A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
PECULATIONS, such as I indulged in last week, about
Lord Linlithgow's successor, are stilled by the announce- ment that Lord Linlithgow is to be his own successor for another six months. It is not a satisfactory arrangement, in spite of the plausible arguments with which the announcement of the further prolongation of the Viceroy's term of office is adorned. The one thing India desires is some sign that things are not to go on precisely as they are today, and this makes it look extremely likely that they will, though, of course, it is quite open to Lord Linlithgow to pursue further certain reforms he has initiated, by, for example, completing the Indianisation of his Council. But what is really depressing is the conclusion that there is no one in the length and breadth of the United Kingdom, or indeed the whole Com- monwealth, both equal to the great responsibilities the Viceroyalty entails, and willing to undertake them. It is an immense oppor- tunity for someone, and though the various Ministers and others who are said to have been invited to go to Delhi may all have had good reasons for declining, the fact that Lord Linlithgow is carrying on simply because no one can be found to succeed him does argue a distressing impoverishment in the field of constructive statesmanship. And what likelihood is there of a sudden afflux of suitable candidates in six months' time? Meanwhile, to turn to another aspect of the Indian problem, the need for competent British speakers who can put the British case to American audi- ences is, as a prominent American particularly friendly to this country impressed on me this week, as urgent as ever. American Universities are full of young Indians preaching the Congress gospel wherever they go. It is perfectly easy to make reasonable Americans, which means most Americans, appreciate the difficulties of the Indlan situation once the case is intelligently put. But it is
not being put, intelligently or otherwise. * *
There is a wholesome and fruity vigour about one comment on the Beveridge Report,—one, moreover, brief enough to permit of quotation in extenso here. It appeared in The Times last week, and ran as follows: SIR,—In my opinion, the way of the Beveridge Report is the road to the moral ruin of the nation; it is the way tending to weaken still further the sp'xit of initiative and adventure, the stimulus of competition, courage, and self-reliance. It substitutes emphasis on rights for emphasis on obligations, and collective personal charity for private personal charity. It is a blow at the heart of the nation, with the weapon of a seductive opiate. It is the way of sleep, not a symptom of the vitality of our civilisation, but of its approaching end.—Yours, &c., OSWALD T. FALK 14 St. Giles', Oxford.
Mr. Falk, I believe, is a stockbroker, and I should judge a pretty comfortable stockbroker. I have no doubt many good causes benefit by his private personal charity. I have no doubt, too, that stockbroking—a completely honourable profession—calls for high qualities of initiative and adventure. But somehow, when I think of farm-labourers and artisans earning about as much in a fort- night as I (perhaps quite wrongly) assume Mr. Falk to earn in a day by facilitating the exchange of stocks and shares, falling under the disabilities and anxieties of illness or unemployment or old age, this full-tongued exercise in invective against an attempt to ensure them bare freedom from want leaves me—not cold, but a little hot.
The spectacle of five Law Lords sitting in judgement 'on a sash-cord, after a High Court Judge and three Lord Justices had done the same, is an admirable example of the meticulous attention
the law can pay to apparent trifles. But in point of fact the principle involved in the case in question was by no means trivial,
and it directly interests every tenant. The occupant of a house
owned by Salford City Council reported to the rent-collector that a sash-cord in the only window in a top bedroom was broken. The window consequently jammed. Nothing was done about it, and in due time the other cord broke, with the result that the sash fell, crushing the tenant's hand. She sued the City Council for damages, but Mr. Justice Croom-Johnson found against her, on the ground that the defective sash-cord did not prevent the house from being reasonably fit for human habitation within the meaning of the Act. The Appeal Court upheld that ruling, but last Friday the House of Lords, in a very sensible judgement read by Lord Atkin, took the view that the breaking of one cord involved the strong probability that the other would break in due course, that in any case the window must remain permanently open or permanently shut, that this rendered the room unfit for human habitation, and that, as there were only two bedrooms all told, the house as a whole became unfit for habitation by a working-class family. Damages of k26o were accordingly awarded to the plaintiff. If it is a nice point of law it is a plain piece of common sense.
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The presentation of Cliveden to the National Trust by Lord Astor is to be welcomed not merely because it means the acquisi- tion for public purposes of a great house, which has not, as it happens, the merit of great antiquity, but because it ensures the preservation of a noble reach of the Thames, of which, by the way, an impressive view is obtained from the slopes of Cliveden itself ; the fact that the adjoining stretch of bank, owned by Lord Desborough, is to be safeguarded equ lly from building, is doubly welcome. The original house at Cliveden had a Royal tenant in Frederick Prince of Wales—Poor Fred—son of George II and father of George III; it was there, and in his time, that "Rule Britannia," verse if not poetry, was first heard, for it had a place in Thomson's Masque of Alfred, performed for the first time in the open-air theatre at Cliveden in 1740. The sentiments it expresses, perhaps, had better not be emphasised overmuch if Cliveden is ultimately devoted, as Lord and Lady Astor wish, to some purpose serving the promotion of Anglo-American understanding.
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Mr. Geoffrey Mander, I am glad to see, has been pursuing the question of the "University of Sulgrave" a little farther in the House of Commons. He asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer on Tuesday whether all universities in Great Britain were at present receiving funds from the University Grants Committee. The Chan- cellor replied, "Yes, Sir." Did that, Mr. Mander pursued, include the great and famous University of Sulgrave? "No, Sir," answered the Chancellor, "I would hardly include that under the title of 'university '." A furthet question by Miss Rathbone (who represents the English Universities), "Can the right hon. gentleman not do something to warn the country about this bogus and dis- creditable university?" received no answer—and perhaps needed
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