21 NOVEMBER 1952, Page 7

A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

SUCH reviews of Mr. G. M. Young's Baldwin as I have read—and I have read a good many— have been more discussions of the man than comments on the book. On the Whole they have, I feel, done rather less than justice to the man, and I was glad to see Mr. Richard Pilkington's letter in Monday's Times, with its relevant reminder that it was under Baldwin that the King George V battleships were laid down and the Hurricanes and Spitfires that saved the country in the Battle of Britain produced. On the whole Baldwin's shortcomings were more obvious than his virtues, though his services during the General Strike and in connection with the Abdication have had to be recognised by everyone except Lord Beaverbrook's papers. It was Baldwin, after all, who—in his own way—got rearmament going in 1935 in spite of the Labour Party. It depends, moreover, whom you measure him by. His two predecessors were Bonar Law and Ramsay MacDonald, his successor Neville Chamberlain. Yardsticks Were hardly a yard long in those days. * * * *