A SPECTATO R'S NOTEBOOK B Y Saturday, the iith, this war
will have outlasted that of 1914-18, so far as this country is concerned. The war began for us on August 4th and ended on November uth four years later. This war began for us on September 3rd and will not have ended by December nth four years later. The Teheran and Cairo conferences have inevitably started new buzzings of speculation about when it will will end. All the symptoms or conceivable symptoms are studied. Urgent orders for the construction of landing-craft have been given in the United States ; this slightly depresses the optimists, for it must be some time before craft not yet begun can be in action in Europe. On the other hand, Turkey is said to be tightening up her A.R.P.; hopeful rumours about Bulgaria are current ; Rumania and Hungary are getting encou- ragingly antagonistic to one another. All this put together does certain:y mean more than nothing ; it means, for one thing, that when a collapse begins it will be sudden and general. But actually there is nothing clear or certain to be deduced from either the Teheran or the Cairo conversations except that a general and con- certed offensive will be launched against Germany, with or without the active co-operation of Turkey, at a date and in a form already decided. Anything beyond that is speculation—very fortunately, for if there were legitimate inferences to be drawn about future operations the Germans would draw them at least as quickly and as accurately as a curious public here. As it is the public must suppress its curiosity and so must the Germans. The day will come when it will be satisfied to the full.
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I have not seen the Lords' Hansard for last Tuesday, and I am not sure whether the Lord Chancellor in the debate on war criminals expounded the view which I know he holds, that, while for people charged with specific crimes on specific occasions there should be fair and formal trial, the directors of the whole vast crime—Hitler, Himmler and various others—should be declared outlaws, that is deprived of any protection of the law, and held at the disposal of the Allies to be dealt with as may seem most fit. That seems completely sound. The trial of Hitler would be a discreditable farce. So far as justice is concerned, he might well be shot out of hand. That, how- ever, would be a pity. He should be kept alive to reflect on the past ten years, in some such spot as the Andaman Islands (temporarily in the occupation of his Japanese confederates, with adequate food and no amenities. There must be no St. Helena.
* * * * The publication of the sp_eech delivered by General Smuts to the Empire Parliamentary Association raises one or two interesting ques- tions. Nothing could have been more useful than that the Field- Marshal, with the immense prestige he enjoys, both in his own person and as a member of the War Cabinet, should, as he put it, "think aloud" in the presence of a large assembly of Members of all parties. The meeting was regarded in the first instance as strictly confidential, so much so that someone who was present and told me the meeting had been held added that unfortunately he was not free to quote anything General Smuts had said. The advisability of the subsequent publication of the speech as delivered. I am thinking, of course, in particular of the declaration that "France has gone, and will be gone in our day, and for many a day." That may or may not be true—France has manifested far too much recuperative power in the past to warrant any dogmatic prediction—but whether it is or not it could only pain, and perhaps anger, the French, who are in an intelligibly sensitive mood at the moment, and do no conceivable good to anyone. To think aloud to a private audience on these lines is one thing, to issue to the world so sombre an estimate of France's prospects is very much another. As to the right of General Smuts to publish the speech I should have supposed that was incontestable. He gave the Empire Parliamentary Association the benefit of a first hearing of his words. What he did with them after that was his own concern entirely.
People whose memory does not go far back may be a little surprised to find The Times obituary notice describing the late Sir Edward Parry as "one of the really remarkable men of his time." That does indeed perhaps go rather far, but that Parry- was a notable figure both in law—in his own County Court sphere—and in literature is undeniable. The list of his publications is lengthy, and most of them had quality. Perhaps the greatest public service he rendered in that field was as long ago as 1887, when he edited the Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Richard Temple, making generally available in a convenient form those delightful seventeenth-century documents. His Queen Caroline, more than fifty years later, was an admirable piece of work. On the Bench, Parry always showed marked sympathy for the unfortunate, and he displayed the same attitude when-in the last-war he was President of the War Pensions Appeal Tribunal. I know, because for a time I had the thankless task of defending on behalf of the Ministry of Pensions the awards against which the appeals were directed.
* * - * * From time to time I lunch with X either at his club or mine. Some time ago (as I mentioned in this column) we happened to discuss at lunch Roman Dmowski, one of the Polish representa- tives at the last Peace Conference ; on the way home I bought an • evening paper and saw Dmowski's death announced. A few months later, lunching with X again, I asked him if he knew anything about Korfanty, the Polish guerilla leader in Upper Silesia ; he did not ; on the way home I bought an evening paper and ,saw Korfanty's death announced. On Tuesday of this week I found myself sitting next to X at a club that was neither his nor mine. I talked, not, it is true, to X, but to my neighbour on the other side—about Sir John Maynard ; on my way home I bought an evening paper and saw Sir John Maynard's death announced. It is fair to add that I have discussed with X various other people who, so far as I know, have survived our conversation.
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I see from the Daily Telegraph that "the Bishop of Southwark, Dr. Parsons, has left for Italy, where he will confirm candidates serving in the British forces there." Whether the prelate in question is Dr. Simpson, Bishop of Southwark, or Dr. Parsons, Bishop of Hereford, is not -clear, but in any case a rather interesting question of diocesan demarcation arises. I should have supposed that Italy would be dealt with by the Bishop of Gibraltar, Dr. Harold Buxton. His responsibilities normally include Malta (he flew there at the time of the island's worst blitzes), and from there' to Italy is no great extension. Indeed, he properly exercises "spiritual supervision over English congregations" as far afield as the Caspian—including specifically Italy. Do we need an ecclesiastical Amgot?
Jams.
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