A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
ARCHBISHOP LORD LANG, when admitted on Tuesday to the freedom of the Worshipful Company of Stationers, observed that he wished more people knew their Bibles today, but that the numbers were becoming less and less. I wonder how far that is true. There may be less personal reading of the Bible, but far more people hear portions of it read from time to time on the wire- less than ever heard it at all twenty years ago. And there appears to be a strong and unsatisfied demand for Bibles from men in the Forces. I see in that connexion that Lord Noel-Buxton suggests that if the shortage of paper limits the supply of complete Bibles there is an abridged " Little Bible " which would go far toward meeting the need. I am not familiar with this volume, but I sug- gest that a wide circulation of the Book of Psalms alone would be of inestimable benefit. The Psalms, it may be objected, are pre- Christian. Chronologically they are, but if any writings ever put on paper were ageless, in the sense of belonging to every age, it is these. No one who knows that fascinating volume, The Psalms in Human Life, by R. E. Prothero (Lord Ernie), can under-estimate the part those incomparable hymns have played in the lives, and on the death-beds, of men and women notable and humble in every century of the Christian era.
To the observations I made here last week on the anomalies of a hereditary peerage I would add a further word (not for the first time) on the gross injustice in compelling young heirs to peerages who are laying the foundations of promising political careers in the House of Commons to go, whether they like it or not, to the House of Lords on their fathers' death. The persistence of this kind of anomaly inspires reflections on the national character. The folly and unfairness of this are palpable, yet such is the prevailing apathy that not only does nobody do anything about it but nobody even suggests that anything should be done about it. Many things could be done. The simplest way would be to allow the heir to the peerage to forgo the right to sit in the House of Lords ; his own heir could still go there if he chose when the time came. Better still would be the abolition of hereditary peerages—and, of course, hereditary baronetcies.
Here is a social and domestic problem on which I suppose two views could be held, as they can on most things. We deplore a falling population. A mother who has certainly made all the contri- bution that could reasonably be asked of her towards averting that evil—she has nine children between seven months and fifteen years—has of late had no help whatever in the household except a sister of her own ; the house in question has fourteen rooms. Now the sister has been commandeered by the Ministry of Labour on the ground that she is not doing work of national importance. The mother appealed, and was informed by the chairman of the Appeal Board, in language not marked by conspicuous originality, that " there was a war on." Even with the sister's help the mother has, she states, been working 15 to 17 hours a day. It looks as if she would now have to put in 25 to 27 hours. What is work of national importance? Clearly not providing for the continuity of the nation's life. This information is supplied, by the victim of it, as a partial answer to the question, Why women don't have babies Speaking at the Churchill Club on Tuesday, Mr. Amery men- tioned that in looking at an old Harrow photograph a few days previously he had noticed two small boys sitting next to each other in the third row ; one was little Jawaharlal Nehru, the other was little Harold Alexander, today commanding the Allied troops in Italy. He might no doubt have added that if he had looked at a Harrow photograph of a few years earlier he would have seen a small future Secretary of State for India and a still smaller futttre Prime Minister—the greatest, as posterity will inevitably decide, in British history.
* * * * The Royal Society, I see, has presented a copy of the fir st edition of Newton's Principia to the Soviet Academy of Science. Another copy of the first edition, with Newton's own annotations, was recently acquired by the Pilgrim Trust and presented to Trinity College, Cambridge. But the Royal Society possesses something much more valuable than the first edition of the Principia. When Caroline Fox was taken by Davies Gilbert, then President of the Royal Society, to see the Society's rooms at Somerset House in 1838, among the treasures shown her was Newton's telescope and " the MS copy of the Principia which went to the publisher, all in his neat hand and with his autograph." This the Society still possesses, but it has been temporarily deposited in some safer area than London.
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Dr. William Paton was so well known to readers of The Spectator as the contributor of articles, based always on wide and accurate knowledge and a statesmanlike tolerance, on various aspects of the work of the Churches that I gladly call attention to the appeal being made for a fund of £ro,000 as a memorial to him. It will be ex- pended mainly to promote exchanges of visits bdtween representative Christian leaders of different countries. The treasurer is the Rev. Hugh Martin, Annandale, North End R6ad, N.W. 11.
* * * * Peterhouse is the smallest college in Cambridge, as well' as the oldest, and it is a little hurt that more attention has not been drawn to its recent distinctions. It was responsible for the education of Group Captain Whittle of jet-propulsion fame, and it long since took to its bosom (when he arrived from Oxford) Dr. Ernest Barker, who received a knighthood in the recent New Year's Honours. No inclusion in the list gave me greater pleasure than this—not that Sir Ernest Barker will be a whit more distinguished in any waj than Dr. Ernest Barker has always been.
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In what army but one could this incident (related by the Moscow correspondent of The Times) have occurred: " . . one memoiable scene in which a group of gunners were romping like happy children in the snow while their chief of staff played the waltz from Tschai- kovsky's Swan Lake on a piano mounted on a lorry "? This was not in rest-billets, but somewhere very near the front line.
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A consignment of football boots and shirts provided by various readers of this column is at present pursuing H.M.S. ' Janus' on its devious courses. • It looks like having some distance to go, for that gallant vessel, whose movements are usually shrouded in the fog of war, was reported last week as bombarding the Adriatic coast of
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