A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
SPEAKING at the luncheon given on Tuesday to celebrate the return of Sir Arthur Salter and Mr. Edmund Harvey as Members for Oxford University and the Combined English Universities Lord Cecil, who presided, observed that just as it was said that what Lancashire thinks today England will think tomorrow, so the lead given by the universi- ties pointed the way to like verdicts from other constituencies. Several heads were shaken at that optimistic prediction, mine among them, and a note was pencilled at an adjacent table and thrown to me with the affirmation " What the universities really think : Better fifty years of Oman Than a cycle of Sir A."
We shall see. Sir Arthur and Mr. Harvey were both deeply impressed with the response which their programme of social justice at home and a League of Nations policy abroad— essentially and in detail that of the " Next Five Years " Group—had evoked from picked constituencies of thoughtful men and women. Sir Arthur Salter was convinced that a majority of electors everywhere would welcome such a programme, which was neither Conservative nor Labour, but such as half the Conservative and half the Labour Party could vote for. It may well be so, but the matter can only be put to the test if independent candidates like the two new university members are run at by-elections—and with both party machines against them they will be under an immense handicap. * * Men are often remembered by what seemed at the time some quite incidental event or achievement in their lives. Sir Henry Hadow was a very considerable musician, and for more than twenty years the successful head of a university or a university college. But it is on what used to be called elementary education that he has left his mark, through the accident (as it almost was ; any one of a dozen other men might have been chosen) of being appointed chairman of the Consultative Committee at the Beard of Education. The Hadow Report on the education of the adolescent, dividing the school career at the age of " eleven plus," and postulating as an essential the raising of the school age to fifteen, has revolutionised educational administration through- out the country for the past ten years, particularly in the rural districts, where the elder children collected from a number of village schools into one central school can for the first time get the instruction their age and capacities justify. The name of Hadow will live in connexion with the children as the name of Burnham lives in connexion with the teachers.
* * * * No feature of the Indian political scene is more remarkable than the way in which at every crisis Mr. Gandhi emerges inevitably as the single force to be reckoned with in the Congress ranks. Theoretically he has dropped out of active politics to devote himself to the untouchables and the renova- tion of village life. But when the vital question of whether Congress shall take office it is Mr. Gandhi's advice, beyond anyone else's, that is sought. When a compromise formula has to be drafted it is Mr. Gandhi who drafts it (with unhappy results). When deadlock ensues it is an interview between the Viceroy and Mr. Gandhi—not the Viceroy and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the President of Congress—which every
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advocate of a settlement by conciliation urges, and it is the possibility of an interview between the Viceroy and Mr. Gandhi which the Secretary for India discusses in the House of Lords. The Archbishop of York once spoke of Mr. Gandhi as one of the world's greatest men—I am not sure he did not even say its greatest man—and if influence over some hundreds of millions of fellow men constitutes greatness, the verdict cannot easily be challenged. Where the source of the influence lies is something of a mystery. To say simply " moral force " is to evade rather than solve the problem.
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As the date of the Prime Minister's retirement gets near the temptation to speculate on possible Cabinet changes— and to push forward candidates for posts at present occupied— increases. I observe with some interest that the Daily Mail devotes considerable space to emphasising the fitness of Sir Thomas Inskip for the office of Foreign Secretary— his chief qualification lying, it is implied, in the fact that he knows nothing about foreign affairs because he has been wise enough never to mix himself up in such entangle- ments. (What the Mail, I am certain, never suspects, fact though it is, is that Sir Thomas was once on the executive of the League of Nations Union.) This evidence of a set against Mr. Eden has a certain significance, but as I have said before, I believe any change at the Foreign Office is most unlikely. The only serious alternative to Mr. Eden is Lord Halifax, but he certainly has no desire to be called on, nor is he likely to be.
* * * * I confess to some doubts as to the value of these flying trips to Spain which various groups of sympathisers of the respective belligerents seem to be undertaking every week, sometimes at someone's invitation, sometimes on their own initiative. If it is a case of organising relief that is quite another matter —suffering can at least to some extent be alleviated from outside—but the despatch of periodic delegations to see, for example, how religion is getting on, has surely become purposeless. There was a case for the visit of the Deans of Rochester's and Chichester's group to the Government area, and its members published an interesting report, but the Dean of Canterbury, for whom I have the greatest personal respect, can hardly be held to be serving a useful purpose by giving interviews in Valencia denouncing as " un-British " Mr. Baldwin's statement on the " blockade " of Bilbao and expressing the hope that Holland and Scandinavia will show more humanity and courage. Rival sympathisers bring back identical stories of the popularity and efficiency of the Govern- ment whose area they happen to be visiting and the barbarity and incompetence of its opponent. That does, and can do, no conceivable good to anyone in Spain ; here its only effect is to widen internal differences.
* * * * What's Wrong with "The Spectator" Two comments on this journal, passed to me from the Editor's desk, where they arrived simultaneously : (a) " Bored stiff with its silly pseudo-leftism and general lack of cowman sense."
(b) " I regret that its politics have gone so disastrously Baldwin." JANus.
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