A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
NO man living was better qualified to pay fit tribute to Sir Austen Chamberlain than Mr. Baldwin, and no man living could have done it better. The verdict of The Times sketch-writer that "Abraham Lincoln himself never rose to greater heights" suggests hyperbole, but no one will be anxious to challenge it. The Prime Minister was right unquestionably in describing his dead colleague as "a great Parliamentarian," a man who loved the House of Commons, loved its life, lived in it and died a member of it. To his influence there could be no greater testimony than that while the Indian Round Table discussions were in the balance everyone instinctively asked, as though it were the deciding factor," Which way will Austen go ? " All that was common knowledge. But there were aspects of Sir Austen's life that were less familiar, notably the intensity of his love for flowers. Every spring at Geneva when he was out for a League Council he used his first spare moments for a visit to a famous rock-garden in the neighbourhood, and when for financial reasons he had to give up his Sussex home it was the loss of his garden that pained him most. But out of the deprivation came an act of friendship to which Sir Austen made grateful reference in the preface to his collection of essays, Down the Years. A fellow-member of the House of Commons "who rejects my politics but shares my love of flowers wrote that he could not bear to think of me without a garden, and should send me flowers from time to time, on condition only that I did not write to thank him ; nearly every week during each succeeding session these gifts have been renewed." Sir Austen does not mention the donor's name. I should say, at a guess, Sir Francis Acland.
* * * * I find it difficult to appreciate the virtuous propriety with which two of the candidates in the English Universities by-. election proclaim" the general undesirability of the innovation made by the third candidate in holding political meetings in certain university towns." It is quite true that in a university election, in which the electors are scattered over the country and outside it, the candidates have necessarily to depend largely on a postal appeal. But a postal appeal is not in itself better than a personal appeal, nor as good, and where a number of electors are known to be congregated, as they are in this case in the university towns of Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and the rest, it is not only common sense but common courtesy for a candidate to present himself before them personally and explain fully, with or without cross- examination, precisely what he stands for. Mr. Edmund Harvey deserves applause, rather than oblique censure, for his enterprise.
* * * * Signor Mussolini may be found to have used words more than usually pregnant with meaning when he declared on Wednesday that Italy needed peace, as she had a more than sufficient task in the development of her Empire. She has. The rains will shortly be beginning in Abyssinia, and such events as the attack on Marshal Graziani and the subsequent massacre in Addis Ababa show how precarious Italy's hold on the country is. At the same time visitors to Rome bring back stories of extensive and growing discontent at home, with rumours of riots in the industrial north which, of course, have never been mentioned in the papers. Other facts are relevant. The Italian reverse in Spain last week has lessons that will be taken well to heart in various quarters, notably in Berlin. Italians did little fighting in Abyssinia, the brunt of the work invariably falling on the native levies. The German General Staff is known to hold pronounced views on the value of Italian soldiers. One of its most distinguished members has roundly declared that whatever country had Italy on its side in the next war could count on defeat. All this may be completely unjust to Italy, but it considerably discounts the idea of a powerful halo-German military combination.
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The ceremony on Tuesday when 2,600 German books, including Mein Kampf, were presented to the Institute of Historical Research of London University by Herr Ribbentrop, had some interesting features. Such gifts can be made, and have been, without a public ceremony, but Herr Ribbentrop, I understand, felt strongly about the ceremony. The books are of real value, and the Ambassador's speech, on the import- ance of education and the contacts between universities of different countries, was admirable. But admirable speeches do not alter inconvenient facts. No contact can be more than formal between universities that pursue truth and knowledge for its own sake and institutions where learning is dominated by politics, and an anthropologist of international eminence can be removed from his post (as happened at Gottingen, which is inviting British universities to join in celebrating its bi-centenary), because he would not sub- scribe to the current political doctrines on race. So far from there being unity of purpose between the uni- versities of Britain and Germany today there is complete antithesis. It is the antithesis between freedom and fetters.
So many competent judges have praised Murder in the Cathedral (now back at the Duchess Theatre for a fortnight) so highly that I am quite ready to believe the impression the play made on me, on a belated first visit this week, is due to deficiencies in myself. I thought there was much too much chorus, and it was tiresome in the way that the chorus in almost all Greek plays is tiresome. I doubt very much whether a Becket—" this pestilent priest "- was as controlled and impassive a person as Mr. Robert Speaight makes him, admirable though Mr. Speaight's performance, and in particular his diction, is. And Mr. Eliot's fantasy in bringing the four murderers on to address the audience in twentieth-century style and language on the motives for their deed struck me as a device which had to succeed triumphantly—which it did not—or fail completely. But though I have to think as I do think, let me not pit myself against the verdict of the world.
jANUS.
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