A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK
MR. EDEN was justified, I think, in saying at Preston on Monday that over a large field of existence the country is possessed by a sense of exasperation and frustration. Nowhere is that truer than where a licence of any kind for anything is concerned. Government departments, no doubt, are overworked, but the effect on the national production of the delays due to controls can be little less than disastrous. Every letter to a Govern- ment department today is posted in a spirit of defeatism, in the knowledge that two or three more letters will have to follow the first before the beginning of any movement can be hoped for ; meanwhile, the merchant's, or manufacturer's, plans are at a stand- still. I find equal, and growing, impatience with Sir Stafford Cripps' austerity decrees. Everyone realises the needs of the export trade, but confidence in the President of the Board of Trade's alloca- tions as between home consumption and export is diminishing. The feeling is that the President takes too kindly to austerity himself, and finds too much satisfaction in imposing it on others for their good.
Let me have men about me who are fat ; Yon Stafford hath a lean and hungry look.
Sir Ben Smith is of a much more reassuring girth and weight, and perhaps realises better the politital value of contentment.
Previous page
