A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
NEWS reaching me from the United States confirms impressions gathered from other quarters, all going to suggest that a door to a fruitful Anglo-American understanding stands, if not wide open at least well ajar. There is no doubt whatever that President Roosevelt and Mr. Cordell Hull are bent on getting a trade agreement with this country if it is by any means possible. But it will only be possible—that must be recognised frankly—if duties against American agricultural produce are lowered or abolished. That raises questions of Imperial Preference and the whole of the Ministry of Agriculture's protective policy. But the foundation of a fabric that may mean immensely much for the world was laid in the currency agreement between the United States, Great Britain and France, and to refuse an invitation to build the fabric up on that basis would be a folly hardly distinguishable from crime. At any rate, after the successive visits of Mr. Runciman, Mr. Mackenzie King and Lord Tweedsmuir to Washington, the Imperial Conference will be amply informed about what the President's views are, and if any doubt does persist Mr. Norman Davis will be in the vicinity to resolve it. We have reached a point at which the situation must become either worse or better—according to whether the attempt at closer co-operation fails or succeeds. * * * Some of the Coronation insurances raise ethical rather than legal problems. That interested parties, notably persons o r institutions with seats to let, should have taken out policies against loss incurred by any postponement of the Coronation is natural enough. But the policies are not all of a standard type. Some were so drawn as to involve the underwriters in the payment of a specified sum " if the Coronation of King Edward VIII does not take place on May r2th, 1937,"—or words to that effect. The language appears to have been a mere matter of form. No one, that is to say, was intentionally making provision for the possibility that King Edward might not be crowned on May 12th, but another King might. And there is obviously no fear that seats will be left empty because the central figure is to be King George. But rlaim.s have been made under the Edward VIII policies—and paid. One of the great hospitals, I believe, has so benefited, and it may possibly be argued that a hospital is justified in raising funds by any legitimate expedient. But is, for example, a West End dub ? The question has arisen in connexion with at least one of them, and the committee is, or was, divided. But the principle seems clear—no loss, no indemnification. * * * * Another nice legal point—I speak as a layman—appears to be raised by the will, published in Monday's papers, of a benevolent testatrix who has left the London Zoological Society £80, to be invested and the income expended on fruit for distribution on stated days annually among such of the monkeys as are inclined to be neglected by the_ public. The bequest, sundry eminent jurists of my acquaintance aver, is void in law as tending to create a perpetuity. It may be so. All I can say is that the prospect that these esurient anthropoids, having had their expectations excited by the publicity given to the testamentary dispositions in question, should have them now summarily dashed is to me infinitely distressing. * * * Nothing to the casual mind could seem more obvious than the derivation of. the term " liberal " in its political sense. Manifestly it must come from the Latin laer. And so, of course, ulrimatPly it does. But to one casual mind at least it came as an ironical, surprise to discover (from that inexhaus- tible quarry of discovery, Dr. H. A. L. Fisher's Europe) that we are indebted to Spain, of all countries, for the use of the word to denote a political party. It dates back some 125 years, to a moment when in the midst of the political and dynastic confusions that marked Napoleon's incursion into the Peninsula, a Cortes met at Cadiz (in 1812), "and here for the first time a battle was joined on the fundamental issue of personal liberty which, giving rise to two political parties, known respectively as Liberates and Serviles, continued to divide the political mind of Spain all through the nineteenth century." * * * * Magistrates, paid and unpaid, who are condoning_ thefts from so-called "open shops," meaning such stores as those of Woolworth and Marks and Spencer, on the ground that such temptation as access to goods lavishly displayed ought not to be placed in the way of customers, are assuming a singularly low standard of public morality. Is the average citizen of this country, male or female, incapable of refraining from seizing something that takes his fancy if he thinks he can do it unobserved ? I don't believe it for a moment. In America—where the" open shop "was familiar long before it was introduced here—it is a commonplace to see piles of newspapers on a stand on the sidewalk with a box for pur- chasers to put their coins in while the vendor is temporarily a'osent. Can Englishmen not be trusted to that extent ?
* * * * Referring in this column to the projected Right Book Club a month ago I commented on the difficulty of defining a " Right " book. The task has, I see, been attempted by the organisers of the Club. They are to be concerned with "books which present a sane, sound and constitutional political viewpoint." That may be as far as you can get, but it is not very far, for one man's sanity is another man's folly. However, if the first volume to be chosen, The Enspire in the World, by Sir Arthur Willert, B. K. Long and H. V. Hodson (reviewed, I believe, elsewhere in this issue of The Spectator) may be taken as typical the Club will be well able to dispense with definitions. * * * * "Corsets for Mercury" runs an evening paper headline. "For Venus" I should have thought ; but it turns out that the paragraph so titled deals with an arrangementconcluded during the War whereby the export of the habiliments in question from Britain to Spain, and the export of fulminate of mercury front Spain to Britain, were made interdependent. * * - * * Erratum.—"Michael Fairless," the author of The Road- mender, is not, ts I inadvertently stated last week, Miss Dowson, but Miss Margaret Fairless Barber. jANUS. -
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