A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

have the incidental merit of enabling the electors to pay relatively greater attention to a candidate's character and capacity as distin- guished from his party label. Out of the House thus elected the leader of the largest party returned would form a new National Administration. I see some flaws in this scheme, but I see many merits in it.

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Major Gwilym Lloyd George, I understand, was offered the post of Minister of Food when Lord Woolton resigned. The offer had obvious attractions, and Major Lloyd George had had con- siderable experience of the work of the department, which he repre- sented most successfully in the House of Commons for nearly two years. He declined, and is sticking to his much more thankless post because he feels he ought to see the job through. His decision, which is greatly to his credit, ought to be known, for in this case to know is to appreciam As Minister of Fuel and Power he is faced on the threshold of winter with a more difficult situation than is generally realised. Economy at least as strict as last year's, both domestic and industrial, will have to be practised. We got through last winter—just—thanks, in part at any rate, to a publicity campaign which undoubtedly did a good deal to make the country " fuel-saving-conscious." That all seems to have been dropped. Exhortations can no doubt be overdone, but not done without.

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Having, no matter how, enjoyed the advantage of what is called a preview of Mr. Harold Nicolson's article on another page, I may permit myself a few words regarding it. He, it would appear, was visiting Oxford while I was visiting Cambridge. He thinks it can rain nowhere as it does at Oxford. I cannot coun- tenance that slur on my university ; its achievement in rain is equal to its achievement in football. Owing to the rain, I refrained from going to see Oxford defeated at Rugby at Cambridge, and he probably refrained for the same reason from going to see Cambridge victorious simultaneously at Association at Oxford. For one other observation Mr. Nicolson will, I hope, forgive me. Hard on the heels of a reference to Worcester and Balliol Colleges (Mr. Nicol- son's order) he refers to Tennyson's return to Trinity. He knows and I know, but probably not quite everybody knows, that the foundation in question is Trim Coll., Cam. There is, I believe, another institution of the same name not far from Balliol. For the rest, I am much interested to see, after reading Mr. Nicolson, how similar Oxford and Cambridge in war-time are in fundamentals.

At Cambridge, I was told, everything is being kept going, continuity is being preserved, far more in this war than in the last, even though the generations overlap so little and there are so few second-year men to hand tradition on to the freshmen. At John's, in spite of the number of dons released for war-work, there were thirty (some of them guests, as always) dining at the high table on Sunday and sitting round the fire in the, combination-room afterwards. That would have been a good muster in x938: * * * * It is fully consistent with the genuine respect I entertain for Mr. Lionel Curtis to suggest that he is getting portentouser and

portentouser every day. His latest pamphlet is entitled An Open Letter to Lords, Commons and Press (no less), and the burden of it-is a pontifical castigation of the Press for not devoting its limited space to discussing a constitutional departure—the complete federa- tion of the units of the British Commonwealth—which Mr. Curtis believes in and very few othe- people do. Why on earth should

it? Mr. Curtis is, of course, perfectly entitled to think such federation desirable. Other people are equally entitled to think (as

I do myself) that an attempt to force federation on the Common- wealth would be to disrupt the Commonwealth. If, holding that view, we see no occasion for spending space on the proposal, why should we be upbraided? Of the depths of Mr. Curtis's convic-

tions there can be no question. But has he never heard of Crom- well's great exhortation: " I beseech you, gentlemen, in the bowels of Christ think it possible you may be mistaken "? I am very much afraid Mr. Curtis does not think that possible. * * * *

- I wonder whether Dr: Benes is discussing technical as well as political questions at Moscow. One of the leading authorities on aviation in a European State (not Czechoslovakia) tells me that the greatest air-centre in Europe after the war will be Prague. " If you take a map of Europe," he said, " and draw a circle of, say, Soo miles radius, with Prague as centre, you: will find it includes almost every country of the Continent." His own country, by added, would immediately inaugurate a service direct to Prague. He was clear, by the way, that Germany must be allowed no civil aviation at

To my suggestion that the development of fighters today was such that civil aeroplanes would be far too vulnerable to be convertible to

military purposes, he rejoined that the transport planes which made the subjection of Norway and Crete possible were virtually civil machines. Germans would have to be.content to make use of the

international services even for internal journeys. * * * *

Presiding at the Nansen Club lunch on Wednesday, Dr. Worm- Muller made skilful use of the outrage perpetrated at Oslo Univer- sity by the Germans and reported in that day's papers. Referring 10 the mass deportation of from t,zoo to 1,50o students and professors to Germany, Dr. Worm-Miller exclaimed: "Nansen's university,

with the monument to Nansen in its garden! " adding, "how Nesen would have applauded their resistance to the Nazis." It is an admir- able move, this foundation of a club not merely* to keep the memory

of Nansen alive, but to work for the ideals which Nansen so con- spicuously personified—and to which Lord Cecil, his collaborator for so long in many fields, paid notable tribute on Wednesday. " Pram" —" Forward''—as the chairman pointed out, was not merely the name of Nansen's ship, but the key to Nansen's life. jANUS.