A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
STRAW-VOTES, even those taken by Dr. Gallup's organisations in this country and the United States, must be accepted with every kind of reservation. It is claimed, of course, that while the questions are put to a variety of persons chosen largely at random, the field covered is large enough to make the results a fair representative sample of common thought. It may be ; the law of averages commands respect ; but there is always the possibility that by some freak of chance the questionees (I know no other term) may come predominantly from some particular stratum or school of thought. When all allowance has been made for that, it is rather surprising that in the last poll taken in Great Britain the first choice for Prime Minister in the event of a vacancy occurring is not Mr. Churchill, who gets 25 per cent. of the votes, or Lord Halifax, who gets 7 per cent., but Mr. Eden, who gets 28 per cent. I make no attempt to determine what precise deductions should be drawn from this. But it is signi- ficant that two Ministers both of whom are notorious for their insistence on a vigorous prosecution of the war should secure between them over 5o per cent. of the votes cast. And it may be no less significant that Mr. Eden, who (since he has been largely out of the public eye since his retirement) still stands primarily in the country's mind for international co-operation through a League of Nations, should be the voters' preferred candidate. Mr. Churchill, incidentally, stands for that equally.
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