A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
IF Ulster justice gains the notoriety which it has in fact
gained, Ulster has no one but itself to thank. I am astonished that so little comment has been published on the case heard at Belfast Children's Court last week, in which a boy of fifteen was sentenced by a Resident Magistrate to twelve months' imprisonment under the Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act for the offence of having shadowed a certain man and alleged that he was a " police tout." The Special Powers Act is a far-reaching enactment with which Ulster finds it necessary to supplement the ordinary law, and the judicial observations that would have accompanied the sentence (if such a sentence were conceivable) in an English Court were represented in this case by a declaration on the Resident Magistrate's part " that it was perfectly intolerable that a young cub of a boy like the accused should be spending hours shadowing people on the Falls Road or the Andersons- town Road." He added that, in the opinion of the bench the accused was incorrigible—which did not prevent the bench from administering correction to the tune, as stated, of twelve months' imprisonment. If the boy is incorrigible when he goes in at i5, I leave it to psychologists to determine what he is likely to be when he comes out at 16.
* * * * Eloquent tributes have been paid to E. V. Lucas and to the quality and quantity of his work. The range of his interests was enormous, and it was a happy inspiration of The Times writer to describe the Max Beerbohm cartoon which showed E. V: in some of his many clubs, as deeply engrossed in the Athenaeum as in the National Sporting Club. This sincere versatility, combined with a lavish generosity and a passionate sense of obligation, won him his many friends. With him it was a religion to " let nobody down." Every promise was kept, every letter answered by return, every kindness remembered, every engagement punctually ful- filled. His was the exacting friendship of a hypersensitive soul, but it was a rewarding one, and there are many who owe much to the example of his considerateness. His - quiet wit, his inexhaustible store of surprising information, his love of literature, art, dogs, cricket and company, his amusing idiosyncrasy, all made E. V. the companion we loved and shall long miss. One of his last actions, when he was barely conscious, was to scribble a list of those who had sent him flowers, so that his secretary might thank them and send his love. He was a lonely man and friendship meant much to him. * * Peterhouse, the oldest Cambridge college, is to revert to the normal practice and elect a scholar as Master in place of a distinguished outsider. The distinguished outsider in this case was Field-Marshal Sir William Birdwood, and apart from his distinction as a soldief he has, I believe, made an extremely good Master. The previous Master, Lord Chalmers, who had been a distinguished civil servant, was rather in the same category. So is Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond, who is Master of Downing, but he had held a Cambridge Professorship, in Naval History, for a couple of years. There is something to be said for thus estab- lishing a link between the cloistered life of a college and a larger world, but more on the whole for the traditional practice which makes a Mastership a fitting climax to a life of scholarship and service to the college. The choice for the Peterhouse Mastership is understood to lie between two history Professors, Dr. Harold Temperley and Dr. Ernest Barker, with the odds in favour of Professor Temperley, who has been a Fellow since 1904, whereas Dr. Barker, a distinguished Oxonian, has only " chosen Athens in his riper age." * * * * A visitor from Central Europe, who left Austria after the Anschluss, has been giving me his views—which are not necessarily mine—on Herr Hitler's personality and character. " Do you notice the weak way," he said, " in which in all his photographs the hands are clasped in front of him ? " I took Lord Londonderry's last book, in which the frontispiece shows the Marquis and the Fiihrer side by side, from my shelf, and found that it was so. " —and how his signature begins firmly and then runs weakly downhill to illegibility ? " I took up the new volume Germany Speaks, whose frontispiece, of the Fiihrer, bore the Fiihrer's signature beneath it, and found that it was so. " And do you notice that you never see Hitler on a horse ? What other dictator in history failed to appear on horseback? " the inference being that Herr Hitler thinks a horse rather a high thing to fall off. The inter- pretation seems a little gratuitous ; dictators may have changed their habits regarding equitation. I don't remember ever seeing a picture of M. Stalin on a horse. * * * * Orators whose exuberance carries them away when they get on the platform hardly realise the harm they do to their reputations. On Monday, Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru received a cordial welcome at a meeting at the Kingsway Hall and informed his audience that " there is no difference between. the bombing of Barcelona and Canton and the bombing of the North-West Frontier of India " ; the differences are, in fact, fundamental, as has been repeatedly shown in these columns—though that is no justification for continuing bombing on the frontier. At the same meeting Mr. H. H. Elvin, chairman of Trade Union Congress General Council, is reported to have said that " the story of the relationship of Great Britain and India could be summed up in three words—robbery, jobbery, snobbery." Cheap epigrams no doubt win cheap applause, particularly when they rhyme, but nothing but ignorance or wilful perversion of the facts could excuse this particular epigram, and Mr. Elvin is certainly incapable of wilful perversion. He is indeed too good a man to descend to a jingle of words which is not much truer of the relationship of Great Britain and India than it is of the trade union movement. Is jobbery unknown in the trade union world ? Or snobbery ? Or even, on occasion, robbery ? * * * * " Be beautiful." Herr Streicher to German Youth last Sunday.
Unfortunately a London daily paper published a photo- graph of Herr Streicher on Monday. jANUS.
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