17 FEBRUARY 1939, Page 16

Much do I admire also the high spirits, the eternal

boyish- ness, with which the Conservative party makes virtues out of its necessities. When fleeing, with exemplary courage, from an enemy, the legs of the Conservative twinkle so merrily that the impression really is conveyed that he is in fact practising for some superb if distant Marathon. When ducked in the pond of obloquy he emerges with the expres- sion of a delighted bather upon his happy Harrovian face. And when obliged by cruel circumstances to abandon, perhaps even to betray, his friends, he persuades us (as one who after long darkness has seen the light) that his friends were not nice friends, that he was in fact keeping low company, but that since then he has been " changed."