A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK

THERE was a time when Dr. Benes, the President of Czecho- slovakia, hoped to spend his sixtieth birthday, which falls on Sunday, in Prague. Events have not moved quite fast enough for that, but at least the President is justified in believing that this is the last birthday he will spend in exile. Russian armies are on the Czecho- slovak frontier, and when once the eastern offensive is renewed, the . beginning of the liberation of Czechoslovak territory, and its adminis- tration by a Czechoslovak Commission on the lines laid down in the recent agreement with the Soviet Union, may be immediate. Dr. Benes himself is an essential—it would be just to say the essential— part of his country's history. Before the war of 1914 he was work- ing ceaselessly for the extension of the rights of Bohemia within the Austro-Hungarian Empire ; during that war he and T. G. Masaryk and Stefanik were the triumvirate on whom Czechoslovakia's hopes of independence were based ; on the creation of the Czechoslovak Republic, when Masaryk became its first President, Benes inevitably became its first Foreign Minister, and, as inevitably, when Masaryk resigned in 1935, Benes succeeded to the highest office. While the position of some of the exiled Governments has been equivocal, and the reception they may meet with on their return to their home lands after the war remains uncertain, no one doubts that Dr. Benes w;11 be confirmed in office by universal acclaim when he submits himself, as I believe he intends to do, to the decision of his fellow- countrymen. He has maintained in London a capable skeleton Government, in perpetual touch with the resistance movement in Czechoslovakia, he has concluded an admirable treaty with Russia, and if the liberal and statesmanlike ideas he entertains for Central Europe materialise, the prospects of peace and prosperity in that vexed region will be greatly enhanced.

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In the opinion of Mr. Sumner Welles, no negligible judge, " the stature of Mackenzie King as a world-statesman has grown im- measurably in these war years." The Canadian Prime Minister's own countrymen seem to think the same, if the reception they have given him this week on his return from London is any indication. And someone in a position to know how the discussions at the recent Conference of Prime Ministers went said to me on Monday " Mackenzie King got all he wanted." I refrained froth asking what it was that he did want, but in fact the question was hardly necessary, for Mr. King's insistence—most well-advised in my judgement—on freedom and elasticity in Commonwealth rela- tionships, and the avoidance of any family compact of a nature to militate against the development of a wider interhational organisa- tion, are well known. What is most striking about the Prime Ministers' Conference is the complete satisfaction with it expressed by those members who, as things turned out, did not get quite all they wanted.

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There is hope for the arts in this country when the Admiralty is found willing, with the concurrence of the Ministry of Labour, to release Mr. Laurence Olivier and Mr. Ralph Richardson to assist in the direction of the Old Vic Theatre Company under the administration of Mr. Tyrone Guthrie. The Old Vic may have had its old home in the Waterloo Road blitzed, but its prestige has gone on increasing. Companies have been sent out into the-high- ways and byways of the country, taking Shakespeare and Euripides to industrial and- rural audiences, and in London a temporary— or it may be a permanent—home has been found at the New Theatre, which, if it lacks the associations of the Old Vic, has the merit of being more accessible. The Government, after all, though it is behind those of several other countries in direct encourage- ment of the arts, has given effective backing to C.E.M.A. as a stimulus to war morale ; the promoters of a National Theatre may well feel that they can turn more hopeful eyes towards White- hall after the war.

• * I find this in a Sunday paper: Ivor Novello is still in the prison hospital at Wormwood Scrubs. He is suffering from shock and nervous prostration.

News of his health is awaited eagerly by the members of his company. Yesterday Miss Muriel Barron said:

" The whole cast is too per cent. behind Ivor in his trouble... " When the news was told to the company after the matinee every girl was in tears."

This, of course, is simply sickly slop, but it seems to portend an ovation on the return to the stage of a man who has been found guilty by two courts of entering into a conspiracy to obtain petrol improperly and illegally for his personal convenience, and who in the lower court adopted towards the woman who had been his accomplice an attitude which I should have thought even the lachrymose ladies of his company ' could hardly find laudable. Sentence having been passed, the matter might- well have been allowed to drop, but this kind of interpretation of the " trouble" Mr. Novello brought on himself and the lady who assisted him makes that difficult.

* * * * One or two of my readers are concerned about the strict accuracy of the moving epitaph I quoted last week. One gives chapter and

verse—The Dumfries and Galloway Standard, January 29th, 1944 —that version differing slightly from the one I quoted. Someone else claims to have heard it earlier still in another form again. I

decline all discussion ; the lines may originally have been written about • Peter's wife's mother, for all I know (though actually there are abstruse reasons against that). My interest was in the Latin version—and no one can claim antiquity for that particular egg ;

it came to me warm from the nest, and ball but saw it laid, Mean-

• while other epitaphs reach me—but I can accommodate only one

this week AND NONE AFTER THIS WEEK. Today's effort:

She grew in beauty side by side, She filled our home with glee, But now, alas! she's far and wide, Almighty .God, with Thee.

The virtue of that is that it recalls a gravestone quotation in one of the "Elizabeth " books, " She was lovely and pleasant in her life,"

which, as the author observed very justly, appeared to imply that in her death she was not divided.

* * * More from St. Paul's The son of an American was being shown round, and came on the grave of a man called Wren. Wren? Wren? " Ah, yes. Hew silly of me. Beau Geste, of course." Si monumentum requiris, lege " Bene Gesta." (Several people will write to tell me that Beau Geste and Bene Gesta do not mean the same thing. If so I shall * *