A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK •
WITH Sir Ernest Benn courting penal servitude through obduracy about his census form and the Housewives' League burning their ration-books somewhere in the vicinity of the House of Commons, the surging wrath of the women of Britain over the " Head of the House " entry drafted by the Registrar- General has attracted too little notice. I confess to finding their feelings intelligible. The sense of perjury with which I wrote my own name against the entry was oppressive. But there are extenuating circumstances. A widower with children could hardly be denied the title of Head of the House. Nor, I suppose, could a widow with children. Whether it would go, per se, to the eldest of three maiden sisters living together I feel less certain. And the census returns, after all, arc confidential. If a primacy that is plain for all to see in the daily traffickings of life becomes subjection once in ten years on an official form, it should be some consolation that the only persons cognisant of the fact are enumerators to whom you and I and any to whom we may be bound by matrimony are no more than inanimate cyphers. The Head of the House question doesn't matter a tinker's—soldering- iron.
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