A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
IVENTURE the prediction that Mr. Churchill will be the most-talked-of politician in this country in the next fortnight. Of all public men today he knows his own mind best, and in spite of his erratic movement about the floor of the House of Commons in the past no one is better qualified to give clarity to, and assume direction of, a popular movement that is beginning to acquire selfconsciousness and gain momentum. He has played the game over India, fighting the Government tooth and nail till the Bill was law, and then pledging himself to do nothing to make the working of a law carried against his opposition difficult. He has sounded ceaseless warnings; exaggerated or otherwise, of the extent of German rearmament, and he can claim to have tried to tell the-people the truth while the Prime Minister preferred not to. Next Wednesday Mr. Churchill is to deliver a speech on the international situation at a luncheon of the New 'Commonwealth Society, of which he, is now President, and a week later he will make a much more important appearance at an Albert Hall meeting to launch the new Peace and Democracy move- ment—of which curiously little has been heard so far. With Sir Walter Citrine in the chair and Sir Austen Chamberlain and Lady Violet Bonham-Carter among the speakers the meeting will be something far out of the ordinary. But it will, if I am not mistaken, be primarily Mr. Churchill's night. If he bids for the role of democratic leader there may be considerable stirrings in the square half-mile south of Trafalgar Square.
Another Albert Hall meeting to be held next week is among the signs of the times. Canon Sheppard and his peace-pledge supporters have already filled the hall in advance and are arranging overflow meetings in the vicinity. They, too, stand for peace and democracy, but a different kind of peace, though not necessarily a different kind of democracy, from Mr. Churchill. Canon Sheppard, moreover, frustrated in his hope of putting his case in. Germany, is to -put it to the Archbishop of Canter- bury, and a statement of both case and reply is to be published. That should be of real value, though clarifying the issue does not mean bridging the gulf. If a reconcilia- tion between the opposing principles the two Albert Hall meetings stand- for could be effected,-the Canon and the Archbishop would no doubt find it possible to settle their differences as well, and the foundations both of democracy and of peace would be strengthened. But there is little likelihood of that, and the two schools must be content to differ honestly without recrimination.
* * - - The curiosity of certain M.P.'s regarding the existence of a censorship of imported literature is not surprising, - in view of the state of some of the - American papers on sale in this country. Some have leaves removed, some (I believe) have paragraphs blacked out. Who, many people are asking, is responsible ? Is some Government department exercising a clandestine censorship, and if so under what authority ? The answer is that there is no censorship, and the mutilations of the papers in question are carried out voluntarily by the wholesale firms who import and distribute the papers. The only grounds on which papers can be stopped at the port of entry are obscenity or indecency, and the authority is the Custonis Consolidation Act. But people who sell papers can be held responsible for their contents as well- as people who write and publish and print them (as one or two of the most reputable distributors in this country have found to their cost), and distributors of certain American papers whose standards as regards both decency and libel are notoriously lax see no reason for running risks. So they do their own censoring. Whether the mutilations that have been so extensive of late come under either of these heads is another matter.
* There seems to be room for some difference of opinion about the stability of the ' Queen Mary.' The Times of last Saturday contained on one page a letter from a grateful passenger who had been through the week's gale and desired to " thank the designers for providing terra firma in mid-Atlantic," and on another the report of the inquest on a passenger who was thrown out of his chair as the ship lurched and struck his head against a desk, sustaining fatal injuries. The truth, I gather from passengers who crossed on the last eastward voyage, is that the ship was expected not to roll, and less was done in the way of lashing furniture and providing rope-holds for passengers than is usual in smaller vessels. This can be easily rectified, and no doubt has been.
* * * * The computations to which the declaration of the latest Woolworth bonus have given rise establish triumphantly the credibility of a story which I have heard once or twice and always found almost beyond belief. When Woolworths first opened in this country a man invested £10 in their shares ; some twenty years after- wards (I was assured) that man's widow was getting from Woolworths every quarter a cheque for 17,500 as dividend. Impossible ? Not at all, if the current computation's are accurate. According to them an original investment of 5s. would this year produce rather over £2,000 in divi- dends. An investment of E10 would therefore yield £20,000 a quarter. The beneficiary in my modest anecdote only got £7,500. But that was some time ago, * * The decision to let this country see the film of Thi Greed Pastures does credit to Lord Tyriell. The Lord Chamberlain still bans the play, :which almost every Englishman visiting New York, where it is presented in an atinosphere of coniplete and impressive reVerence, in recent years has made a point of seeing. I have not myself seen the film, but if it bears any resemblanee : to the play as staged, which no doubt it does, this moving representation of a negro conception of the Old Testament , God should move Londoners as deeply .as it moved New
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