A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK
BOMBING, which fills so large a proportion of the B.B.C. news bulletins, is the outstanding visible activity (how constantly we forget the invisible, indispensable activity of the Royal Navy), and Dr. Goebbels has been comforting his countrymen with the assurance that our admitted losses are such that the raids cannot be maintained long on the present scale. That would not be of much consequence if it were not that the question were not being some- times asked here whether we can afford losses of 44 a night. On that it may be observed that 44 a night is a maximum. The total loss of bombers in raids on Germany in June was less than 300. That, of course, is not negligible. It means something in money, and over two thousand brave and highly-trained men ; but by no means all the men are casualties ; many are unhurt and prisoners of war. How trifling is such payment for the immense damage inflicted when compared, for example, with the slaughter of the Somme, which began on July 1st, 1916, and resulted in. the capture of a strip of territory thirty miles long and seven deep (other ultimate consequences must no doubt be taken into account) at the cost of 410,000 British casualties. How do losses of aircraft compare with the supply? It is being very conservative to assume an output from the factories of Britain, the United States and Canada alone of 6,000 a month, or twenty times our present losses. When all allowance is made for the fact that only a proportion of these are heavy bombers, that there are losses in combat in other theatres than Germany and losses from accident everywhere, and that much of the output must go to Russia and China and the Pacific theatre, it will be seen that the day when losses will restrict activity against Germany is far from even beginning to look like dawning.
* * * * I hope the Bishop of Chelmsford will elaborate the surprising statement he made at the Albert Hall on Sunday when he spoke of • " the Christian people of Russia—a far larger number and percentage of the general population than is the case with the Christian people of this country." When I say the statement is surprising I do not mean that it is necessarily inaccurate ; but it would be interesting to know on what authority it is made. It is commonly said that about to per cent. of people of this country attend places of worship ; is there any ground for believing that an equal percentage, say 17,000,000 persons, do the same in Russia? The Bishop of Chelmsford may reply that churchgoing is not his criterion of Christianity—and indeed there may well be better. But on any other criterion, if applied equally to the two countries, what evidence is there that " Christian people " form a larger percentage of the population in Russia than in Britain? I put the question with the less hesitation because I find that a friend with very recent personal experience of conditions in Russia shares my surprise at Dr. Wilson's statement. * * * * The Lord Chancellor's observations on the public school system at Repton Speech Day are ,as conspicuous for good sense as some other observations on the subject are for the absence of that desirable quality. Lord Simon mentioned that he himself came from a simple and modest home, where sacrifices were necessary to give him the public-school education on which he looks back today with a deep sense of its value to him. There is much to be said both for and against boarding-schools as such, and much of what is best-in the public-school tradition can find its place and exert its influence in the right type of day-school. But wantonly to destroy a historic heritage, as capable today as ever of forming plastic character—in particular of inculcating the qualities of responsibility and leadership—would be to scrap gratuitously a national asset. Let no public school be a home of privilege ; throw its doors wide open to any boy capable of profiting by what it has to offer ; but let educational reform, in the national interest, take the line of levelling-up, not levelling-down.
Lord Simon (who was at Fettes himself) did not say all that in so many words, but it is a logical and legitimate elaboration of what he did say.
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At a time when the possibilities of civil aviation are very much in the public eye some of the limitations of it are worth a little passing consideration. At a discussion to which I listened at the Royal Empire Society on Tuesday Sir Frederick Handley Page quoted some striking figures from a statement mad.: recently in the American House of Representatives at Washington. It was computed
that to carry by air from San Francisco to. Australia 100,000 tons of goods—ordinary goods such as constitute the normal export trade to Australia—would need 6o times the personnel and 4o times the fuel required to send them by sea, and that more ships and men
would be needed to fuel and victual the landing-fields en route than could have carried all the goods by sea. The conclusion is
that for goods-transport the air will never be a substitute for, but only complementary to, the sea—and that to only a limited extent.
* * * * Nothing is more difficult than to draw the line between good taste and personal prejudice in the use of words. You instinctively react against a particular expression. Why? Does every man.
whose writing is generally approved agree with you? Or is it just a kink in your own mind? I asked myself that question after glancing again through Sir Arthur Quiller Couch's delightful lecture on " Jargon," in the new and admirable "Eyeryman " reprint. Here are four verbs which he denounces : "obsess," " recrudesce," " en- visage," " adumbram" Is there any valid objection to any of them, and, if so, what? Personally, I am against " recrudesce " and
" adumbrate," but I see no real objection to " obsess "—used almost always in the participal form y" obsessed "—or " envisage." Fowler, in his English Usage, characterises " envisage " as " a surely un- desirable Gallicism." Does that mean undesirable because a
Gallicism? If so we shall have to purge our language rather rigorously.
* * * * Of orthographic interest: Notwithstanding anything contained in the Control of Paper (No. 48) Order, 1942, Directions Nos. 6 and 7, the Minister of Supply hereby directs in lieu of the provisions thereof that you shall not (subject to the provisions hereinafter contained) consume in the peiiod June 27th, 1943, to October 30th, 1943, in the produc- tion of the news-bulletins, magazines or periodicals mentioned in the first column of the schedule to the Special Direction (hereinafter referred to as the previous Direction) issued under the Control of Paper (No. 48) Order, 1942, under Control Reference 167/43, a quantity of paper (including any paper printed or made outside the United Kingdom) the aggregate weight of which exceeds the weight set out opposite that news-bulletin, magazine or periodical in the second column of that schedule plus one-seventeenth thereof.
Or, more cumbrously, " Periodicals may use the same maximum amount of paper in the next rationing-period as they did in the last."
JAnus.
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