A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
ability in 1919, and he has acquired wide and varied experience since then. General Smuts, it will be recalled, was the originator of the mandate principle, though the mandate article of the Covenant was drafted mainly by the late Lord Lothian, then Mr. Philip Kerr. If the question of a colonial regime comes up at San Francisco, General Smuts's authority to speak on that particular subject will be universally recognised.
It needs a powerful imagination to conceive the spectacle that Germany will present when the collapse comes and the conditions prevailing behind the military fronts are revealed to the world. The drop in the male population—perhaps 5,000,000 dead, a number im- possible to estimate disabled and prisoners—will be only a minor aspect of the tragedy. It will be a country almost without com- munications, a country almost without industries, a country in which perhaps a third of the population must be homeless, in which whole cities like Cologne and most of Berlin are desolate and uninhabitable, and others without water, light or power, in which the food and clothing situation will soon be desperate. and in which there is no sign of a government capable even of taking over the administration of the country as a smooth-running concern, much less cope with a situation that superhuman ability and resourcefulness could do next to nothing to alleviate. Some day some relief may come to Germany from outside, but in view of the state of the countries liberated from the brutalities of German occupation, she will manifestly have to take her place at the end of the queue. What may have happened to her by the time her turn comes no one could predict, or even, it may be repeated, imagine.
An interesting view on the question of lay J.P.s, on which Sir Henry Slesser wrote in last week's Spectator, was put to me a few days ago by a friend who is both a K.C. and chairman of a petty sessional court—thus, though unpaid, satisfying the desired require- ment that such courts should always be presided over by a chairman with legal knowledge. Rather to my surprise he spoke with emphasis of the general standard of ability of the average lay J.P. In his county, he said, there were twelve petty sessional courts, of which two (his own and another) happened to be presided over, by lawyers. He did not claim for a moment that these two were the better for that. He went so far, indeed, as to say that a lawyer was apt Co attach far too much importance to technical points of law, whereas the lay J.P., bringing to his task patience, sympathy,
common sense and some normal ability to weigh evidence, was likely to give at least as fair decisions and sentences, and very often fairer. That is a point of view which obviously deserves consideration.
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The death of Lord Alfred Douglas swings the mind back with abrupt suddenness to the nineties, and dead people and institutions like Oscar Wilde and Frank Harris and the Morning Post and The Academy. It is quite true that he had been writing poetry, and addressing the Royal Society of Literature, right down to the last year or two, but the days when his name was on people's lips lay far back. He was litigious ; he was something of a fire-eater ; he wrote a number of satires, an autobiography, The True History of Shakespeare's Sonnets and, of course, a book on his friend—as some would say his fatal friend—Oscar Wilde. He was a formidable and pugnacious controversialist, but an admirable poet, whom some good critics have regarded as a master of the sonnet form. On the whole, his poetry was more academic than adventurous,- but it always revealed a certain distinction of taste and a genuine literary sensibility.
* * The Minister of Information, I gather, has annoyed what he him- self calls "municipal worthies." When they see a good building, he affirmed last week, they are forthwith impelled by a desire to pull it down and build a red-brick chain-store in its place. This allegation a municipal worthy does not hesitate to stigmatise in quite unparliamentary language as lying and slanderous, and indeed Mr. Bracken should, I think, by virtue of his office, be aware that chain-stores are normally built not by town-councillors but by chain- store proprietors ; and the aggrieved councillor whom Mr. Bracken has stung to such epithets as I have quoted complains with bitter- ness that chain-stores, so long as they comply with the standing bye-laws, are beyond his and his colleagues' control. Has the Malet hit the wrong nail on the head?
I read in Thursday's Times that "Sir Alexander Mackenzie Livingstone gave his 167th Win the War Dinner last evening at Claridge's," the usual galaxy of eminent persons being present. Such announcements are not unfamiliar. Indeed, they have probably appeared about x66 times before. Sir Alexander Mackenzie Living- stone is evidently in favour of winning the war and believes in dining the way to victory. I have no doubt he is right, and the impending German defeat will prove it. All the same, this i% a curious institu- tion. I know little about Sir Alexander, and particulars in Who's Who do not shed much light on his qualifications for becoming a kind of unofficial trencherman to the United Nations. But he must have spent a great deal of money in a good cause, for Claridge's, they tell me, is not among the most frugal of caravanserais. No doubt the Field-Marshals and Admirals among the guests do their jobs all the better for having their fair round uniforms with good capon lined.
A certain B.B.C. announcer—let no names be named—would give satisfaction to a great many hearers if he could consent to reduce himself to the level, of common mortals and pronounce foreign names as ordinary men, including all other announcers, pronounce them.'
instead of rendering German like a stir— ebbels, and other tongues to match.
Pim&
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