A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
C OMETHING may with advantage be added to what I said last week about the British Embassy at Washington. Since I wrote I have been sent a passage from a private lecture delivered recently in London under influential auspices. The lecturer (with whose permission I quote) had just returned from the United States, and what he had to say was: "Until we change (with one or two exceptions) the whole of the Embassy staff in Washington and that of the British Library of Information we shall not begin to tell America and the American people in words they can understand and in a way they can understand just what Britain stands for. The social change going on in this country is just not appreciated in the United States today."
Supplement that by a leading article in the Toronto Globe and Mail of April znd (based incidentally on a letter in The Spectator), headed "A Problem of Manners," and observing among other things: "There is a type of what somebody called 'spurious English
gentry' quite incapable of concealing their pity for people who have not had the good fortune to be born in England, and Canadians as well as Americans know how irritating the manifestations of this pitying superiority can be."
All too true, I am afraid. But the British airmen and child evacuees at least are doing a lot to put matters right.
There is something verging on the indecent in the persistence of the Council of the Zoological Society in its endeavours to oust Dr. Julian Huxley from the secretaryship of the society (by suspending the office of secretary under emergency powers). Fortunately this step requires the assent of the Privy Council, and that body dismissed the Zoo Council's first application as being irregular in form. A second application was therefore put in, and that has been promptly dismissed too. It appears that before it can put in a third the Council will have to call a general meeting and take a vote of Fellows of the Society, which involves stating An public, or semipublic, what the grounds of complaint against Dr. Huxley are. The hollowness of the ostensible ground—the need for economy—has already been exposed, for Dr. Huxley offered voluntarily to forgo his salary for the period of the war. The Council must produce something better than that. Perhaps the giraffes don't like the look of him. I don't suppose, for that matter, they like the look of a Council which chooses the occasion of the secretary's absence in
America to propose the suspension of his office.
It is natural, no doubt, that Mr. W. J. Brown, fresh from his victory at Rugby, should take himself rather seriously, but his article in Tuesday's Daily Mail on "The Independents: Will They Form a Party? Will Their Numbers Grow? Will They Support Mr. Churchill?" (the headings are probably not his, but they accurately represent the article) evinces a rather strange understanding of the Parliamentary situation. Independent members are not a new phenomenon in the House of Commons. That label is worn at present by Sir Arthur Salter, Mr. A. P. Herbert, Mr. Edmund Harvey, Mr. Vernon Bartlett, Miss Rathbone, Commander KingHall, to mention no others—though Sir Stafford Cripps is of the number. The questions "Will They Form a Party," &c., have never been asked regarding them. Is it the advent of Mr. Brown and Mr.
Reakes of Wallasey which makes the interrogation suddenly r vant? Is the stormy petrel of Labour to weld into an integral Is half a dozen individuals so different from one another, and eac them, it may be added, much more radically different from Brown? Many strange things are possible in war-time, but one, I fancy, would be a little too strange. Even in peacefor "independents," who are ex hypothesi non-party, to fo party would be a little odd.
One aspect of Mr. Brown's electoral success raises a question some interest. There-is no doubt, as reports from the constitu indicated, that though the candidate was unfamiliar with the elect a large number of the electors were familiar with the candidate well-known broadcaster. Mr. Vernon Bartlett would no do readily agree that that applied to him equally at Bridgwater. 0 names ot M.P. broadcasters could be mentioned. In such cases B.B.C. confers unintended—and in certain of the cases very NI deserved—benefits. It is a point of some importance. Mr. Tho Handley could, I imagine, get elected for any constituency in country (except perhaps the Universities) if he chose to st Though a broadcasting candidate may seem to his opponent to e an unfair advantage, I doubt if there is much wrong. After all broadcast:r is judged on his merits, and the thing cuts two ‘1 There are plenty of radio orators I would vote against till I blind ; for example "passage obliterated by censor].
Various Members of the House of Commons have been disp ing an intelligible interest in Lord Beaverbrook's present posm The general public, I think, shares their curiosity, particularly to the degree of official responsibility attaching to his public ads in America of a second front. Mr. Attlee in his answers ambiguous. Lord Beaverbrook, he said, was as free to express own opinions as any other person. But that is only so if he a private persotl, and Mr. Attlee had to admit that though the Minister of Production "is not holding a definite appointme none the less "he is undertaking a special mission of an info kind," which had then (on Thursday of last week) not come to end. Now Lord Beaverbrook is back in this country, and it rather important to know whether he is simply an influential ne paper proprietor or something else. Events will no doubt sho The B.B.C. discussion on India on Tuesday evening was a success, so much so that this particular method ought to be, no doubt will be, actively developed. The three Indians—a Con member, a Moslem League member and a Moderate—did parts admirably, and the accident of differences in tone and a effectively emphasised the differences in their points of view. British listeners the debate had a most valuable educational. in demonstrating the difficulty of reaching any solution whil.e Congress and the Moslem League policies remain irreconola and Mr. Carl Heath, the English participant in the discuss pointed out usefully that in addition to the Moslems there were " minorities " like the Sikhs and the Depressed Areas, whose have to be considered. Sir Frederick Whyte, needless to say, fl an ideal Chairman. Jou
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