larndry' and larnch'. When I tell educated Americans that their speech is probably far closer to the English as spoken by George III and his court than the refined Oxford accent, which we take for granted today, they are astonished. Unfortunately no tapes were made in 1800, but if they had been I am willing to bet that the Oxford dons of, say, 1900 would have been gravely shocked.

My Irish grandfather, born in 1839, always said 'glass' and 'castle' instead of `glarse' and 'carstle,' and while I have no doubt this was a Dublin accent, nevertheless I believe it was old English as well. I have always been told that the nearest thing left to an Elizabethan accent • today is to be found in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. which had a large settlement from Devonshire. English people, however, are usually surprised to hear that their greatgrandfathers would have taken the North American accent for granted.

Bell Telephones

Anyone who has made use of the Bell Telephone System in America cannot but be dissatisfied with our own system in Britain. The first thing that strikes a visitor is the incredibly good reception between, say, New York and San Francisco. Why do we have to suffer the bangs and crackles and distant thunder which so frequently make conversation so difficult in this country? Then there is the American equivalent of Directory Enquiries. The speed with which a number is discovered from the provision of a skeleton address is almost aweinspiring. On one or two occasions I have found, when speaking from an airport telephone box, that someone was not in their office; on hearing my distressed reaction, the operator has immediately offered to find and ring the number of their home, and one can hear all this going on as one waits—"Is that Mr Smith's home? Could you please tell me where I could locate him as he is not in his office?" etc. About ten years ago we were in Chicago. My wife, who was later visiting her aunt in Western Canada, only had her address. She asked 'Directory Enquiries' for the number, and even before she had really asked for 'Long distance' to make the call, she found herself .speaking to her aunt. I am sure I will be told that we cannot afford such a telephone system in this country. but surely we could afford the incredible kindness and courtesy which American operators show to bemused strangers speaking in an 'English' accent. Had I been writing this a year ago, I would have balanced these criticisms by saying that our Post Office was vastly superior to the one in America, but I am not sure that I can do so any longer. Anyone who has waited fourteen days for a letter from the large and important W I area would doubt whether a favourable comparison can be made. The two Post Offices have one thing in common — they are both national institutions. Although the Bell Telephone System is virtually a national institution, it is in fact a private enterprise operation. Can it be that this is one of the reasons why it is so vastly superior to the telephone system here in Britain? Perhaps a new coalition government could get Bell Telephones to run our system on an agency basis. Who knows, we might get a greatly improved service imbued with that wicked incentive known as the profit motive.

Trees

People who are fortunate to have some land round their houses should not only concentrate on garden flowers and shrubs, but should also consider the possibility of planting some trees. At home in Ireland I have a flourishing 'arboretum' which is only twenty years old, and by now looks 'established.'

Originally I intended to make it into a 'pinetum,' but eventually I was unable to resist the introduction of some deciduous trees. It was only some fifteen years ago that I planted side by side a Leyland cypress (Cupressocyparis leylandii) and a Southern Hemisphere beech (Notofagus obliqua). Today they are both about thirty feet high as they race each other to the sky, and I think the beech is winning. A tulip tree with its lovely large leaves is a 'must,' and a Monterey pine (Pinus radiata) is most rewarding. A giant Thuya is a wonderful tree — perhaps Thuya plicata zebrina, with its yellow and green stripy effect, is the answer. Those who are short of space should definitely try a `Dawyck' beech from Scotland. It grows straight up like a green column. For its coniferous counterpart an Incense cedar (Libocedras decurrens) is the magnificent answer.

In all I have about fifty specimen trees in an area of only one acre. But I would consider it worth while 'having a go' in only a quarter of that area. The further west you live the quicker they will grow, but having been bitten by the bug of arboriculture, I would find it hard not to start one in East Anglia.

O'Neill of the Maine

This is the last of the present series of 'Notebooks' contributed by Lord O'Neill of the Maine. Our next guest contributor will be DrA. L. Rowse