A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK

THE election Brekekekex continues. In my constituency the name (misspelt) of the Labour candidate is scrawled on walls in a blackish chalk or paint which reminds me of political in- scriptions in Italy during the early days of the fascists. Some Conservative posters have been torn down and defaced. Perhaps Labour posters are treated similarly in other parts of the town, but it is a little disquieting that, as at the last general election, most (though not all) of the interference with freedom of speech appears to come from unofficial supporters of the Left. I notice that some of the Left are complaining of Mr. Low's indisposition as a piece of bad luck for them. I should have thought that, as long as Lord Beaverbrook keeps in good health and makes speeches, the Left have not lost their best vote-winning asset. As for the Liberals, their tactics seem to be to deliver right and left punches in quick succession. The tactics are sound, but the punches do not seem quite heavy enough to count as knock-outs. Meanwhile the Japanese war also continues.

• * * * The increase of land under corn may have contributed in a minor degree to the comfort of that large class of unfortunates who suffer from hay fever. So many other factors—rain, dust, heat, cloud, and so on—must be taken into account on the plus and minus side that one cannot judge whether the fact that there are X acres less under grass really makes any difference. At all events I for one find the train journey to London through the home counties in the latter half of June much less of a torture than it used to be.

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The doctors have done a good deal to mitigate the discomforts of hay-fever, but my fellow-sufferers will agree with me that it is still a most troublesome thing. I have always wondered why nearly every university puts its examinations at a time when a considerable number of candidates—hay-fever being worse in youth than in late middle-age--are certain to be suffering from a disease not serious enough to disqualify them from sitting but serious enough to lower, their vitality and power of concentration.

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Why is it that there is no good history of the British navy? There are excellent monographs on certain aspects and periods of naval history, and I am not forgetting the History of the Royal Navy edited. by W. Laird Clowes, in a number of volumes. This work contains a great deal of most valuable material and hundreds of interesting illustrations, but the text it laboured and often over- technical. In any case the volumes are now nearly fifty years old. Obviously a historian must hesitate before taking on an enormous subject which broadens out into almost every aspect of English life and covers so long a period of time. Nevertheless one man has written a history of the British army. The task of a historian of the navy would not be much more difficult. Indeed in some respects it would be easier, since at any given time there is more uniformity about naval campaigns than about warfare, say, in Burma and in the Low Countries.

* * I have been carrying about in my pocket one of the most lovely . , . . of all short anthologies, Mr. Maurice Baring's English Landscape. This small book was published in 1916. Any profits from it were

given to the British fund for the relief of Russian prisoners of war in Germany. It would be a graceful act if the book could be reprintec for the same generous purpose today, or, if the time is past for thi, particular purpose, the profits might be used in some other way for the benefit of those Russian soldiers whose heroism has contributed so much towards keeping the English country from the horrors of a German invasion.

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Mr. Baring's book includes the superb stanzas from Tennyson-

In Memoriam describing an English .mia-summer night and .earl) dawn:

Till now the doubtful dusk revesPd

The knolls once more, where couch'd at ease,' The white kine glimmered, and the trees Laid their dark arms about the field: And suck'd from out the distant gloom A breeze began to tremble o'er

The large leaves of The syaanctre, And fluctuate all the still perfume ;

And gathering freshlier overhead, Rocked the full-foliaged elms, and swung The heavy-folded rose, and flung The lilies to and fro, and said "The dawn, the dawn," and died away, * * * *

There are some ridiculous lines in In Memoriam: e.g., "My drooping memory will not shun The foaming grape of eastern France," meaning that the poet will not say no to a glass of champagne. In any case, quiet verse about grief remembered in tranquillity cannot have the high magnificence of "Peace, peace, he is not dead," or of

Antony's "I am dying, Egypt, dying" or of Wordsworth's sudden lament for Lucy

No motion has she now, no force ;

She neither hears nor sees ; Rolled round in earth's diurnal course, With rocks, and stones, and trees.

All this may be said to show that In Memoriam is something other

than a great elegy. The best passages in the poem are those in which Victorian England appears as sweet and everlasting as the little landscapes seen out of the windows in an early Italian painting.

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Someone was kind enough last week to give me a good slab of Roquefort cheese brought from Copenhagen. It is unnecessary to enlarge upon the difference between Roquefort and the " mouse- trap " to which we have been .limited, with occasional exceptions, during these war years. What strikes me most as a patriot, or .perhaps I should say as a greedy or at all eventi as a cheese-loving patriot, is that, if it is possible to make Roquefort cheese in Denmark, why can it not be made in England? Are we to go back in post-war years to the jejune English Cbecldar or to the repulsive imported Gorgon- zola?_ (Heaven forbid that _I should complain about, Stilton, .bui small Stiltons are not found everywhere.- -.Anyhow they are not as

good as large_ Stiltons, and a. cmAll family cannot cope with a large Stilton.) .Fprtbermore, might ,we not keep -more goats -on our hill- sides? In short why, cannot Roquefort,Pornmel, Camembert, Brie,

Gruygxe, Port -du Saint, Bel :Paese.-and all be .made_ in England's