A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
WHAT, it is inevitable to ask, will have happened by the time this column appears again next week? The feeling that anything may happen at any moment is irresistible ; but no doubt it ought to be resisted, for there is in fact no clear sign yet of German military collapse, though there are many signs of the imminence of complete German military defeat. The warnings that there must be a pause on the Oder are salutary, for the feeling tends to grow that the Russian achievements have been so incredible that there is no reason why they should not go on being incredible indefinitely and without interruption. The Germans themselves, indeed, who seem to be following the plan of always telling their people the worst, suggest that the interruption will be brief enough, and that Zhukov is ready now for a new drive that will carry him in force across the Oder, and no one can predict how much further. As to that, we can afford to wait, without the prospect of waiting very long. One reason for wanting to see Berlin captured, apart from the immense political consequences such an event must involve, is that it will avert the necessity of such slaughter as the mas-raid of last week inflicted. I am not questioning the necessity. If you have war you must have this. If anything is a legitimate military objective, it is a group of railway stations through which abnormally heavy military traffic is passing in execution of a vital strategic movement. And the area on which bombing was concentrated was not residential. But the picture of thousands of miserable and terrified refugees who, after an agonising escape from the east were thronging the stations because there was nowhere else to go—the picture of what happened to those tragic crowds of old men, women and children scars the imagination indelibly.
It is natural, I suppose, that political liberation should lead to a demand for liberation of utterance, but in certain European countries it is by all appearance being carried to excess. I see that in Rome authorisation has been given for the publication of it new daily papers, in addition to the 12 already existing. That makes 23. (London is content with nine ordinary dailies—i.e., other than financial or tiade). In Paris the plague looks like getting worse still. The papers there are, I believe, reduced to a single sheet, but new ones are being started all the time, the authorities taking the view that to refuse permission is an infringement of the liberty of the Press. Unfortunately, a single sheet at 2 francs (roughly 2d.) is a paying proposition, so that there is a financial inducement to new flotations. The objection to this multiplicity of organs is that most of them represent some personal influence or some political opinion, so that their existence tells strongly for sectionalism.
Persons of varying degrees of eminence have written to point out that under the Oaths Act of 1888 it is only permissible to "affirm" instead of taking an oath if you state either that to swear is contrary to your religious belief, or that you have no religious belief. That is so, I know, and for that reason I should like to see the Oaths Act amended so as to allow any person to affirm who desires to do so. All the provisions regarding perjury apply, I believe, to an affirmation equally with an oath. The difficulty about "contrary to religious belief" is the definitipn. What, in fact, is a "religious belief" about oaths? What I myself dislike is the suggestion that holding a Bible in my hand, swearing by Almighty God, and ending with the invocation "so help me God," makes any difference to the quality of my veracity, when, in fact, it makes none at all. Does that make swearing "contrary to my religious belief "?
One of the last acts of the Archbishop of Canterbury while he still held the See of London must have been to choose as his Lent Book Canon Charles Smyth's The Friendship of Christ. I should doubt whether he has done _anything, better worth doing since. Picking upthis half-crown paper-covered volume of less than a hundred pages purely by chance, I became, as I read, deeply and increasingly impressed. Let no one suppose that because this is sub-titled "A Devotional Study," there is anything pietistic about it. The astringent character of Canon Smyth's writing is not unknown to readers of this journal, and from his starting-point in Cicero's De Amicitia to the goal betokened by the title of the book the appeal is hardly less to the mind than to the spirit. Rarely have I seen so much material for thought packed in so small a space. The thought may or may not result in conclusions identical with Canon Smyth's,
but it cannot fail to lead to profitable reflection.
A writer's death usually has the effect of calling attention to his works and so stimulating their sale—though they are obviously as well worth reading before that event as after it. So no doubt the death of Lord Charnwood will send some new readers to his Abraham Lincoln, since virtually all his obituary notices have called attention to the book. The best tribute to it, I think, is to say that it is a volume worthy in every way of its subject • very few writers can have written a better life of a statesman of another country. For English readers it is better in many ways than the one-volume life by
Nicolay, or the longer and most admirable biography by Carl Sandberg, for American works naturally take for granted many references and contexts familiar to Americans. But it is not likely, I imagine, that Lord Charnwood's book is available today except from libraries or second-hand.
Another of the sOcieties I should like to form if I had time (there are quite a lot of them by now) is an Anti-Cliché League. I open a daily paper and find someone opening an article with the sentence "When the report of the Wallasey cruelty case appeared I could not believe my eyes." This, of course is complete nonsense. The writer never for a moment doubted the functioning of his eyes. He never dreamed of ringing up his oculist for an appointment. He may not have believed that what he read was true, but that is a totally different matter. In short, this, besides being a cliché, is one of the stupidest clichés in existence. However, he might have rubbed his eyes about it. That would be worse.
I am not quite sure whether uncles ought to be admitted in the longevity competition. After all, a man's father might have had a brother much younger than himself. However, I cannot refrain from passing on, as a kind of uncovenanted mercy, information regarding General Owen Hay, who lives at Tunbridge Wells, and at the age of 98 is still prosperous and active ; he possessed an uncle who foughi at the Battle of the Nile in 1798.
The first syllable of the first line of an Alcaic can be short. Tc the many correspondents who have reminded me of what I had discreditably forgotten, the familiar Vides ut alta stet nive candidum Soracte I tender my thanks. (But it isn't often short, all the same.) Jaws.
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