A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
LIKE many other people I know, I have been a good deal exercised in the past week regarding methods of showing respect for King George. Of the depth of feeling that has pervaded the whole nation there can be no question. Never perhaps has a great people so expressed itself. No mournful trappings could add anything to the demonstration of sorrow and affection which the queues in Westminster Hall and the multitudi- nous homage of last Tuesday provided. But King Edward was right when he decided that Tuesday should not be officially declared a day of national mourning. The nation made it so, but the nation was not necessarily right. The day could not be a holiday, and no one wanted to make it that. And a lengthened midday stoppage, covering the period . of the funeral at Windsor, would have been more effective in many ways than the con- version of a week-day into a Sunday. For a man to leave his job for an hour or two because of King George, and then go back and do it a little better because of King George, would be the best of all proofs of respect.
* * * * I go a little further than that. There is even a danger that mourning profoundly sincere may take on a touch of the artificial. The B.B.C. is not quite guiltless in regard to that. The general verdict, with which I agree, is that the B.B.C. faced the situation so suddenly thrust on it admirably, but let its emotions get away with it later. Never had news so momentous been announced by wireless, and Sir John Reith deserves warm commendation for the method adopted on the first sad Monday night—and not less for the conspicuous success of the Windsor broadcast last Tuesday. The .cancellation of all regional programmes last week may have been justified, but if so, far more trouble should have been taken to make the single national pro- gramme worthy of the occasion. Worthy of the occasion it certainly was not—particularly on the musical side. And the decision to close down all transmission on Tuesday after the funeral was indefensible. Half the nation that day had little to do but sit at home. Why should Sir John Reith deprive them of the instruction and entertainment he was appointed to provide ? Suitable programmes could easily have been framed. To call this " respect " is to misuse language. What, I wonder, did the B.B.C. consider the right way of spending the last ten hours of Tuesday ?
* * * 41 The poets have not on the whole responded with marked success to the demands made on them in the past ten days. I have read, I think, most of the verses printed in the daily Press—Mr. Masefield's two sonnets, Sir John Squire's poem and the Dean of Durham's (unless I am mistaken in the identity of J. C. S. and C. A. A.) and Mr. Shane Leslie's and Mr. Edmund Blunden's, and two -by Algol in the Morning Post. None of them is anywhere near first class. By no means all of them are near being second class. None, I think, is as good as Mr. A. C. Benson's pcem on the death of Queen Victoria, which first appeared in The Spectator on January 26th. 1901. I should put Mr. Blunden and Algol at the top of the list, but not predict immortality, or even length of days, for their poems or any others. But of course the comparisons that suggest themselves are hardly fair. Tennyson did not, so far as I know, write his tribute to the Prince Consort in the days between the Prince's death and burial, and King George may yet find worthy celebration. Meanwhile journalists have in these last days produced some notable prose. The leading article in The Times of last Saturday, under the heading " The Last Audience," was far finer than any of the poetry.
* 41 Instances of King George's singular consideratentsc recurred so often that no peculiar quality can be claimed for one incident recounted to me a few days ago. Not long after the War an investiture took place: The recipients of distinctions were both military and civilian, the former, of .course, in full uniform, the latter in, decent black. • But times were hard even then for some ex- officers, and one man, whose decoration was a .double D.S.O., had come, no doubt perforce, in a flannel suit. His discomfort as the long file moved slowly up the room towards the sovereign was manifest. At last he reached the King. Instead of receiving the usual formal word, he was held in conversation for something like five minutes, and passed on with the consciousness that the thousand eyes he had imagined looking askance at him were now expressing an unmistakably respectful envy.
* * . * • Curious testimonials to the general humanity of our penal system crop up from time to time. The other day a London magistrate got a letter from a man be had sentenced a few months before as a suspected person. The writer was in a general hospital in the metropolis He knew no one in London and wrote to the magistrate in a moment of loneliness telling him he was there. He promptly received a visit, for which he had not gone so far as to ask, and can count on help and support when he gets out to start life again. Obviously the incident is a considerable tribute to the • magistrate himself, but it also says something, as I have suggested, for our system of criminal justice.
* • * I have mentioned once or twice the astonishing response to Canon Sheppard's recent appeal for the Ethiopian Red Cross. The full total has not yet been officially announced, and I refrain from stating it here (though it has, I believe, been mentioned in public). But it will be found to be very well above £25,000. The previous highest wireless appeal total was under £20,000.
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