A Spectator's Notebook
LISTENING to Sir Herbert Samuel in the House of Commons last week, I realized that political views in this country are not destroyed by logical confutation ; they simply fade out of the intellectual air. • His speech was in the main the kind of Free Trade speech which Mr. Asquith used to make round about 1904. But then the contentions had a sharper bite, for they were in accord with the mood of the ordinary .citizen.-, To-day our minds have moved away from those presuppositions which are more important than argument.' We are less dogmatic in our adherence to so- called economic laws, believing them to be largely de- Auctions from contemporary data, which may have to be revised as the data change. We have become more accustomed to direct State management, and we are inclined to doubt the possibility of individual freedom in a " managed" world. Sir Herbert Samuel was clearly conscious of this, for his alternative proposals were in themselves a drastic form of management. One of the chief duties of a statesman is to interpret these sub- conscious national moods. Joseph Chamberlain found himself rowing against a heavy stream, and not all his skill of watermanship could bring him home ; his son has the current with him.
* * * * To those who, like myself, accept tariffs without enthusiasm as a stern necessity, an encouraging feature of the situation is the feeling to be detected everywhere in the country that they can only be granted on terms. The proposed Advisory Committee will have power to lower or remove a tariff if those who benefit from it are trying to fleece the public. It is more difficult to see how protection can be combined with a compulsory re- organization of backward industries ; but there is one fact which may expedite that process. Foreign firms are making haste to acquire factory sites in this country that they may have the shelter of our tariffs. That will provide employment for our workers, but it will also provide most active competition for our manufacturers. If British firms are not to be ousted by competitors operating on British soil, many of them will have to revise their marketing and advertising methods, and in some cases their manufacturing processes, for they will have domesticated their rivals in their own back garden.
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Centenaries make strange companions. Last week it was George Crabbe, the most circumscribed of men; next month it will be Goethe, the most universal. I hope that something will be done in Britain to commemorate Goethe, for he had a profound influence on Victorian thought and literature. To quote him used to be for a Scottish professor or divine a proof of enlightenment. .And' whatever is done should be done' well. At this moment the recognition of our literary debt to Germany would -have a real significance. As for Crabbe, he is likely to remain a classic, but unread. George Meredith, on the only occasion when I heard him talk about books, prophesied, in connexion with Mr. Hardy's vogue, that an early revival of interest in Crabbe was assured. That revival has never come, in spite of his real power of satire, his skill in the Popian couplet, and his bleak sincerity. I have always felt that there must have been more in Crabbe than ever got into his poetry. After Dr. Johnson he was Sir Walter Scott's favourite poet, and he was also a close friend, which suggests that the personality of the man was more coloured and varied than the dry light of his verse would suggest. I have read in recent articles on Lewis Carroll that no child has ever been frightened by Alice in Wonderland. I was—far more than by anything in Grimm or Andersen, or the Arabian Nights. First of all, I hated the idea of going down - a rabbit hole—claustrophobia, I suppose. Then Alice's loss of identity haunted me like a nightnuire. Children in their queer way are metaphysicians, and personality has a real meaning for them. I wonder if many children have felt the same uneasiness.
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The new United States Ambassador to Britain is one of the most remarkable of living Americans. This slim, white-haired gentleman . with the quiet manner is the opposite of the common conception of a millionaire, but he is none the less the third or fourth richest man in the world. He is the first -instance of a process which I hope will continue, since the future of America is bound up in it, the harnessing of the very rich to public duties. There were cases, of course, in the War, but Mr. Mellon was the first to accept office in normal times. His successor at the Treasury, Mr. Ogden Mills, continues the tradition. When he took office under President Harding, Mr. Mellon was a man of sixty-five, with a strenuous and most successful business career behind him. Since then he has led a life of constant toil, for which he has received more criticism than credit. But he has laid the foundations of a great work. He has done much to reorganise the Civil Service of his country, and make it an expert and honourable pro- fession instead of a reward for political wire-pulling. He has had to face the two most thankless jobs of enforcing prohibition and funding the War debts, but he has not lost favour with his countrymen. I cannot think of any man better suited for the London Embassy, for he is familiar with both sides of the Atlantic, and he can keep his head. He is a lover of Europe, and his son is a Cambridge graduate ; but he understands also the psychology of the average American, which is almost the most important political factor in the world to-day.
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It was a happy thought of The Times to reconstruct from different points of view the scene of fifty years ago ; a proof, too, of the increasing interest in the immediate past, which is history to the younger generation, hearsay to their parents, and an intimate memory to their grand- mothers. These recollections fix for us the manners and doings of a preceding age in a formal pattern. But at its best it is a diminishing view, seen through the wrong end of the telescope. For true understanding we want the picture in movement, showing how past shades into present. That is the supreme merit of Mr. Coward's Cavalcade, the sense it produces of the continuity of history. I believe work of this kind to be a great public service, provided it is done in a sympathetic spirit.
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A year or two ago a cormorant perched on the sum- mit of the Clock Tower at Westminster. One eminent statesman—no ornithologist, for he thought it was an eagle—interpreted the event as the end of parliamentary government, since, said he, " it is the arrival of the flapper." But last week there was a still greater prodigy. A woodcock was found in an exhausted condition by a policeman in St. James's Street. Very properly it was removed to the Office of Works, whence, after rest and refreshment, it was handed over to the warden of bird life in St. James's Park. It is the most sensational event that has happened in the metropolis for many a day. But I wish that I could live up to my name and read the
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