A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
HE Foreign Office is singularly fortunate in having two Ministers so competent to guide its destinies in Mr. Eden's absence as Mr. Selwyn Lloyd and Mr. Anthony Nutting.
By his mission tO Korea and his leadership of the British dele- gation at the United Nations Assembly, Mr. Lloyd, who had made no study of foreign affairs till appointed to his present office, has shown himself qualified to carry out with competence and confidence any task that may be imposed on him in that sphere. Mr. Nutting has indeed served for a short time in the diplomatic service and the Foreign Office itself, but that is not enough to account for the equanimity with which (at the age of 32) he handles Parliamentary questions when it falls to him to answer them. That happened on Monday of this week, and a study of Hansard suggests that the Under-Secretary's answers to supplementaries (answers to main questions are, of course, prepared beforehand) could hardly have been improved on. by the Secretary of State himself. Take, for example, one on World Government. Asked whether the Government would invite the United Nations to investigate the establishment of a form of world government, Mr. Nutting said briefly " No sir." A mental defective could have done that, but when the questioner elaborated his query and pressed for a further answer, the Under-Secretary replied, " My view is— and it is the view of Her Majesty's Government—that setting up a World Government can only follow and not precede such a degree of international understanding as, unhappily does not exist today." That seems to me sound sense, admirably expressed. At any rate it is almost exactly what that wisest of Foreign Ministers, Dr. Benes, said to me years ago regarding a more limited union—not a bad recommendation.
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