A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
Ip HE to-ton bomb whose existence is made known this week repre-
sents the realisation of a long dream. Some four or five years ago a friend living in a Surrey village rang me up and asked if he might bring a neighbour of his—a man named Wallis, of Vickers- Armstrong, who had invented what was then • one of our most serviceable bombers, the Wellington—to see me, with the idea that I might put him in touch with certain people in a position to further a project he had in mind. Mr. Wallis came, and brought with him a set of blue prints, far too complicated for my non-scientific com- prehension, of something that then seemed completely fantastic (I fancy that at that time 8,000 lbs. was the bomb-weight limit)—a bomb weighing ten tons. He explained the necessity for it, how nothing less could produce the subterranean disturbance that would put coal-mines, underground oil-storage tanks and the like out of action. I asked him one question that seemed not irrelevant—whether he could design an aeroplane that would carry such a bomb ; he was quite confident he could. I did what I was asked to do, but I hardly imagine that that did anything much to expedite official adoption of an invention which would, of course, have fought its own way to acceptance in any case.
* * * * British papers, naturally enough, made little reference to a broad- cast speech delivered last week in America by Commander Harold Stassen, the former Republican Governor of Minnesota, but a full transcript of the speech which I have had an opportunity of reading shows it to have been a very remarkable utterance, which emphatically confirms previous impressions of Governor Stassen as "Presidential timber?' Few more virile declarations of Pro- gressive Republicanism have been heard since the days of Theodore Roosevelt, though there was a good deal of the same note in the speeches of Wendell Willkie, to whom incidentally, and perhaps significantly, Commandes Stassen paid a special tribute. I have no space here to quote the speaker's seven principles of United States world policy, but he goes further than I think any other prominent American, certainly any prominent Republican, has gone in advo- cating full and unreserved American participation in the new Inter- national Organisation. And it was as one of the American delegates to the San Francisco Conference that Commander Stassen (who is of Scandinavian origin) was avowedly speaking.
* * * * This is a notable month for Mr. R. A. Butler, the. Minister of Education. This week he is presiding over the Conservative Party Conference—that as a pure party Politician. In his other capacity, as chief administrator of a national service which transcends party differences, he has issued on successive days two circulars of great practical importance dealing with the temporary supply of teachers, and with permanent arrangements for financial help to scholars in any grade of education, to enable them to take full advantage of any financial facilities that they are capable of pickling by. And in less than three weeks' time the Education Act that imbeds Mr. Butler's name in history comes into force (sub- ject to the necessary postponement of some part of its provisions). The comprehensiveness of the grants to scholars, covering as they do school uniforms, membership of clubs and societies, and so forth, and ranging up to 4175 a year at certain universities, is signal proof that the educational ladder is a reality at last. • An article by Miss Eleanor Rathbone in another column today on the subject she has Made peculiarly her own, Family Allowances, draws timely attention to a remarkable achievement for which not indeed all the credit, but by far the chief part of it, is due to the woman Member for the English Universties. Coming of a well-
known Liverpool family conspicuously marked by social ardour,-
Miss Rathbone, since she was first elected to the House of Commons in 1929, has done service such as no other woman Member has surpassed and few, if any, have equalled. It is the distinguishing feature of Miss Rathbone's crusading activity that she invariably adds to zeal knowledge, and to both an inexhaustible fund of moral
courage. To that she owes the respect which she universally com- mands. There is one interesting indication of that. Concerned as
she is for progress and improvement in many fields, she not infre- quently adds her name to those of a familiar stage army of Left- wing letter-writers to the Press. It is a well-known little phalanx, so well known that the views above the signatures tend to be dis- counted—unless one of the signatories is Eleanor F. Rathbone. If that name is noted all informed persons read the letter with care. _ * * * * Not a great many Englishmen, I imagine, possess detailed know- ledge of the Remagen region. One who does has given me some interesting information about it. He used to cycle all over the district as a young man forty years ago, and though many of the works of man around Remagen have changed, the works of Nature, in particular the contours, have not. It is clear that optimism about any swift development of operations initiated from the Remagen
bridgehead should be severely restrained. The land to the east of the river is a tangle of hills, the road-system is poor—or rather used to be ; the construction' of the Frankfurt-Cologne. motorway has
obviously altered all that—and the odds generally favour the defence. Obviously Remagen is not the starting-point General Eisenhower would have chosen for the final_ battle to the east of the Rhine. But that does not alter the fact that the acquisition of a lodgement across the river is an astonishing piece of luck brilliantly exploited by skill, for it finds the enemy hope- lessly undecided what to do about it. * * * * As to the houses which could not be sold because the deeds and all copies of them had been destroyed in various blitzes, I have received various pieces of information for tvhich I am duly grateful. One or other of them may be correct ; they certainly cannot all be.
' Someone suggests that an Act was passed by the Balfour Govern- ment .givffig 'a valid title to anyone who had been in undisputed possession of a piece of property for twelve years ; someone else that what is needed is a statutory declaration by some person with knowledge of the facts (e.g., an assistant overseer, who can' speak as to the rates having been paid). The best advice, no doubt, is to get the advice of a conveyancing counsel—and pay the appropriate fee. * * * *
The decision of Aberdeen University to confer an honorary doctorate of laws on Mr. Stanley Unwin does honour equally to a university which takes so large and sane a view of service to scholar- ship and to the recipient, whose qualifications rest both on his personality and on the position he holds in the publishing world. There are some academic honours which the discriminating rate higher than any with. a title attached. jADJUS.
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