A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
IDO not weaken in my conviction that everyone who is not already sick of the word Coronation will lie long before June 2nd arrives. By that I do not mean, of course, that I think there ought to be no Coronation. Of course there ought to be—but mainly as a religious act, not as a public show, and not postponed till sixteen months after Her Majesty's accession, and without the plastering-of London six months in advance with metal-and-timber stands to enable various fortunate persons to admire a procession for. perhaps half an hour. These are merely personal reflections from which no one need bother to express dissent; I will take dissent for granted. But there is another kind of reflection. I wish the Coronation ceremony were not tied so closely to the traditions of the past, majestic as in many ways they are, and were brought into closer touch with the realities of the present— with the Commonwealth, with science and art and manual labour. Most of all I wish due notice could be taken of a senti- ment voiced in a letter in The Times this week. Writing on the question of flogging (in which he happens not to believe) Sir Edward Cadogan submitted that something much more funda- mental than modes of punishment was in question, and that far more might be done by emphasising in schools the Queen's example and practice in such matters as regular attendance at church than by any amount of birching of delinquents. It may be well enough to make the Queen's features familiar to youtlir ful eyes through various commemorative objects; how much better to make the Queen's character familiar to youthful minds as something to admire and emulate. It is not for me to decide how that can best be done; there are thousands of instructors of youth who know that far better than I could. There is occasionally a complaint of the exploitation of the Coronation or the Queen's personality for party purposes. This is a form of exploitation of which no one could complain.
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