A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK
THE economic consequences (to say nothing of the cultural conse- quences) of being uneducated are forcibly dealt with by Sir Ernest Simon in a pamphlet he has just written.* The position is stated in three or four lines on the first page. The total income of American Universities was in 1937-8 the equivalent of £97,000,000 ; of British Universities L6,500,000. It is quite true that the population of the United States is larger than ours. But it is not fifteen times arger ; it is three times. If British trade, particularly export trade, is to hold its own in the post-war world a determined developmem of scientific research is essential. I recognise, of course, that universi- ties exist for other than these utilitarian purposes, but if the utilitarian work—the production of scientists who will enrich the world by inventions and improvements of all kinds—is to be done, it is much better done in the liberal atmosphere of a university, with all its various interests and pursuits, than in some ad hoc school of tech- nology. What is needed is more money (primarily from the Govern= ment) to enable the universities to take more students. In that connexion Sir Ernest Simon makes an interesting point. Qualita- tively British university education is pretty certainly superior to American, but quantitatively—i.e., in the percentage of men and women who go to universities—it is all the other way. In America a far higher proportion of business men have been to universites them-elves, and as a consequence they are far more ready than the conservative British business man to turn to the university for chemists or research men in other fields for help in their businesses. Those brief reflections open up a wide field of thought.
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In the debate on civil aviation in the House of Commons on Tuesday, speaker after speaker insisted that air-lines would need subsidies for a long time to come. Some lines, no doubt, may, but pretty certainly not all. During the week-end I heard surprising details of the programmes which certain responsible British concerns have worked out. They include a nightly sleeper service to America at a cost of £50 return, and a day-service, probably cheaper, via Iceland and Greenland. If this can be done—and the organisers have no doubt about it—the effect of such competition on shipping lines will be grave, and fully explains the application of the shipping companies to run air-services themselves. The estimate of cost I have quoted is a little more optimistic than that given by Air Commo- dore Chamier in an article in Europe. Before the war, he says, air-transport could be profitable at a rate of 3d. to 31d. a mile. Under favourable conditions traffic in Europe (with short hauls and high traffic-density) could come down to 21d., and before long to 2d. The double Atlantic crossing at 3d. a mile would work out at about £75 ; at 2d. it would be L50..* * * *That war is bad for morals is plain. I do not mean sex-morals ;
they are as may be. But take the incredible outbreak of pilfering in the last two or three years. In the first-class sleeping-compartment of one railway, at any rate—for all I know it is the same on the others—towels are no longer supplied. The reason is that they have all been stolen. How many scores or hundreds of thousands have gone I don't know, but practically every one has gone, and what is worth underlining is that first-class passengers are quite as dishonest as any others Not, of course, that I suggest that first-class passengers are normally any more moral than third-class ; but they
* The Development of British Universities. (Longmans. is.) are likely to be more amply stocked with towels of their own, and therefore have less incentive to thieve. This particular railway is losing £2,000 a day in pilfering of different kinds—stealing of towels, stealing of electric-light bulbs (which are of too low power to be worth anything except in railway carriages), window-straps and the like ; in addition to which there is an epidemic of cushion-slash- ing. All this seems to me really deplorable, the more so that it is far from obvious how it can be dealt with. Neither punishment nor preaching seems adequate in such a case. Yet the deterioration of national character which these things betoken is, without taking any exaggerated view of it, really serious. The progression from small thefts to large thefts is inevitable—though no doubt some allowance must be made for the strange mentality which thinks it no more than a peccadillo to steal from a public institution what it would be a crime to steal from a shop or a private house.
So Virginio Gayda has been killed in an air-raid on Rome. I never knew him well enough to be able to explain his evolution into not merely one of the fiercest but, I am bound to say, one of the foulest, evangelists of Fascism. In his attacks on this country there was nothing of the honest delusion of the fanatic. Gayda knew Britain well enough to know that half what he wrote about us was lies. Yet he was once a perfectly agreeable person, quiet, friendly, courteous, and a very able and well-informed journalist. I saw a good deal of him at the many inter-Allied and international conferences after the war, but only met him once, I think, after the march on Rome. That was in London in the early 'twenties. " Well," I said, " I suppose you are Fascistissimo." " Not issimo," he laughed, and so far as I remember he talked perfectly reasonably, as he always had. When I knew him he was on the Messagero. He took over the Giornale d'Italia in 1926.
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I said something last week about the case of a highly qualified medical man from an Allied European State who is prohibited from undertaking private practice in this country. That brings me par- ticulars of what seems to be a worse embargo. Medical students who come here having completed half or two=thirds of their course in some European university can get entry to no medical school, and so have no hope of qualifying—in spite of the certainty that there will be a clamant need for doctors all over Europe. Embargo is perhaps not quite the word to use ; the schools, no doubt, say there are no vacancies. But such obstacles can generally be surmounted when there is a will to surmount them. The Poles and Czecho- slovaks, whose Governments have established medical faculties of their own in this country, are provided for. But for the rest— French, Austrian, Belgian, Dutch—there is, it appears, nothing.
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Odd things sometimes happen in the literary world. A little small thing has been happening just recently. Mr. X, a well-known literary critic, receives a very nicely printed card of invitation to a party at an aristocratic address from a Mr'. and Mrs. Y, of whom he has never heard. He wonders why. A few minutes later, as it happens, his eye falls on a large advertisement of the new novel which the world is about to receive from Mr. Y's pen—on the very day of the party, indeed. Only a coincidence no doubt, but an odd coincidence. Odd things do sometimes happen in the literary world.
jANUS.
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