A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK

EMBEDDED in the mass of good news from Italy is one thoroughly sinister item. The Times correspondent with the Eighth Army, telegraphing a few days ago, spoke of the capture of nearly five hundred Germans of the First Parachute Division. " They conform in general," he says, " to the type that has now been fre- quently described. They retain a complete but wholly blind and unreasoning faith in the idea that Germany is winning this war. Their average age seems to be about twenty, and most describe their previous occupation as ' youth leaders.' " The Parachute Division, of course, notoriously contains as tough young Germans as are to be found anywhere, and a description of them could not be applied properly to the whole German Army. But it appears to be only a question of the degree to which the inoculation with Nazi doctrine has succeeded. These particular men, as youth leaders, are no doubt not so much inoculated as inoculators ; but of inoculated and inoculators between the ages of, say, eighteen and twenty-five there must be some millions in Germany. It may be, of course, that the shock of discovering that Germany really is beaten will deflate them more completely than seems probable today ; but with or without that the problem of the re-education of Germany may well prove to be the most baffling of all the problems of the peace.

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The maps of Italy move as the armies move. Nemi, among the Alban Hills is full within them now. To how many, I wonder, does it bring back that unforgettable opening passage of Frazer's Golden Bough with its haunting picture of the sacred grove where grew " a certain tree round which at any time of the day, and probably far into the night, a grim figure might be seen to prowl. In his hand he carried a drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if sit every instant he expected to be set upon by an enemy. He was A priest and a murderer ; and the man for whom he looked was sooner or later to murder him and hold the priesthood in his stead. Such was the rule of the sanctuary. A candidate for the priesthood [of Diana] could only succeed to office by slaying the priest, and having slain him he retained office till he was himself slain by a stronger or a craftier." (Macaulay makes the trees plural:

" Those trees in whose dim shadow The ghastly priest doth reign, The priest.who slew the slayer, And shall himself be slain.") The blood of men of many nations may stain in the days immediately ahead waters that the blood of priest after murdered priest stained constantly in days so distant that they hardly belong to history. Some British or French or Polish soldier, seeing Nemi, may perhaps remember that. * * * *

Such readers of this coluinn as find themselves in London in June and the first half of July will, if they are wise, make a point of looking in at the National Gallery to see the National Buildings Record exhibition which has just opened there and is to remain open (nor, unfortunately, between 12.3o and 2.15) till July 15th. The National Buildings Record has not yet obtained—or sought—much public prominence, but in collecting drawings and photographs of outstanding examples of British architecture—ecclesiastical, domestic, municipal—examples, in short, of every kind of building worth studying, it is doing quite invaluable work. Lord Greene, the Master of the Rolls, has been the moving spirit in the enterprise, the well- known architect, Mr. W. H. Godfrey, is its Director, the Treasury

has made some contribution towards the cost (I will repeat that : The Treasury has made some contribution towards the cost), and so far All Souls' College has housed the photographs. Hundreds, or more probably thousands, of the buildings thus perpetuated have been

destroyed in the past four years, a fact which adds greatly to the value of the record. But the collection does not concern only the past. If the national architecture of the future is to preserve continuity with tradition the best examples of a great tradition must be available for

study. And the public as well as architects should study them. * * * * I am glad to see there is a scheme (to be accurate, three schemes) for making Leicester Square respectable—I mean materially ; morally is another question. At present, with the railings gone, what was once a pleasant bit of greenery in the fnidst of cinemas is a lamentable

acre or so of trampled earth. Leicester Fields, as- it used to be, has a great place in London history, both during and after the days of duelling. All sorts of interesting people,—Hogarth, Joshua Reynolds, Isaac Newton, Dr. Burney and his daughter Fanny, John Hunter,—

lived there or thereabouts. And it was in Leicester Square that the

Geographer-Royal, James Wyld, who was also for sixteen years a Liberal Member of Parliament, exhibited his "Great Globe," 6o feet high and lighted with gas (stars outside, physical features of the earth inside), from 1851 to 1862 for the geographical edification of the populace. Clearly Leicester Square must be put straight, and on lines in keeping with the modernisation of the buildings round it—though in fact it is at present a good deal of an amalgam of fairly old and modern.; there are great possibilities in it.

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Controversy about applications for prayer tends to be distasteful. I don't know how far the Co-Operative Movement as a whole is behind the request to clergy and ministers to regard July and as

" Co-operative Sunday " and make some reference in the course of their services to the movement started by the Roc.hdale`Pioneers just two hundred years ago, but the National Federation of Grocers

and Provisional Dealers' Associations, representing a rival form of trading, seems considerably agitated by the suggestion. The Co- operative Movement has considerable merits ; so have the I.C.I. and the B.B.C. and the multiple stores and many other organisations concerned with supplying goods and services to the public. All of them, no doubt, might be the better for being prayed for. But in the circumstances it would seem wise for the Churches to leave the Co-operative Movement to do its own thanksgiving.

* * * * The only serious criticism to which Lord Woolton's White Paper on Employment impels me has relation to the King's English. Clause 63 of the document discusses " the programming of capital

expenditure by public utility companies." Inasmuch as "pro- gramming " is a substantive derived from a verb, it postulates the existence of the verb—" I programme, thou programmest, he pro-

grammes." I don't like it. Does Lord Woolton?

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One of the new words with which the war is enriching the English language is SHAEF, of which much more will be heard in coming weeks. A good many. people (myself among them) have been concerned with it already without knowing what the letters stood for. Having now acquireLd knowledge, I pass it on: Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force. Jews.