A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
0 NE of the post-war problems which will in all likelihood be settled before the war is over concerns the future of the three million or so of Sudeten Germans who before the war inhabited Czechoslovakia. In a recent speech Dr. Hubert Ripka, the Czecho- slovak Minister of State, made it quite clear that they will inhabit Czechoslovakia no more. No one can quarrel with that decision. It was the Sudetens who, as Hitler's instruments, precipitated Munich and all that followed. Now the bulk of them will have to go else- where, presumably to Germany. On that Dr. Ripka, in a little booklet he has just written on the subject, makes a neat point. " As Germany," he writes, " after Munich declared all the so-called Sudetic Germans to be citizens of the German Reich, she cannot now fairly refuse to look after those who served her so devotedly throughout the war, and who by all their behaviour provided con- vincing proof that they did not belong to Czechoslovakia but to Germany." None the less, Czechoslovakia is ready to retain any genuinely democratic Germans who are prepared to become ordinary Czechoslovak citizens, and behave as such. What she is not ready to countenance, and in my view rightly, is any kind of federal State of which the Sudeten Germans would form a constituent and semi- autonomous part.
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The fact that it is just sixty years since General Gordon's death at Khartum has produced a number of commemorative references to that tragic business. But it is still a contentious question. The legend that Gordon was left to his fate by a callous or incompetent Government will not hold water at all. Gordon was a romantic and an admirable, but in many ways a difficult, character. *He to a large extent drafted his own instructions before he left England ; he agreed to go to Khartum to carry out the evacuation of British and Egyptian troops from the Sudan ; when he got to Khartum he sent back a series of optimistic messages declaring that there need be no anxiety at all about the situation in the Sudan ; he then decided against evacuation, and resolved on a final test of strength with the Mandi, whom he regarded as almost negligible. In the end he was cut off in Khartum, and appealed urgently for reinforcements. Here there may have been undue delay, but the conflict of messages emanating from Khartum gave some excuse for that. Gordon was a hero, and died a hero's death ; but he was, as Morley put it, " the creature, almost the sport, of impulse." The home Government's real fault was in selecting such a man for such a mission.
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Having occasion to take an oath the other day in connexion with a function I was called on to fulfil, I could not help wondering why the alternative, and equally legal, method of affirmation is not resorted to more commonly. I am bound to say I dislike the oath procedure. I am no more impelled to tell the truth through holding a Bible in my hand than if I held the Oxford Dictionary. The Bible, indeed, in words which come with the highest of all authorities, tells me to swear not at all. Apart from that, people in the habit of telling the truth more often than not should not need to invoke the help of God for the purpose of making a simple statement. The plain and dignified words of the affirmation " I, X. Y. Z., do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that . . ." seem. to me very much preferable. But when I told the Commissioner for .Oaths who was handling me that I wanted to affirm, he was completely undone. Such a thing had never
happened to him before, he wasn't familiar with the formula, the little book that had it in was in another room. In the end, to save time and trouble, and not regarding the matter as a major moral issue, I took the oath with the usual (to me) empty symbolism. But I should like to put in a word for affirmation—in courts of law and anywhere else where the occasion arises.
* * * * "May not the Prime Minister have had a nursemaid? " someone writes. He certainly may, of course. The suggestion behind the query is that it was from that functionary that Mr. Churchill first heard the hymn he quoted in his last House of Commons speech, " When the roll is called up yonder I'll be there." Considerable interest seems to have been aroused by this melody. Someone suggests that it originated not in the Moody and Sankey mission of the 1870's, but in the _later Torrey and Alexander mission: A point in favour of that is that while the hymn is included in the latest edition of " Sacred Songs and Solos " (the Moody and Sankey book), No. 983, I have failed to find it in an earlier edition which I happened to chance on since writing last week, and which contains much fewer than 983 hymns altogether.
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For Latinists only I once knew more.about the quantities in Alcaics than I do now. For that reason I am not quite sure whether there is one slight flaw in the story which a correspondent sends me of how Lord North, writing to commiserate with his son for having to cut down his stables owing to hard times, advised him to keep the mares with a view to the future, and clinched it with the injunction-
Equam memento rebus in arduis Servare.
My doubt is whether the first syllable of the first line can be short. But to look such a gift mare in the mouth would be reprehensible ingratitude. * * * * Though I am getting just a little tired of " spitchered," I can't quite abandon the chase while the quarry is still riming. Having got the word back from Malta to Cornwall via Tasmania, I am now offered a rather attractive link between the island and the Duchy. Phoenicians, it is known, colonised Malta. Phoenicians,. it is known (or confidently asserted), came to Cornwall regularly for tin. The inference, therefore, that a word common to the Maltese and the (obsolete) Cornish languages is of Phoenician origin has its tempta- tions. I go no farther than that. * * * * The latest on longevity. There is living in health and vigour (I think in Scotland) a lady whose father was born in 1772 ; so, at least, I am assured by one of the family. That, I fancy, will take some beating. The lady was born in 1852, by her father's second marriage. * * * * Hitler Spricht "The speech lasted only i6 minutes."—The Times.
"His speech, which lasted 21 minutes . . ."—Necus Chronicle. " Hitler, in a 2o-minute broadcast last night . . ."—Daily Herald. "He spoke furiously for 17 minutes."—Daily Telegraph.
"He spoke for 18 minutes."—Daily Mail. Jemus.
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