A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
THE fourth volume of the Prime Minister's war-time speeches (Onwards to Victory, Cassell, tzs. 6d.) is published this week. I am not much impressed by the way the material has been handled. Mr. Churchill has delivered in the House and on the radio speeches which, in some cases at any rate, are literally imperishable. They contain phrases, at all events, that will live as long as some of the elder or the younger Pitt's. To collect these in a convenient form would be a considerable public service. They are indeed all here, but cluttered up with a whole mass of casual utterances, many of them not speeches at all—such as a message of congratulation to Sir Arthur Harris on the success of the bombing offensive, or a six-line tribute to Cardinal Hinsley, or this, which is brief enough to be quoted in full, " All my compliments to you and your officers and men on your brilliant exploit, the effectiveness of which the photographs already reveal "—which no one, least of all their author, can seriously want preserved. I hope that when the right time comes we shall have from someone a volume, reasonably priced, containing simply the great speeches, wisely and carefully selected.
* * * * That Goebbels' fantastic lie-output is to be read as a sign of German desperation is true enough, but though Germans seem capable of believing anything their capacity to believe these mass- produced inventions needs some explaining. Actually the explana- tion seems not very abstruse. Germans have seen to their cost—in Berlin, in Hamburg, in Cologne, in Leipzic—what massed air-attack can mean. Every item in Goebbels' accounts of the state of southern England—huge fires, billowing clouds of black smoke, con- stant explosions, evacuation of cities, disruption of communications— is simply a description of what has been a matter of common experi- ence to millions of people in Germany. All Goebbels has to say is, " We are doing to England what England did to us, and much worse." That sounds credible enough to a people systematically and efficiently insulated from the real facts.
* * * * Ernesi Parke was a remarkable journalist. I see he is referred to almost everywhere simply as the editor of the Star. He was that, and a very live paper he made it. But the point was his achievement in running both a morning and an evening paper (his Morning Leader was the first halfpenny daily, preceding the Daily Mail by four years). He was always ready to take a bold line, and in his early days, as editor of the North London Press, he was sentenced to twelve months imprisonment on a charge of criminal libel arising out of serious accusations he brought against a certain peer. There is little doubt that the accusations were justified, but when the trial came on the witnesses on whom Parke relied were found to be out of reach of subpoenas, and his defence therefore failed ; it was an episode which did him credit rather than the reverse. He exaggerated the importance of issues like anti-vivisection and anti-vaccination, and he was adamant in his insistence that in all his publications the word which most people spelt " programme " should appear as " program."
* * * * I take considerable pleasure in the light just thrown (according to the Sydney correspondent of the News Chronicle) in Adelaide on the poems of Ern Malley. Ern Malley, said to have died in 1943, at the age of 25, was the dernier cri among esoteric poets in Australa. He was lauded to heaven by Max Harris, editor of Adelaide's high-brow review, Angry Penguins, and by one of the principal university lecturers on literature. The vogue, indeed, reached America ; it may have reached here for all I know. But Ern Malley, it turns out, never was. Two former members of Sydney University, now in the forces, who evidently share my views on certain types of modern poetry, have claimed paternity for the eulogised verses. Their technique was simple. They opened various books, picked out sentences at random, and strung them together in accordance with one over-ruling principle—that in no circumstances must they make sense. The first three lines of one poem, " Culture as Exhibit," came straight from a report on mosquitoes' breeding-grounds. These men have not lived in vain.
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Dr. James Moffatt wrote many theological works, to say nothing of a primer to Meredith's novels, but he will be remembered, and long remembered, pre-eminently for his translation of the Bible in modern speech. It is only one of many such translations, but it stands first by common consent, the second place being generally accorded to Dr. Weymouth's. To read any of these versions, even Moffatt's, is to be impressed afresh with the incomparable dignity and beauty of the Authorised Version, which the revisers of 1881 and 5885 only 'recaptured in part. Moffatt's strength lay in accuracy of scholarship. He was familiar with all the work done on textual criticism and exegesis of the Old and New Testaments in the genera- tion following the appearance of the Revised Version, and for most people the chief value of his translation will be as illumination of some passage left doubtful or obscure in 1611 or the ago's.
* * * One further word on the sentence of the American negro soldier, Laroy Henry, to death on a charge of rape, and the subsequent cancellation of the sentence by General Eisenhower. The question whether there was to be a re-trial can now be cleared up. There is not ; Henry is a free man and is back at duty. Such sentences by American court-martial are, it appears, never regarded as final, and, in fact, no negro soldier in England has been executed for rape (though one, I believe, has for murder preceded by rape). In this case one member of the court which unanimously found the prisoner guilty and sentenced him to death (in the absence of pruinimity death sentence cannot be proved) was a negro officer.
* * * * The House of Lords does not exist in vain. Debating the Educa- tion Bill, it has decided that what the Bill calls " Young People's Colleges " shall instead be called " County Colleges." I am not sure whether the new title describes the institutions concerned ,quite accurately, but in itself it is a great improvement, and I hope the House of Commons will take that view—or improve on the name.
* * * * I am indebted to R. H. H. for a neat and courteous correction an error of which I was guilty last week : " It is true that General Bradley Was named. I think madley, After a poet. But it is Omar Not Homer."
I had observed the fact—too late to put myself right ; but this is
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