A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
PERIODICAL revelations of the extent to which the Press is muzzled, and the public blindfolded, in the dictator- ship countries are enough to drive the most obdurate optimist to despair of ever reaching a genuine understanding with the countries in question. What has been the most important event in Germany in the past week ? Obviously the receipt and reading from every Roman Catholic pulpit of the Papal Encyclical on the German Government's breach of the Concordat. No reference of any kind to that appeared in the German papers the next morning. What has been the most important event in—or, rather, affecting—Italy in the past week ? Obviously the defeat of the Italian troops in Spain. Not only is all reference to the catastrophe banned, but the official wireless takes occasion to admit for the first time that Italian troops are fighting in Spain, adding—what of course is the precise reverse of the truth—that in an engagement with them the anti-Fascists have been annihilated. The common man in every country necessarily draws his knowledge of world affairs mainly from the newspapers, and forms his ideas and his sympathies accordingly. And when millions of common men in democratic countries are being, on the whole, shown the world as it is, and millions in dictatorship countries shown the world as their rulers desire them to imagine it, all common ground for fruitful contacts between the two is cut away. * * * * Everyone who has ever met Dr. Ernst Hanfstaengl will watch with particular curiosity for the explanation of his disappearance (from Berlin), discovery (at Zurich) and ultimate destiny. Zurich, it may be observed, is the spot which most Germans who think they will be safer outside Germany make for. Dr. Hanfstaengl, who was a Harvard graduate and received a marked rebuff when visiting his old university as a Nazi a year or two ago, held one of those anomalous positions so common under the Nazi regime, depending as it did not on any official appointment but on his personal relations with Herr Hitler. He is an accom- plished musician, and one of his chief functions was to play the piano (usually Wagner) to the Fiihrer in the latter's hours of agitation or fatigue. Journalists and others seeking rare access to Herr Hitler regarded Dr. Hanfstaengl as the most hopeful intermediary. But he had his enemies. Dr. Goebbels welcomes no rivals in his own line of business, and the unofficial office on the Party side of the Wilhelmstrasse may not reopen. But Herr Hitler's final word has apparently not been spoken, and he will not necessarily throw over his old associate.
• * * The scandal of inadequate mortuary accommodation in rural areas has been curiously little ventilated, perhaps because it is so hard to see what to do about it. Not long ago public apathy was slightly stirred by Press reports of a case in which a doctor had had to carry out a post-mortem in a shed in which it was impossible to stand up, and was compelled in the end to drag the body out into a field, driving off as best he could the children who naturally gathered round to watch. Now a story reaches me of a sudden death near a south- country village. In this case the body was placed on boards on a packing-case in an ota thatched shed, formerly used for animals but now for cars, with the only light coming from the door, which opens on the village-green. The police stripped and washed the body and left it naked, there being no covering available. So, to their infinite distress, the two maiden sisters of the deceased found it when they arrived on getting news of the tragedy. The difficulties of the problem are obvious. Villages have no funds for the erection of mortuaries, which would only rarely be needed ; nor could the cost of mortuaries everywhere be laid on the State. But a £3o asbestos garage as make-shift would at any rate enable the elementary decencies to be observed.
* * * * The appointment of Bishop Tubbs, at present Assistant- Bishop of the diocese, to be Dean of Chester in succession to Dr. Bennett is admirable. His predecessor earned the gratitude of every visitor to Chester by the way he interpreted every stone of the cathedral to them both through the corps of voluntary guides which he organised and the unobtrusive but illuminating descriptions posted up at every point of interest. Another caustically-tongued Dean might refer to him as " The Very Reverend Verger," but he did a very great deal more than his critic to make his cathedral, its history and its architecture, understood. He lays down his charge assured that Bishop Tubbs (who was an association football blue at Cambridge and later Bishop of Rangoon), will watch with no less zeal and devotion over the fabric with which, as assistant-bishop, he has already been associated for three years. * * * * I notice a belated mention here and there (I admit to being a defaulter myself) to the astonishing resemblances between the Fenland floods as depicted in Miss Dorothy Sayers' novel, The Nine Tailors, and the floods enveloping the Fenland today. The events at Prickwillow and Denver Sluice might almost be described as a play based on the book. The encyclopaedic knowledge of the advertising world dis- played by Miss Sayers in Murder Must Advertise is only equalled by the encyclopaedic knowledge of change-ringing and the habits of floods displayed by her in The Nine Tailors. Where her familiarity with floods comes from I have no knowledge. However, I understand she is to explain that herself in next week's Spectator.
* * * * A reference in an Estate Market column to a sale of land in what is known as " the Roadmender Country " in Sussex raises the question of how far Michael Fairless's—or Miss Dowson's—little books are read today. They are certainly not forgotten, for a search for a second-hand copy in the old sage-green binding revealed that the demand is constant still. The sale of The Roadmender, and some way after it The Gathering of Brother Hilarius and The Grey Brethren, thirty years ago must have been enormous. Their tran- quillity made an effective appeal to a world that was itself more tranquil then. The modern spirit, I suppose, would call them sentimental. Perhaps. But a life without senti- ment would hardly be worth living. JANvs.
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