FAMILY PROVERBS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.']
SIn.,—When Fred Archer, the famous jockey, had been for about two minutes on the continent of America, he was asked by the interviewers what he thought of the United States. A cricket eleven that had returned from Australia were inter- viewed at Plymouth. A reporter wrote: " Lohmann thinks that Malta is more strongly fortified than Gibraltar, but Mordecai Sherwin is of the contrary opinion." Whenever my father heard anybody laying down the law on a subject that was beyond the speaker's ken, he would say, "Let me see. Lohmann thinks that Malta is more strongly forti- fied. . . ." The words had become quite a family proverb. I am reminded of that saying by what the Standard of Empire Annual says of the Lord Chancellor and the Post- master-General. You can see the words in a Fleet Street window : "Each one of these statesmen and politicians has returned to the Mother Country a new man with a different outlook from what he had when he left it." Of course Lord Haldane was as long in Canada as the combined stays of that cricket eleven at Malta and Gibraltar. But Lohmann saw what Sherwin saw; yet his opinion was diametrically opposed to that of Mordecai. Have the Lord Chancellor and the Postmaster-General drawn the same conclusions ?—I am,
Previous page
