A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
WHY, I wonder, (1) do the more extreme left-wing pacifists constitute themselves ipso facto scientific authorities on the value or valuelessness of the Government's anti-air raid precautions, and (2) why do they take such obvious pleasure in proclaiming that the precautions will in fact confer no pro- tection at all ? At the back of it all, I suppose, is the idea that if the Government persuades people that the effects of air-attack on the civil population can be in some degree mitigated the civil population will not be sufficiently under the compulsion of fear to resist war at any price. But the danger of the agitation is obvious. Whatever casualties an air-raid causes, panic will increase them appallingly, and anyone who sets himself to convince the people that the Government is fooling them when it says they can be in part protected and invites them to practise discipline in advance, is assuming a grave responsibility. No one can say what the degree of protection will be, for no one knows what gases will be used in another war, but there must always be a marginal area where the wearing of a gas-mask, or a room even partially air-proof, may make all the difference between life and death. The Cambridge Anti-War Scientists' Group, who are the latest exponents of the doctrine of defencelessness against gas, may have some basis for their de- structive criticism, but they have the look of being at least as much anti-Government as anti-war. Moreover, the Govern- ment is hardly likely to have dispensed with scientific advice altogether. I wonder what the highest of Cambridge authori- ties on the subject, Sir Joseph Barcroft, has to say about his colleagues' views. * * Mr. Elihu (ElThu, not Elihu, oddly enough, in America) Root's death deprives the United States of very nearly her greatest citizen. There are, no doubt, other claimants to that title, and I have no wish to dogmatise. But I have rarely met any man who gave a more convincing im- pression of quiet wisdom than Mr. Root. He was Secre- tary of State as long ago as 1905-9, and his " Gentleman's Agreement " with Japan, which settled the immigration difficulty for years, was characteristic of his practical common sense. I once said to him that if President Wilson had taken him, as a leading Republican, to the Paris Peace Conference, the whole course of subsequent history might have been changed. " No it wouldn't," he replied, " because I should have come away after a couple of months disillusioned and disgusted." I doubt that very much ; his influence would have been great enough to get a great deal changed that needed changing. A lawyer of distinction, M. Root took a leading part in framing the statutes of the Permanent Court of International Justice, and he travelled to Geneva in 1929 (being then 84) to help revise them.
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Mr. Victor Gollancz deserves all the congratulations he got last Sunday when his Left Book Club celebrated its existence and its author with an Albert Hall meeting. Every member of the .dub, for a monthly payment of 2S. 6d., gets a specially-bound edition of the selected Gollancz Book of the Month (which in its ordinary form may be published at anything up to I25. 6d. or more) and a copy of the Left News ; also he can buy various other books at reduced prices. Now this is obviously a brilliant piece of business enterprise, for the Book Clith now has a membership approaching 40,000, and a membership of 40,000 at 2S. 6d. a morith"-rneans. an assured income to Messrs. Gollancz of £6o,000 a year, coming direct into the office. Moreover the total is not likely to stop at 40,000. But there is more than mere business in it, for Mr. Gollancz and his partners believe profoundly in the doctrines underlying the books they are publishing. The books themselves have the maximum of influence, for in different parts of the country local Left Clubs are springing up, at which the Book of the Month is discussed ; in some cases, in South Wales in particular, the monthly half-crown is made up of pennies from thirty individuals and the book is lent round. All this is symptomatic and significant. Why can neither the Churches nor any other political party (not that the Left Book Club is itself a party) do anything comparable ? * * * * We are most of us interested in cars these days, as drivers or passengers or potential victims. Hence the amount of space road-safety questions rightly occupy in the daily Press. Two items of news in that field have provoked comment in the past week. One is the proclaimed resolve of a section of cyclists to protest against the intention of the Minister of Transport to have cycle-tracks constructed alongside the new trunk roads. I hope, and have little doubt, that Mr. Hore-Belisha will remain adamant. The argument that if cyclists are given special tracks the next thing will be that they will be kept off the roads altogether is as rational as the refusal of pedestrians to use footpaths lest they should be debarred from footpathless roads would be. The other point is the dictum of a High Court judge that a red stop-light cannot be regarded as a substitute for a hand-signal of intention to stop. But why not ? Illumin- ated indicators showing intention of turning right or left are far more effective than any hand-signal, and I never heard them challenged. A stop-light is exactly on a par with them, and it is much more conspicuous than a hand thrust out of the window. This is important, for it raises questions of contributory negligence. * * * * The attempts of various religious leaders to persuade the Film Censor to withdraw his approval of the film, The Green Pastures, I find incomprehensible. I have seen the play in New York and I have seen the film here, and in neither can I detect the smallest modicum of irreverence. Surely we are familar with the anthropomorphism of children, and of races still mentally immature. Once realise that what you are being shown is a negro's, and a pious negro's, conception of the Old Testament story, and the last semblance of a ground for criticism disappears. Personally I think the film is distinctly inferior to the play, but I am sorry for anyone who misses it all the same.
* * * * Coronation Day is to be a national bank-holiday. With or without pay ? With pay, of course, I shall be told ; to give men a holiday and then tell them they m ill lose a day's wages by it would be monstrous. Quite ; but there seems to me to be another side. Take a firm employing, say, a hundred hands, most of them skilled, and making ends meet year by year with a narrow margin. A day's holiday with pay may cost it anything from £40 to £50 ; it is a good deal to sacrifice —though no doubt it argues lack of patriotism or public spirit or something similar to say so.
TANTIS.
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