A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
SINCE it is clear that the complete eliminatiOn of Berlin is definitely in prospect, it is worth while trying to estimate what that may mean politically—quite apart from its more obvious industrial and strategic consequences. We do not always realise what the pre- dominance of Prussia in the German Reich is. In 1939 the popula- tion. of Germany was 69,622,483 ; out of that Prussia accounted for 41,762,040. And it was in Berlin primarily that that predominance was expressed. In population it completely overshadowed all other German cities. Berlin had 4,332,242 inhabitants ; the next largest, Hamburg, 1,682,220 ; no other city touched the million ; Munich, the third city, was not half the size of Hamburg. That centralisation and that predominance created ideal conditions for a totalitarian government established at Berlin—and ideal conditions for the Gestapo, which with the minimum of effort and the maximum of efficiency could maintain its iron grip on the heart of the Reich. Berlin gone, where will the heart of the Reich be? The significant fact is that it will almost certainly not be in Prussia. Look at the other Prussian cities of any size—Cologne, Essen, Frankfurt, Dussel- dorf, Hanover ; every one of them is more vulnerable to air attack than Berlin. One city, it is true, I have omitted, Breslau, to which one or two departments of government have already gone. But Breslau is almost on the Polish frontier ; to administer Germany from there would be rather like administering France from Toulon. Breslau, moreover, with the Russians inside Poland, may itself not be the healthiest of resorts.
* * * * One satisfactory feature of the elevations to the peerage announced in the New Year Honours' List is that three out of the five new peers appear to have no sons to succeed them, so that 'what has been created in these cases is in effect life peerages (unless the succes- sion goes to a brother or a cousin), which are entirely rational, not hereditary peerages, which are completely irrational, and only survive at all through the astonishing subservience to tradition manifested in this one particular by a not fundamentally reactionary country. I know I shall be told that there is no more reason to object to a hereditary peerage than to a hereditary monarchy. The answet is that a hereditary monarchy is required to justify itself—and does. If a sovereign chose to model himself on George IV that would be the end of the hereditary monarchy, or at any rate of that particular monarch. But a hereditary peer can be guilty of any kind of vice, short of putting himself within reach of the criminal law, and manifest any degree of mental in- competence, short of putting himself within reach of the lunacy laws, and yet sit every day in the House of Lords and vote against measures which some of the best brains in the country have devised and discussed in the House of Commons. It is a strange anomaly, not to say a strange liability, to carry into the post-war world.
* * I suppose an increase in gambling at a time like this is explicable by the fact that a great many people have more money than usual in their pockets and fewer outlets for it as the result of various controls. The Churches' Committee on Gambling has just issued figures which show that totalisator betting alone on 92 dog-tracks has increased from £36,000,000 in 1938 to £42,000,000 in 1942 ; for nineteen tracks in the Greater London area the rise was from £22,238,791 to £23,897,483. Now, without suggesting that these statistics mean that the country is going to the dogs metaphorically as well as literally, or that putting a few shillings or even pounds on a greyhound is a mortal sin, we may and must conclude that the squandering of over £40,000,000 in this particular way demonstrates the amount of irresponsibility prevalent in wide circles at this crisis of the war. The stewardship of wealth, even the weekly wage-earners' wealth, is not simply a religious virtue ; it is a civic virtue, which a democracy can ignore only to its detriment. Money has its relation to life, and it is possible even today to think of a dozen ways in which it can be used to enlarge and enrich life— quite apart from the duty of lending any superfluity to the State. The man who throws his money away on the tote is not a criminal ; but neither is he a good citizen.
There are moments when the British Press seems resolved at all costs to play into its critics' hands. What is to be said of London daily papers, two of which display on their front pages and two on their second news pages the grievances of a Mr. Howard Thomas who, having been proclaimed regularly, as I under- stand, for the last two years as producer of the Brains Trust, suffered the intolerable outrage of not being so proclaimed on Tuesday, January 4th? Mr. Thomas apparently took his troubles to the papers, two of which, as I say, treated them the next morning as front-page news—with the capture of Byela Tserkov, the record bombing of the " rocket-gun coast," and other events of that order. If this is the new journalism, we may pray for a return to the old. As to the general question, the B.B.C. seems to me a full hundred per cent. right. It is no part of its business at all to build up individual reputations. There has been far too much of that in the past, whether by accident or design, and if the B.B.C. is beginning to set its face against the practice, it is to be congratulated. Its producers, there is reason to believe, are very adequately paid for the work they do ; if they think not, it is always open to them to seek remuneration more proportionate to their deserts elsewhere.
* * * * The death of George Ridley, the Chairman of the Labour Party, is profoundly to be deplored. He was a man of integrity, great ability and a most encouraging soundness of judgement. He had, indeed, a capacity for real statesmanship, and after his year's chair- manship of the party would well have earned office in the National Government. I first made contact with him as the result of a most admirable speech he contributed to a debate on India—directed as much to the left-wing hotheads of his own party as to anyone else— in the House of Commons a year or eighteen months ago. That acquaintance engendered in me a profound respect for this able, un- assuming, hard-working (I am afraid too hard-working) man. His death is a loss to much more than the Labour Party. * * * *
Lady Oxford's new book, Off the Record, is to be published next week. It deals with the many Prime Ministers—a full dozen, I fancy— whom she has known personally, and one of the claims made for it is indiscretion. When to all the writer's natural gifts in that direction is added conscious effort th" result should be arresting. * * * * " On New Year's Day there's something of Janus in all of us."— Mr. Richard Law, in a broadcast to America.
And what about the other 365 days? So much for hopes of- becoming a pervasive and perpetual influence. JANus.
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