A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
WHEN Mr. Ramsay MacDonald tells a Peace Congress what the nature of the peace treaty after the next ar will be it is plain at least that he is anticipating a "next war." When Mr. Duff Cooper says the situation today is worse than it was in 1914 it is much harder to know what he means. Actually the European situation down to the middle of June, 1914, was by no means bad. Mr. Lloyd George, earlier in the year, had described it, with some reason, as good. There was no talk or thought in the middle of June of war being inevitable. Sir Edward Grey was gradually ironing out our differences with Germany. What the bomb at Serajevo did, of course, was to reveal the vast amount of tinder lying about. Mr. Duff Cooper would argue, no doubt, that there is still more of it today. There may be, but there is, in effect, only one danger point, Germany, and Ger- many at present is ringed round with a fairly effective corps of firemen. And considering the part mob psych- ology plays in the generation of war-scares it would be a great deal better for even a War Minister anxious about recruiting to refrain from expressions like " worse than 1914." For 1914 has inevitably a terrifying sound.
* * * * Mr. Chesterton was a prolific writer to the end, and it is good news that his autobiography is ready for publica- tion, but the great G. K. C. was the G. K. C. of pre-War days—the days, in particular, when he was building up his reputation by his weekly articles in the Daily News. I used to see something of his copy in the raw in those days, and wonderful stuff it was, scribbled on any odd scrap of paper, and always late. Once when he was moving house he pressed into the service, appropriately enough, the back of a piece of wall-paper. His association with the Daily News, then under the Cadbury regime, was ended by his publication of a calculated and rather outrageous poem on cocoa. My own first memory of G. K. C. was when he visited Cambridge to discourse to the Nonconformist Union (of all organisations) on the public-house. He contended, characteristically, that two of the most splendid expressions in the language were public-house----a place of assembly for the great democracy without distinction—and music-hall, hall of music, and added that if we were sensible we should adjourn at once (it was a Sunday evening) to the nearest public-house. We weren't.
* . * Those who had had reliable reports of the health of the Provost of Eton, or saw him making his last effort to share in the life of the school by appearing on the Fourth of June, knew that the shades of death were closing upon his happy life. He spread happiness about him and he was happy in attaining the Provostships of the two royal foundations for which he spent his life. While at King's he was the best loved man in Cambridge, and unlike any other in apparent paradoxes. He seemed to be idle, always ready to talk, often frivol- ously, to strum the piano, to play jacobi,- to watch cricket or read light fiction. Yet in addition to college work he was pouring out those volumes by which his unrivalled erudition and flair made valuable and useful the masses of ancient manuscripts which lay unused and unusable in the libraries of colleges, cathedral chapters and elsewhere. Though he made a fine figure on great academic occasions, those who knew him only by hearsay believed that the fun and familiarity that went on in his rooms must be undignified levity. The retort to that charge is, " Was anyone, old or young, ever impertinent to him ? " That was impossible. Just as he never obtruded his learning by " talking shop," so he was reticent about his religion. But, though he cared for everything in Eton and King's, he cared most of all for their incomparable chapels. On them he lavished his time and trouble, his learning and reverent care to preserve and adorn the structures and to make the worship in them both beautiful and devout. Such labour for the outward things sprang from an inward faith and piety, dominant though unseen.
Whoever the National Labour candidate at Derby may turn out to be, the adoption of Mr. Philip Noel Baker by the Labour executive promises to make the contest memorable. Perhaps half a dozen men in this country know as much about international affairs since the War as Mr. Noel Baker, but none of them knows more, and none of them is in the House of Commons. One of the most ardent supporters of the League of Nations in Great Britain, Mr. Baker is likely to make an attack on the Government for its part in the failure of sanctions the main plank in his platform. That will be enough to fix a great many eyes outside England on Derby in the next three weeks. The loss of the seat in such circumstances would be a severe blow to the Government, but there is a majority of over 12,000 to wipe out, and rearmament Work has meant a great deal to the Rolls-Royce company, whose factories are in the constituency. I do not share Mr. Noel Baker's political views, but if I lived in Derby I should vote for him, on the ground that it is in the national interest that a man with his almost unique knowledge and experience should be in Parliament at this juncture.
* Satisfaction that Mr. Sydney Carroll has been enabled, thanks to the public spirit of a large number of sub- scribers of small sums, to give London the Open Air Theatre again this year will be universal. The per- formances in Regent's Park have a charm all their own. Even Hamlet or Macbeth would manage somehow to get profit out of such a setting, and for Comus or A Mid- summer Night's Dream or The Tempest it is, of course, incomparably beyond anything the orthodox stage can provide. The narrow margin by which the enterprise has been saved for another year is a warning of which notice should be taken. A guarantee fund of no great magnitude would be enough to set fears for the future at rest. But the performances will never be quite the same without Sir Philip Ben Greet as Master of the Greensward.
JANUS.
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