A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
THE critics who have assailed the Archbishop of Canterbury for his strictures on King Edward VIII and his associates will inevitably protest that at least the other Archbishop might have been content to leave things where they were. He might ; but the critics cannot have it both ways. If religious leaders are condemned, as they constantly are, for not making their voice heard on great national issues they cannot be condemned equally when they do make it heard. Nothing would have more gravely prejudiced the Church of England than the charge that on this subject of all subjects its chief spokesmen had nothing to say. And if they did have something to say what could that something be but what it was? Dr. Temple, in point of fact, has put his linger very necessarily, as surprisingly few speakers and writers have, on what is clearly the gravamen of the whole affair—the fact that the harm was done when the ex-King found himself falling in love with another man's wife, and that that was the moment when a man of honour would have taken a decision which, however painful, was the only right one. (I may perhaps be permitted to recall that this was said in almost identical language in a leading article. in this journal a fortnight ago.) In referring to the subject in his regular message to his diocese the Archbishop of York can certainly not be accused of dragging it up gratuitously. He could not conceivably have ignored it.
• Of the two new Governors of the B.B.C. one appoint- ment, of Capt. Ian Fraser, is good, and one, of Dr. J. J. Mallon, admirable. Captain• Fraser has long followed broadcasting closely, and, being blind and devoting his life to the interests of the blind, he is in a position to put a different value on the heard word from those who have the whole range of printed words before their eyes. Of Dr. Mallon it may be said, briefly and comprehensively, that he is very nearly the ideal man for any job. He first came into public notice when he became secretary of the National Anti-Sweating League, formed after the Sweated Industries Exhibition organised by the old Daily News in the days of Mr. A. G. Gardiner's editorship 30 years ago, and he decided subsequently to cement that association by marrying Mr. Gardiner's daughter. As Warden of Toynbee Hall he is in close touch with all phases of social work and industrial life, and as J. J. Mallon he is in touch with leading personalities in every walk of life from Archbishops to their antithesis (what- ever that may be held to be). It would be hard to find a more alert or fertile mind for the B.B.C. to draw on.
I hope the new Governors will make it their first business to raise the question of the Christmas Day programme, which must be easily the flattest and most commonplace on record. In the past—at any rate the recent past— it has been the most notable broadcast of the year. The King's talk to his people from Sandringham, the bells of Bethlehem and the greetings round the Empire have only been the outstanding features of a day's pro- gramme that reflected the highest credit on the B.B.C.'s enterprise and imagination. This year there is no enterprise and less imagination. Over the -King's decision Sir. John Reith has, of course, no control, and though everyone will regret that the sequence of the Sandringham broadcasts should not be maintained, King George VI's reluctance to undertake this particular responsibility so soon after his accession, and at a moment when some reference to the circumstances of that accession would be inevitable, is natural enough. Never mind, says Sir John, undaunted ; if the King is not available there's always the Hastings Municipal Orchestra—and the Coventry Hippodrome Orchestra, and the Blackpool Town Ballroom-organ, and gramophone records (twice) and other exotic fruits of imagination and enterprise. Quite true,—and we are getting them all. What a pro- gramme. Give me, on the whole, the gramophone records ; but I could have had them before wireless was ever invented.
In Sir Robert Bruce, of the. Glasgow Herald, a great provincial editor retires from active service, and the tributes paid to him by the Prime Minister and others at a farewell dinner last Saturday were abundantly merited. The word provincial, of course, is really a mis- nomer as applied to papers like the Glasgow Herald or the Scotsman. They are in the fullest sense national organs, and they serve Scotland as wisely, as capably and as responsibly as any daily paper serves grwland. Sir Robert has full right to claim that 'the great. journal over whose destinies he has presided for twenty years has at all -times given the Scottish public which it- serves "the news of the world accurately and clearly presented and with unbiased arid well-informed com- ment." Having relied on the Glasgow Herald during various holidays in Scotland, I can endorse the claim from personal knowledge. .
The second Test Match proves at least that the result of the first one was no accident. It proves further that if the English batting strength is nothing abnormal, apart from Hammond, Australia's strength is still less abnormal, and that the English bowling is well above Test Match average ; to get Australia out for 58 and 80 in two successive matches is an achievement few if any English elevens of the past could equal. And it proves above all that in G. 0. Allen England has found a captain worth a hundred runs and five wickets a match to his side even if he never scores or gets an opponent out. His first innings declaration obviously had a fatal psycho- logical effect on the Australians, but his management of his bowling gives him quite as strong a title to the reputation he has deservedly won.
The business side of the circulation of Herr Hitler's Mein Kampf really does deserve attention, as the writer of a recent letter to The Spec:ator has pointed out. Not only has every loyal family in Germany to acquire a copy (at 12s.) but now—according to last Tuesday's daily papers—every German married by a German consul abroad, even though it be to a foreigner, must acquire a copy too. How profits in the volume are divided as between author and publisher has not, so far as I know, been disclosed, but one or both must be making a singularly good thing out of it.
JANUS.
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