WILL ROGERS
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—The world has lost something rare and valuable by the death of Will Rogers. He had an attitude towards life which never seemed to falter. He always saw when things were unjust or conceited or absurd, as well as when they were beautiful, and he had the knack of putting his criticism into a wise-crack, and his praise into an inverted criticism. I met him once when he had just arrived in the middle of the General Strike and he described the warnings he had received against entering London. He was told there would be barricades in the streets, bloodshed, famine and no transport. Instead he found everyone smiling—" Earls and • Dukes running the 'buses and trains quite well". –and a sense of humour hanging over the town like sunshine.
I was concerned at the moment in organizing concerts and amusements for both sides ; strikers and blacklegs, police, and. military and naval detachments ; these last were consumed by boredom confined in the Duke of York's school away from. their own occupations and with nothing whatever, most of them, to do. Lady Astor persuaded, though I do not think much persuasion was needed, Will Rogers to go down to Chelsea and talk to the men—rows and rows of bluejackets. His theme was the immense superiority of the American over the British Navy, illustrated by incidents told with the utmost gravity which displayed the exact opposite. It can be imagined how delighted the sailors were and how they roared and shouted with laughter. I think he showed them, too, a few of his tricks with a long whip, but I am not sure whether this display was not in Lady Astor's drawing-room, when he discoursed about his own astonishment at the House of Lords to several of its members and various political figures.
The laughter then was just as keen as at Chelsea, for the, English like being laughed at.
It is sad to think that Will Rogers will not be here to make us laugh at ourselves again. I am sure he met death with his own kind of invincible courage, and is perhaps being humorous about it in the Elysian fields.—Yours truly,
EDITH LYTTELTON.
Somerset Hill, Holmbury St. Mary, Surrey.
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