A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
THE Deputy Prime Minister was on Wednesday invited by an M.P. to assure the House that our bombing campaign against German centres of production will be further intensified, and Mr. Attlee duly complied. I find, and am glad to find, the feeling grow- ing steadily that we could with advantage talk a great deal less about the bombing of Germany. It is obvious to any sane person that we are bombing Germany to the full extent of our power. It is obvious to every sane person that we shall go on bombing Germany to the full extent of our power. No one, certainly, in Germany doubts it. Why, then, must Ministers, whether in reply to questions or not, be declaring about once a week that we shall bomb Germany to the full extent of our power? Verbal threats are cheap. Dr. Goebbels has lowered the rate to a new level. This is a case where action is its own best comment. The Air Ministry Information Service is work- ing harder than it need. When Germany is raided we want to be told where the raid was, whether it was regarded as successful and how many machines were lost. We do not, I venture to suggest, want constant statistics about the number of bombs dropped here or there, or everywhere all told, in the last month or quarter or full year. Most of us have not got minds to which such figures convey any clear picture ; they serve, on the contrary, to divert attention from the essential elements of immediate events. I doubt even whether we gain much by learning every time that large fires were started and that the glow was visible 15o miles away, but that no doubt is regarded as a natural part of the story and there is no need to cavil at it. But, generally speaking, it is the action that matters. The talk as often detracts from that as adds to it.
In reading a variety of disquisitions on desirable political develop- ments, I am struck with the tendency—often, of course, manifested in other connexions—to treat an aspect of truth as though it were the whole truth. Take, for example, the recent by-election at Skipton. The gist of most of the comments was that a local candidate of sixty-one was defeated by a young Serviceman in the early 'thirties, and that the triumph of youth was in the right order of things. In this particular case that may be a perfectly sound judgement ; knowing nothing at all of either candi- date, I cannot say. But other things being equal, local knowledge and familiarity with the needs and general conditions of a con- stituency I should have thought were assets of considerable value from a constituency's point of view. What I am most concerned with, however, is the rather facile assumption that youth is the one thing needful in political life. That there is a partial truth in that is not to be denied for a moment. As I said, all I mistrust is a tendency to identify the part with the whole. What is needed before all things in the House of Commons is a knowledge of facts,—economic facts, facts about foreign policy,—and that experience which only some apprenticeship in public affairs can confer. The danger, of course, is that age may bring ossification ; it sometimes does, and in such cases youth is to be preferred to it every time. But when experience is combined, as it often may be, with the preservation of mental alertness and resilience, then it provides what may be regarded as the ideal qualities for a House of Commons man. Youth, on its side, is often combined with knowledge—of economics and political his- tory and current social problems—and in that case again you have
an ideal House of Commons man of a rather different kind. But the doctrine that youth even without knowledge is better than experience with alertness is unsound,—a truth which is in some danger of being ignored.
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It is always interesting to come across a new name twice on successive days. On Monday I read in the morning papers the encouraging address on Allied unity which General Shcherbakov, head of the Political Department of the Red Army, delivered in Moscow on Lenin's birthday, and decided I must find out more about the position and importance of the speaker. On Tuesday, reading a little book called This Is Russia, by Flight-Lieut. Hubert Griffith (just published by Hammond and Hammond at 5s.), I came on a section devoted to Political Commissars, containing a sentence to the effect that, though the commissars no longer fill their former roles with the armies, they still retain some of their political functions, " and the appointment of Shcherbakov, an official very high in the councils of the Government, to the rank of Lieutenant-General would seem to show that the political education of the Army is by no means being neglected." This, incidentally, is a very instructive little book by a writer who has known Russia well for years, and was at Mur- mansk with the R.A.F. in 1941. That explains such convincing illustrative touches as, for example, this: " The black Kola Peninsula was so sparsely inhabited that something was able to happen there that could hardly have happened anywhere else in Europe—a German bomber crashed, the crew had to walk for it, and were able to walk for ten days and nights without seeing anyone and without them- selves being seen." I recommend This Is Russia—with a very few reservations.
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The Postmaster-General's defaults will lead to serious trouble one day. On the occasion of a recent wedding a friend of the bride's despatched to her a telegram containing (no doubt for pecuniary reasons) simply the words "I John iv., i8," a verse which, as every reader of this column will realise without reference, runs: " Perfect love casteth out fear." It arrived during the wedding breakfast, but the telegraphist, by omitting the prefatory " I," had converted epistle into gospel. And John iv., 18 runs: " Thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband." (This—i.e., the story as a whole, not the last sentence,—happens to be true.)
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"Mr. Bemays (Bristol N., L. Nat.): 'There were no bulging combines in Europe today." So The Times Parliamentary Report, influenced perhaps by the fact that Lord Woolton was simultaneously announcing in another place an enquiry into the working of inter- national cartels. But the classic reference to " the bulging corn-bins of the Ukraine " ought not to have been quite forgotten. Its author, I am sure, still remembers it among the bulging corn-bins of Chun. * * * * So complete was the surprise effected by the Allied force which landed behind the German lines in Italy that three Germans, so I read, were taken prisoner in their pyjamas. Such ignominy could never befall British troops. They have no pyjamas to be captured in.
JANus.
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