A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK T HAPPENED to read two pronouncements on an
important subject within an hour or two one morning last week. One was by the Editor of the Nineteenth Century.
"The whole nation," he wrote, "is becoming aware that a German offensive against these islands may be expected, although opinion differs as to when it may be expected and what precise form it will take."
At the same time, Mr. Ian Orr-Ewing, M.P., was reported as describ- ing speeches at a meeting called to discuss possible invasion as "drivelling nonsense." Having seen no report of the utterances in question, I must suspend judgement on their wisdom or folly ; but if it is a question of odds for or against the chances of an attempt at invasion, I should say that money wagered on the " for " side stood a good chance of being lost. Of course, we must be prepared to the last button against any eventuality, and it is conceivable that if Russia could be completely neutralised and the great bulk of the German army and air force transferred to France, a stroke at our shores might be attempted. But if we are not in a position to invade the Continent today, it is difficult to imagine how Germany could conceivably invade Britain. She never enjoyed command of the seas, she is being, and is bound to go on being, increasingly outclassed in the air, and the millions of men which our Army and Home Guard represent are being reinforced monthly by Americans and more Canadians. Heavy parachute raids may well be attempted as a desperate venture for wrecking purposes pure and simple, but on all the known evidence invasion from the sea seems a remoter possibility than ever before—and likely to grow remoter still.
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Some notes on the bombing of Budapest by the Russians, which have reached me from a Hungarian source in this country, contain one or two pertinent comments which are worth reproduction. The raids, it is pointed out, are hitting the favourite " hide-out " of the Germans, who had flocked there in tens of thousands to enjoy safety, comfort and high living, and at the same time they explode the assurance of the Hungarian Government that this war is for Hungary a one-way enterprise, to be fought out on Russian soil exclusively. More than that, Budapest, which is, it is claimed, the world's largest milling centre after Minneapolis, is a most vulnerable bottle-neck of Germany's food supplies, the more so as the Hungarian capital is the centre of an elaborate railway system by which the corn is brought to the mills from the provinces. Quite apart from that, the first Hungarian communiqué made it clear that last week's raid (which has been quicidy followed up) found Budapest practically undefended. If Hitler wants to protect his granary, so far as it can be protected, he will have to strip other equally vulnerable towns of anti-aircraft guns.
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Eden Phillpotts once wrote a comedy called The Farmer's Wife. There is room, if some of the stories I hear are true, for something like a semi-tragedy on the same subject. The average farmer's wife is an indispensable, tireless, uncomplaining figure, but burdens are being laid on her to which the normal human 'system is unequal. "Half the farmers' wives in the country are on the verge of nervous break-downs" is one rather sweeping verdict by a well-informed student of British agriculture. The reasons are obvious. Th farmer's wife always had the indoor work, including the dairy and often the poultry, on her hands. Today she has been ruth lessly stripped of what domestic help she had, and in most easel it is she rather than her husband who attempts to grapple will the mass of semi-intelligible forms and questionnaires showered it on every farmer by the Ministry of Agriculture, the War Agri cultural Committees, the Ministry of Food, the Petroleum Board, and a dozen other local and national emergency organisations. An while land-girls may be a blessing to the farmer, they only ad to his wife's cares when they have to be lodged and done for whet they work. There may be an element of exaggeration in this, but there is certainly a considerable substratum of truth.
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A.B.C.A.—the Army Bureau of Current Affairs—which has just completed its first year of very successful existence, is launching a new venture at the beginning Of next month. The lectures given by officers on the basis of material supplied by A.B.CA. have had the effect—precisely the effect they were meant to have—of stimu- lating a desire for more information. To provide that a Forces Book Club has been floated, and it will begin operations on October 1st. Any unit on putting up £3 will get, on the first of each month, ten Penguin books, some of them fiction, selected by A.B.C.A. headquarters, most of them, of course, books already published (like Sir Bernard Pares' Russia), some of them new. What is more, arrangements have been made by which certain new and expensive books will be printed for the Artny, Navy and Air Force alone in a cheap edition, and supplied to units under this scheme. "This is a reading Army," says one of the men in the best position to know. It should be more than ever so when, the new Book Club gets to work.
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Mr. Claud Mullins is not always conspicuously happy in his pronouncements from the bench, and his commendation of the gentleman who knocked a cigarette out of the mouth of a person who insisted on smoking in a non-smoking carriage could too easily be read as a plain encouragement to anyone to take the law int° his own hands when he saw fit ; crimes passionels would be justified beyond dispute ; our legal system exists for the precise purpose of precluding that. But the fine inflicted on the offender was, of course, abundantly justified. The -days when smoking carriages were so labelled and all residuary rights went to the non- smoker are long past. Non-smoking compartments on ordinan trains are in a proportion of one to six, or even less. We are a most decently-behaved people as a whole, but insistence on forcing tobacco-smoke on people who prefer to be without it is the reverse of decent. If reasonable rights are invaded with impunity they will soon vanish altogether.
* * * * I am not quite clear what comptometers are, but they are persons, not machines. The Ministry of Labour knows all about them It recently called up several of them who were employed by 3 well-known firm. Then with great intelligence it sent some of them back to the same firm as trainees. Others—one at any rate—it sent back to the same work at lower pay.
jaNns.
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