A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
'WAR talk is getting very, much too prevalent. . Rearmament programmes and air-raid circulars encourage it, but it should be regarded as a public duty to resist the temptation to become alarmist. A fatalist attitude about war tends to be • fatal in its results. To speak of war this year or even next -..year as inevitable . is to create the very atmosphere in which constructive. effort to avert war is paralysed, • and to fill • with needless, or at the worst premature, apprehension. tens of thousands of people who through age or other circumstances could do nothing in .a war . but suffer.. Most .of us can remember a great many abortive alarms before 1914—in-1898 and 1905 and 1911 in particular. It -is true that the cataclysm of 1914 . • came in the end, but there is pretty general agreement that it would not have come- if the world had been • . organised then. as it is organised today. The Cabinet . should give the right lead by showing that it is devoting as =much energy to consolidating peace through Geneva as it is to consolidating the national defences against attack.
* . * * • • - -Sir Alexander Cadogan's return to Whitehall may • mean .a good ,deal.. Those who know most about the • • Foreign Office haVe long looked on him as the next Per- • raiment Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, and his appointment as Assistaut Under-Secretary—he will now be Tyrrell to- Sir Robert Vansittart's • Crowe—is strong ;:confirmation -of their belief. 'Sir Alexander was at •• Vienna with Sir- Maurice- de Bunsen- in the critical weeks hefore the War, and he has since built up a well-deserved • reputation -for -wisdom and firmness combined with a • genuinely progressive • outlook. What is perhaps most important is that one of the two • principal permanent posts in the Foreign Office passes for the first time into • the hands of a man with a long and intimate knowledge - of the working of the League of Nations. Sir Alexander . was head of the League of Nations section in the Foreign • Office,- and as such a regular attendant at all the chief ; meetings at Geneva; for ten years before he went to China as Minister (the Legation has since become an ••Embassy) in 1983. His recall by Mr. Eden -is significant.
It is curious 'how slow countries tend to; be in copying sound innovations from each other, and the action-of the National . Trust in bringing the Due de Noailles, bearer of a historic name, to London on Tuesday, to tell what France is doing to preserve her historic chateaux and mansions, is very much to be commended. Thanks to ' death duties and surtax historic mansions all over England are in peril. • If the Treasury is ready to temper its rapa- city a little; on condition that the houses are opened to the public regtilarly for a small fee, a great deal that will otherwise be lost can still be saved. It was appropriate that the owner of Hatfield and Lord Londonderry, who has one mansion in London, one in Durham, one in Wales and one in Ireland. should have voiced the heartfelt thanks of all mansion-owners to the Due de Noaillcs for showing • them how to keep afloat. The destruction of the aeroplane purchased with fundg collected by Lady. Gladstone and presented : to • the Ethiopian Red Cross is-deplorable. The -machine,: which was flown out to Addis Ababa by Air-Commadore. Fellowes, of Everest fame, was doing most valuable work transporting doctors and medical supplies. I-believe-that .an -aeroplane of higher engine-power is *really •fieeded to ensure a quick rise- at such an altitude from the relatively small tree-girt aerodromes in Abyssinia: .(-If a suitable one can be found at short notice, its: cost .could • pretty cer- tainly be raised without difficulty. • * * . * *.
It is apparently no -easier to get 57 • diptomatistS• lute a space meant for twelve than it is to get a quart•Of fiipior into a pint tankard. The Soviet Ambassador,-1 -Under- stand, has come . this intelligent ccineluSiea;*:and is • bringing the point before, I suppose, the First Conunissioner of Works, by way of the doyen of the Diplomatic Corps -and the Foreign Office. It is a question of the Diplciniatie Gallery in the House of ••Commons. Before-. the ',War there were 34 foreign diplomatists accredited to the Court of St. James' ; today there are 57 ; -•the Diplomatic Gallery holds about a dozen ; and diplomatists may be slim but are not always slender. -But the pint and quart difficulty still persists. If you give- more gallery to diplomatists you, must give less to someone else. * * -* * There was a visitor to the Lobby -of- -the House of Commons on Monday. That, it may be observed, is not astonishing. There are a good many hundred•-..-Visitors to the Lobby every day.• But this was no ordinary visitor. It was, in fact, a Visitor, and -The Times devoted- two long notes to him. He came, he suggested, he diiiitegrated. His-suggestion was—" Neville Chamberlain to to-Ordinate defence "—and all the six _hundred' members- fell agog with the idea. " Suddenly, as rare things will; he vanished," vanished before you could say Jack Robinson —or for that matter Jack Dawson. -But-he had impressed The Times a great - • In deciding not to send a delegation to the -'Heidelberg university celebrations but to despatch a Latin address— with a pertinent reference to the •Heidelberg' motto, Semper apertus—the University of Oxford seems to me to have done precisely the right thing. - As a • Cambridge man myself -I trust my own and all- other British universities will follow the same course-. --making no concealment, but at the same time no panide,'• of th reasons why delegates are not being sent.::
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" Muisolini talks of the Pax Romani-1M." Gerald- I lea ri!, in Time and Tide.:. - Mr. Heard should teach him Latin.
--a' * - Take It As You -; " So far in this. matter - we have never misled our readers by a single 'thoughtful warning or considered forecast."—J. Is Galvin iii The Observer.. "Jizius.
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