A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
PREDICTIONS about the result of the Oxford University Election can have only a flimsy basis. There is little doubt that if the vote were confined to resident members of the university Sir Arthur Salter would be returned comfortably. But the issue rests with what used to be called "the country parsons "—a quite misleading description of the constituency now that every B.A. has a vote. To them the Conservative Press is now making various appeals—Professor Lindemann enjoying the support of the Daily Telegraph and Morning Post, and all the organs of Lords Beaverbrook and Rothermere, while The Times lifts its dignified voice on Sir Farquhar Buzzard's behalf. Professor Lindemann's election address is a little odd. He seeks election on the ground of his familiarity with aeronautics and his belief that defence against the bomber is possible. But he cannot mean either (t) that his admittedly great knowledge and experience will be at the Government's disposal only if he is elected to Parliament, or (2) that the ideas he has could properly be disclosed in public discussions in the House. All that can safely be said is that the successful candidate will get in on a minority vote, and that there seems to be a reasonable probability that even Conservative electors will reflect that there may be less to be said—particularly when a University seat is in question—for increasing the (approximately) 380 Conservatives in the House to 381 than for returning to it an independent member of unique administrative experi- ence who has always shown himself a constructive critic.
* * * * The controversy over whether Christ meant adultery or fornication when He spoke of the cause for which a woman might be divorced, turning as it does on the disputed meaning of two Greek words, fills me with a kind of incredulous depres- sion. Are Christian teachers really going to stand up today and tell intelligent people, who will quite rightly refuse to believe it, that we can be certain that the New Testament everywhere records for us the ipsissima verba of Christ ? The words of which the earliest written version known to us— and that known only through copies, not the original—was made thirty years or so after they were spoken, being depen- dent largely on oral tradition in the interyal, should have come down intact without the change of a syllable is frankly not credible. Christ's teaching, however much it may have been paraphrased in transmission, is a perfect unity, clear (apart from one or two difficult passages), decisive and co- herent. No serious student will question that. But to build an elaborate doctrine on a single word, or even phrase, is to offer a rightly critical generation not meat but split hairs.
* * * * My note regarding the Left Book Club has brought me a cormunication of some interest from a leading publisher, who declares with some bitterness that no one except Communists buys books. That is obviously a conversational hyperbole, and is. meant so. But if it is true that people, particularly young people, on the far Left are much more inclined than anyone else to buy serious books and read them and discuss them, then, for better or worse, we are going to see in due time a definite shift of the political centre of gravity Leftwards; unless, of course, good impervious British stolidity stands proof, as it has so often in the past, against all. intellectual assault ; o unless the workers to whom primarily. the Marxist gospel is meant to appeal prefer trade union leaders to professors, as they always have. Or unless the men and women who read the Daily Worker in their twenties get to the Daily Telegraph in their thirties and the Morning Post in their forties. A few may, but not, I believe, most. The real truth is that what we ought by now to stop calling the post-War generation is both ardent and anchorless, and eager to accept any positive gospel that may be preached to it. And in some ways Communists are preaching more effectively than Christians or anyone else.
* * * * I am not going to say that Candida at the Globe is the best- acted play in London, because I have not had the privilege, or the pain, of seeing all the plays that are at present being acted in London, and I doubt very much whether most of the eulogists who so often use the phrase I have quoted have either. But at any rate it is hard to imagine better acting anywhere than Nicholas Hannen, Ann Harding, Athene Seyler, Edward Chapman and Stephen Haggard give us, and the sixth member of the cast, Geoffrey Edwards, though his part was small, played the stage curate to such perfection as to deserve a special mention. Ann Harding, who is almost as unfamiliar on "the living stage" as the play itself is to Londoners, gives perhaps the most finished performance of all in her quiet mastery of every situation.
* * * * Few honours have been more universally popular than Sir Edward Marsh's K.C.V.O. But it is a little perplexing, all the same. For the Royal Victorian Order has a special connotation. "It was instituted " (I quote from my constant pocket-companion, the Encyclopaedia Britannica) "by Queen Victoria, for personal services rendered to Her Majesty and her successors." And what the Encyclopaedia says thus tersely Burke says more verbosely. Now Sir Edward Marsh has been perpetual private secretary, guide, philosopher and friend to a succession of Dominion and Colonial Secretaries stretching back into the impenetrable mists of the forgotten past. And though Mr. J. H. Thomas, for example, may well have said "Who serves me serves my King" I should hardly have thought that satisfied the exigencies of Burke.
* * * * The speech delivered by Lord Horder at the Eugenics Society dinner on Tuesday, when Mr. J. M. Keynes delivered the Galton Memorial Lecture, was so admirable a model for other chairmen that I record it in full. "Ladies and gentle- men, you are all familiar with the chairman who says he is not going to make a speech and proceeds to make one, and the chairman who says there can be no need to introduce the speaker, and proceeds to introduce him. I shall be as good as my word tonight.—Mr. Keynes."
* * * * An Englishman visiting Germany is driving near Cologne. He sees levelling going on, and -asks the chauffeur what is happening. "A new aerodrome, I believe. They've just built one for 26 machines a mile away." " Civil machines, of course ? " " Civil ? Certainly not. Military. Against Communism." "Communism where ? " "Why, in Russia." All in apparent good faith ; why not take-off for Russia from Cologne ? The conversation is true ; it took place last week.
jANUS.
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