A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
IIT seems hard to believe that Dr. J. J. Mallon has been Warden of Toynbee Hall for twenty-one years, but since it is a historical fact that he started there on November 1st, 1919, grounds for scepticism seem to be excluded. In those twenty- one years he has done a great work. Toynbee has had, I think, fire previous wardens. When I knew it first in 1908 the post was held by Mr. T. E. Harvey, now M.P. for the English Universities, but " the canon," Clemenceau's " little pale clergyman," still used to drop in and shed his benison on the institution he had already made so notable. Under Dr. Mallon Toynbee has 'been largely rebuilt, acquiring in the process an admirably appointed theatre. It is still a ceaselessly active centre of social discussion and experiment, still a training- ground for the best type of civil servant, still a hatchery for Parliamentary Bills on social and industrial questions (Miss Ellen Wilkinson's Hire Purchase Bill was, as an M.P. once said of himself and Stepney, almost born there), still, in short, the model, as it was the pioneer, social settlement. To Dr. Mallon's immense social experience, and still more to his vital and infective personality and his contacts with everyone who matters in Church and State, the Toynbee of today owes everything. And in view of the feeling that Toynbee residents once manifested a slight Oxford-and-Cambridge hauteur it is probably all to the good that his university was Manchester.
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