A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
THE conflict raging round the slight (physically) and attractive (in every way) figure of Mr. Malcolm MacDonald will have repercussions far beyond Ross and Crotnarty. National Liberals outside the constituency are highly indignant at the proposal to hand over a safe National Liberal seat to a candidate who has never been a Liberal of any kind. No one, moreover, knows how the matter has been arranged. String-pulling by the Conser- vative Chief Whip in Mr. MacDonald's favour has been public and open. But who secured National Liberal support for a National Labour candidate is much more obscure. Sir John Simon, the head of the National- Liberal Party, is at Monte Carlo, and when he gets back he is likely to meet with vigorous representations from his followers. But the major fact is that two defeated National Labour Ministers have had to be accommodated in the one case with a Conservative seat and in the other with a National Liberal. National Labour has no founda- tion in the constituencies, and the two MacDonalds, if elected by Conservative and National Liberal votes, will in no way widen the basis of the National Government, for they bring to it no more than their own personalities. ,Moreover, the dozen National Labour members in the House of Commons are only there by favour of voters of the other two parties. They include some men of promise, like Mr. Kenneth Lindsay and Mr. Harold Nicolson, but if the promise is to be fulfilled they will have to find another and a firmer platform. We are not going on with five political parties (to say nothing of the I.L.P.) and the first one to go, since it has least raison d'etre, will no doubt be National Labour.
I shall be surprised if the new Cambridge theatre, sponsored by the ever resourceful Mr. Keynes, opens its doors an January 27th, as I believe it is still officially supposed to do. So will be one of the workmen who explained to me, though indeed little explanation was necessary, how much still remained to be done when I paid the foundations a visit the other day. However that may be, it will certainly be a theatre worth waiting for. The technical equipment has been designed to meet equally lavishly the diverse requirements of opera, ballet and drama ; the cinema apparatus is reported to be the most up-to-date in the country ; the seats, each complete with the latest refinement in smokeless ashtrays, have leg-space alleged to be adequate even for a rowing blue ; and the restaurant is expected to prove the daily point of convergence of every epicurean taste in university and town. Whether the fare provided on the stage can live up to the quality of its surroundings remains to be seen, but in point of variety at any rate it will give little opportunity for complaint. A film will be shown every afternoon, and in the evening either a play or a ballet will be performed, generally by a London company.
I suppose it must be true that Professor Gilbert Murray is 70, for he says so, and he ought to know. Fortunately there is every sign that he has twenty good years of work before him, and this particular milestone need only be regarded as an opportunity given to his friends to signalise their appreciation of him. They have seized it very happily, and their tribute to him takes the form of an honour that may also be in a minor degree lucrative. The two volumes of essays to be presented to him, one by his Oxford and one by his London friends, should, if they sell, bring in a little stream of royalties which will, in defiance of the laws of gravity, flow constantly up to the Château Murray on Boar's Hill. The contributors have all forgone their fees. Whether the printers, binders, publishers and booksellers are being equally altruistic I have not heard. Even so, I can guarantee with assurance that enough will come in to pay Dr. Murray's wine-bills for ever.
* * * The evidence given by a chemist at a London inquest this week, to the effect that though the addresses and signatures on doctors' prescriptions were usually illegible he always made up the prescription if the Latin text of it seemed all right, sounds a little startling to the layman, who tends to think name and address desirable as a guarantee of good faith. But why in fact are signatures so constantly illegible ? How often, at any rate in newspaper offices, do you get a perfectly good letter, every word of it clear, culminating in a scrawl which no one in heaven or earth could decipher ? (It can be very awkward if the letter needs a reply, for many people are highly indignant at having their names misspelt on envelopes.) I believe there is a kind of subconscious arrogance about it. The writer's name is so familiar to himself that of course everyone else knows it, and when he gets to the end of his letter he drives his pen over the paper with a gesture that may be magnificent but is emphatically not calligraphy. With typewritten letters there is no excuse. They should, as they much more often do in other countries, bear both a typewritten and a pen-written signature.
* * * * I cannot readily recall any parallel to the steady and sustained rise in the circulation of the Daily Telegraph. I have no record of previous figures, but the 460,000 announced on Wednesday must be more than double what the total was not long ago. What must be singularly satisfying to Lord Camrose and his colleagues is the knowledge that the advance is due to no sudden leap consequent on adventitious aids like liberal free-insurance schemes or any other kind of " stunt." It is, in fact, as anyone who follows the Telegraph regularly recognises, the just reward of sound journalistic merit. I know no daily which has improved as much in all that makes a paper what it should be as the Telegraph has in the last three years.
* * There was one remarkable feature about the response to Canon Sheppard's wireless appeal for British Red Cross work in Ethiopia on Sunday night. Over £500 was received by the first post on Monday morning. Since the appeal was only made at 8.45 on the Sunday evening that means that the sums, large and small, which made up the £500 must all have been posted at pillar-boxes in the London area the same evening—for no provincial letters posted after 8.45 would have been in time for the first delivery in London the next day. JANUS.
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