A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
RECENT articles in The Spectator, and in particular the Greek Censor's Instructions printed on August 19th, have suggested the question why King George, who has Liberal antecedents, is content to support a crudely totalitarian regime in which he himself is reduced to a cypher. The answer may or may not be found in a curious story which I have lately heard from two quite different sources. King George was restored to his throne in November, 1935. On Aug. 4th, t 936, a dictator-. ship under General Metaxas was set up. On August 21st the Official Gazette, in which decrees of the dictatorship must be published to give them the force of law, appeared in a strange form. Though only a few people noticed it, the numbering of the pages showed that several pages were missing. What had happened to them and what did they contain ? I make no claim to know. But I do know what a good many hard-headed people at Athens thought—that those pages contained particulars of the new Civil List (payments to the Royal Family), that those payments were on a generous scale, and that the pages appeared in one or two special copies of the Gazette in order to comply with the law, but in none to which the general public had access. The public in Greece of course knows how it is taxed, but has no knowledge of how the taxes are spent. Nor may the papers discuss such things. * * * * Not a great deal is known about the British Council, which prefers to go its useful way unobtrusively (in spite of having for chairman Lord Lloyd, by no means the most unobtrusive of persons), and there might be some danger of credence being given to the allegation of Herr Bohle, at the Stuttgart Conference of Nazi organisations abroad, that the Council was engaged in organising Britons abroad just as Nazis outside Germany were being organised. If that were true the Council would not be organising them politically as the Nazis are doing, but in fact it is not concerned with Britons abroad at all. It exists—with a quite open and undisguised Government subsidy—to familiarise other countries with British ideas and British culture. It sends well-known Englishmen to lecture (without fee) in foreign countries, it helps to support English libraries in various foreign cities, and in various ways tries to maintain intellectual contact between this and other countries. It is cultural propaganda, if you like, but certainly not political. Lord Lloyd, strong though his views on certain subjects are, keeps the Council completely out of politics and draws his speakers from all political parties.
It is never entirely easy to gauge the public taste, and though I am disposed to think that what the public—or more of the public than one realises—wants to read about most today is foreign affairs, confirmation of that view from a responsible source is welcome. The source is Mr. Allen Lane, publisher of the Penguin books, which I suppose have caught the public taste more successfully than any similar series ever before. It is a fact, I believe, that the blue (non- fiction) Pelicans sell as well as the fiction Penguins, or better, and now I hear that negotiations are well advanced for publication in the Pelican series of a short history of inter- national relations since the War, in collaboration with the most authoritative of all bodies in that field, the Royal Institute of International Affairs. The arrangements are not quite concluded, but there is every prospect that they will be. If so the book is likely to be written jointly by Professor Arnold Toynbee and Mr. G. M. Gathome-Hardy, both of them masters of that particular subject. The interest and importance of the book itself can be guaranteed, but what is of greater interest is the opinion of one of the shrewdest judges of the public's taste in literature that this is the kind of book which in a cheap edition will sell by (I suppose) the hundred thousand. * * * * Abyssinia under Italian rule has been designed for many roles, but the idea of the country as a tourist centre is new to me. However, there it is. I have been sent the prospectus of a new Guide to Italian East Africa, about to appear under the auspices of Italian Touring Association, together with a specimen map which, if I had any desire to get in the Post Office at Addis Ababa, and could find my way on my own account as far as Benito Mussolini Avenue, would take me right there. The sponsors of the volume anticipate a clamor- ous demand. They ask, indeed, " Shall we be guilty of arrogance if we assert that the new Guide is destined to find a place in every home, in every business-house, in every office, as demonstration of the vast importance of our reborn Empire and to meet elementary practical requirements ? " The answer, unquestionably, is in the negative. But the words of warning addressed on Tuesday by the Under Secretary for Italian Africa to would-be settlers in Abyssinia may have some relevance for would-be tourists in Abyssinia. * * * *- It is unfortunate, but it is certainly no discredit to Canon Peter Green, that something he once said about euthanasia should haVe been quoted by a man who shot his wife (who was suffering from " mental degeneration ") and then himself, and left a letter saying why. There is a great deal to be said both for and against euthanasia, but responsible advocates of it stipulate for the most rigorous safeguards in the way of the consent of relatives and certificates of incur- ability by doctors. Even so, there are dangers, for doctors are not infallible, and most of us know cases of patients pronounced incurable years ago who are alive and relatively active still. In any case a layman who decides it is right to end the agony of someone he loves may be justified ethically— a point on which I express no view—but he certainly has no warrant for his action in the doctrines of any of the societies formed to advocate safeguarded euthanasia. * * * * Writing last week on the Test Match I ventured to observe, as proof that life has its compensations, that while I could not • at present bat as well as Hutton I thought I should get better marks at the microphone. This has brought me a, doubtless merited, condemnation couched as follows : "Your remarks regarding Hutton's appearance at the micro- phone are in very bad taste. No doubt your parents had sufficient money to send you to a public school, and so enable you, if necessary, to speak at a microphone with élan. It shows, however, a lack of good manners to gibe at another's lack of culture." This is very distressing. What is worse is the thought that I may have upset Hutton himself. My paragraph appeared on Friday ; playing for Yorkshire on Saturday the record-breaker was out for a paltry 22.
JANUS.
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