• A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
XT ONE of the Cabinet changes has caused more surprise than the move of Sir Samuel Hoare from the Admiralty, where the rearmament programme is just getting going, to the Home Office, which rumour had marked out for Sir Kingsley Wood. Why did Mr. Chamberlain do it ? The answer, it is safe to say, is that he did it because Sir Samuel wanted the Home Office, which has a higher status than one of the three Defence Ministries, particularly since Sir Thomas Inskip has appeared as co-ordinator. That gives rise to some instructive reflections. The new Prime Minister, sound in wind and limb though he be, is in his sixty-ninth year, and the tenure of his leadership of the party, whether in office or in Opposition, cannot by the nature of things be prolonged. Every Prime Minister has a potential successor, and as a rule it is the Chancellor of the Exchequer. But it is obvious that Mr. Chamberlain's successor in a predominantly Conservative Government cannot be Sir John Simon, who is a National Liberal. (Mr. MacDonald's continuance in office in 1931 is no analogy.) Among Conservative Ministers, Sir Samuel Hoare, who is only 57, is a strong candidate personally, and a stronger in virtue of the new office he now assumes—with Sir Thomas Inskip, who is 61, as a by no means negligible rival. It is clearly to Sir Samuel's advantage to cease to be in the position of being co-ordinated by Sir Thomas.
* * * * No one, I am afraid, can feel much satisfaction at the way in which the marriage of the Duke of Windsor has been conducted.. Whoever may have been responsible for the decision that none of the Duke's relatives and no British official in an official capacity should attend the ceremony, it was a most deplorable ruling. The Duke of Windsor is King George V's son and King George VI's brother. He made his choice between a throne and a wife, and after that great sacrifice he was surely entitled to be spared further penalty. And ostracism is unquestionably a penalty. The Duke has as much right to marry Mrs. Warfield as any of his brothers had to take the wives they did. The world may not approve his choice equally,' but that is his business, not the world's. I for one, and I believe many millions of English people feel the same, would have been far happier if the Duke had had his sister or one of his brothers at his side as he celebrated one of the great events of his life. If all the members of the Royal Family decided that they would prefer not to go to Tours there is, of course, no more to be said, for their views must be completely respected. But if, as is suggested, the decision was the result of representations from elsewhere the representations can and must be deplored. The Duke has made his renunciation, and nothing could be more ungenerous or unjust than to treat him as if he had forfeited his birthright as well as his throne.
* * * * On his day Mr. Churchill can put himself in a different class from any other single speaker in the House of Commons. Tuesday was essentially one of his days. His intervention in the debate on N.D.C., before the Prime Minister had announced the withdrawal of that ill-starred measure, was a ;verb performance, as anyone who took the trouble to read it in the daily papers will realise—genial, incisive, wise, and with brilliant flashes of wit punctuating the wisdom through- out. But to read the speech was only to experience half its savour. The speaker's verve, his wealth of gesture, the inflexions of his voice, his palpable if restrained enjoyment of his own achievement, were all essential parts of an inter- vention such as the House is rarely treated to, and never by anyone except that particular speaker. What bearing has it on Mr. Churchill's future ? Not much, I think, in itself. But it is one of the periodical reminders of the existence in the House of Commons of a politician far more brilliant intellectually and with substantially more executive capacity than half the members of this Cabinet or the last. But Cabinet restraints would sit ill on him after a period of unchartered freedom, and he himself may prefer his un- rhallenged domination of the back benches. If he did not join the Cabinet last week there is no particular reason why he should in the next year.
* * * * The Prime Minister, it is generally agreed, made an admirable speech in the House of Commons on Monday on his predecessor, but I find his discovery of a marked similarity between Mr. Baldwin and Abraham Lincoln a little startling. Whatever the likeness between them, the contrasts were demonstrably far greater. It is true that Mr. Chamberlain sheltered behind comprehensive qualifica- tions, in the words " making all due allowance for differences of education, of upbringing, of country and of time." There is allowance to be made for much more than that. Lincoln dominated his Cabinet (" Well, gentlemen," when all his Ministers opposed him, " six noes, one aye ; the ayes have it ") as Baldwin never did his, and it is not recorded that Artemus Ward was ever read aloud in the Cabinet room in Downing Street. Would Mr. Baldwin have accepted the South's challenge and started the Civil War ? Mr. Baldwin, it is true, might have used the familiar words which the Prime Minister quoted (not quite accurately) " with charity for all, with malice toward none, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work that we are in," but so might many other public men. It is not a very large base on which to rest a comparison that is otherwise unconvincing. * * * * A paragraph in this column a month ago was, I believe, the first public reference to the prospect of the Bishop of London's retirement. It suggested that Dr. Winnington- Ingram might well desire to celebrate his eightieth birthday (next January) before retiring. In his address to his diocesan conference on Monday the Bishop put the date a little later, speaking of carrying on till he had completed fifty years of work in London, to which he came as head of Oxford House in 1889. It is obviously premature to be speculating about his successor, but I am not surprised to see Dr. Fisher, Bishop of Chester, mentioned in public in that connexion, as I heard him mentioned six months or more ago in private.
* * * * It commonly takes two or three months to get the patents for a barony or an earldom through, and for that period we shall have, I suppose, to accustom ourselves to speaking of Sir Stanley Baldwin, K.G. We did it, after all, in the case of Mr. Balfour, who got the Garter some time before his earldom was conferred. It was the more confusing in thnt case because there was another well-known Sir Arthur Balfour. I hope the Heralds will push on with all reasonable diligence with the formalities that will make
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