A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
AT the League of Nations Council meeting which opens this week the Spanish chair will be filled by Senor del Vayo, the new Foreign Minister, who moves up to that exalted seat from the Press benches from which he has so often reported Council meetings in the past. He will be accompanied by Senor Azcarate, who, till a week or two ago, was an Assistant Secretary-General of the League. And another Assistant Secretary-Generalship is vacant because the Russian diplomat who held it, M. Rosenberg, has gone to be Ambassador of his country at Madrid.. So .considerably has the Spanish civil war affected the League. .Can the League affect the. Spanish civil war ? So far as it is a civil war it can be argued plausibly that it is no affair of Geneva's. But so far as the conflict jeopardises the peace of the world and the good understanding between nations on which peace depends, as it undeniably does, it is in order for any member of the League to raise it under Article XI. of the Covenant. And it might be worth while. A moment will come sooner or later when friendly intervention will be capable of securing a truce. That moment may not be so far distant as it seems, and the League would on many grounds be the most appropriate body to take the necessary action. * * A visit to Mr. Ivor Novello's Careless Rapture at Drury Lane provokes various emotions. First of all, undoubtedly unstinted admiration for those unseen indispensables, the stage carpenters. The setting is astonishing, and the swiftness and smoothness of the scene-shifting incredible. The earthquake is, of course, a tour de force, and Hamp- stead Heath, complete with merry-go-round that goes round with irresistible merriment, runs it close. As for the play. Mr. Novello wrote it, Mr. Novello plays the hero, Mr. Novalo composed the music. (Mr. Coward must look to his laurels.) And Mr. Novello has the prospect of seeing his show hold the stage indefinitely, for it is booked up already, it seems, to the end of January, and even the traditional Drury Lane pantomime has to go by the board. But such success is double-edged. Is this hilari- ous fooling really what English playgoers want ? Is this the way to pack one of the biggest theatres in London ? Evidently. So all is well with the English stage.
I hope that in his laudable zeal for silent motoring the Minister of Transport will not abate anything of his still more laudable zeal for safer motoring. To have extracted an undertaking from manufacturers that they will produce no more noisy motor-cycles is an immense gain, and apparently the outrageous din created by sports cars is to be checked at the same time. All that is unreservedly good, and a few prosecutions of genial young men (and women) who start up their ears and ruthlessly race their engines at round about midnight in residential roads and squares would be a public benefit' of the first order. But the suggestion that a ban on hooting should be made compulsory throughout the twenty-four hours is a very different matter. Having had to do one or two drives recently with my horn out of action I speak with some experience. To say that it makes drivers careful is largely nonsense. To some extent it may. But it does not make other drivers, or pedestrians, careful. A fast car must often overtake a slow one, and except on the broadest roads its driver ought always to sound his horn. Pedestrians, too, have a right to be warned of a car's approach, not to compel them to give way, but to remind them not to do anything erratic. The fact that no-hooting at night has worked well means nothing, because at night headlights can be flashed. Also the roads are clearer.
.* * * * - Herr Hitler's Nuremberg speeches raise rather acutely the pertinent question of what the validity of Mein Kampf today is. Hitherto, of course, it has been the Nazi Bible, inspired, sacrosanct, to which no man addeth, from which no man taketh away. Is that so still ? The Nuremberg doctrine is that' Germany is entitled to colonies and must have them. The Mein Kanipf doctrine is that Germany was all wrong in seeking colonies before the War, and that under the new reginze " we are making a break with the colonial and trade policy of pre-War days, and changing over to the territorial policy Of the future." In face of the clear evidence that one doctrine in Mein Kampf can be superseded at will, the question arises which others can, and how far the volume is to be taken as still embodying the Nazi gospel. That is not unimportant.
* * The Bible Society's annual output is always rather an astonishment. Last year over eleven and a half million copies of the Bible, or part of it, were issued, the demand from every part of the globe showing a substantial increase over the year before. Where do. they go ? There is presumably a certain amount of replacement. The growth of literacy in certain countries no doubt accounts for something—though hardly in Russia, where literacy has made the greatest advance. And there may be other explanations. But at a time when the decay of interest in religion tends to be taken for granted (far too readily and on quite insufficient grounds) this ceaseless and increasing absorption of copies of the Bible is a fact of some significance.
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Heard in Germany Luther said what he believed.
Hitler believes what he says.
Goebbels says what he does not believe.
Schacht does not say what he believes. JANUS.
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