A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK
THE appointment of a new Viceroy of India is evidently to be expected almost at once. The expectation seems to be that the choice will fall on Lord Cranborne, and there will be general satis-
faction if it does. But there are other possibilities. Sir John Anderson, a former very successful Governor of Bengal, is one of them, but he is at present the only member of the War Cabinet not burdened with departmental duties, and it is difficult to imagine that he could be spared. General Auchinleck is another. He is available, his prestige stands high with all parties in India, and he has many of the qualities of a statesman as well as a soldier. From many points of view it is a pity that Sir Maurice Gwyer, who is about to retire from the Chief Justiceship of India under the age- limit, was not appointed when Lord Linlithgow completed his original term of office last year, for Sir Maurice's knowledge of the Indian situation and hold on Indian opinion is remarkable. Age, indeed, need not be a decisive obstacle, for Lord Willingdon began his very successful Viceroyalty at precisely the age Sir Maurice Gwyer has reached now ; but at 65 the order generally seems to be go out rather than go on.
• * * * After reading the leading articles on the Beveridge Report in all of Wednesday's London papers I have not a shadow of hesitation which to pronounce the best of the bunch. Credit for that must go unquestionably to the Daily Mail. (I only hope the writer of The Spectator leader has done his job as well ; if he has I can spare some eulogies for him too.) In what do the virtues of Mail's article consist? Analysis of such things is never easy, but it is worth attempting. What the article emphasises is the magnitude of the task undertaken ; the revelation of an almost unique capacity in the author of the report ; the conviction that, considerable though the price to be paid is, " we can do it " ; the assertion that our capacity to do it and determination to do it is at once a proof of national quality and an example calculated to stimulate other nations to like endeavours. That, of course, is only the bare bones. Clothed in terse, vigorous and unambiguous language, they constitute what to my mind is a most admirable piece of journalism—and to avoid misunderstandings let me add that I do not know so much as the name of any Daily Mail leader-writer.
* * * * I am glad to see that questions about the so-called Intercollegiate University and kindred bodies (these concerns are getting thick on the ground ; someone has kindly sent me an announcement of a meeting arranged by Avatar International University, British Section) have been put in the House of Commons. Mr. Mander on Wednes- day asked the Foreign Secretary " if he will consider the advisability of entering into consultation with the United States Government with a view to a mutual agreement to prevent the authorisation of the setting up of bogus-degree-granting universities in the territory of the other." To that Mr. Eden replied that it seemed to be primarily a matter for the universities of this country, and in view of supplementaries put by University Members like Miss Rathbone and Mr. T. E. Harvey there would seem to be good reason for hoping that the University Members' Committee will take the matter up. The activities of the Vice-Chancellor and Registrar of the lately defunct Intercollegiate University, British Division, as Vice-Chancellor and Registrar of the lately nascent University of Sulgrave deserve some vigilant attention. Christmas is just three weeks away, and there is one aspect of it this year which I should like to emphasise with all the power of expression I can command. Very few people have money to spend on Christmas presents, very few the strength and leisure to devote to drawing up Christmas lists and trailing round shops to find something suitable for this friend and that friend. Many, particu- larly elderly people, find it a serious tax on strength even to write the Christmas letters they have been accustomed to send. No one wants to make Christmas sombre. It is all to the good that the Minister of Labour should have appealed for two full days off. But a " token-Christmas" can be just as cheerful as one in which re:a- tively costly presents change hands. The Government, of course, is urgently anxious that money shall only be spent on the purchase of real necessities—and how many ordinary Christmas presents come into that category? There are special cases—friends serving abroad or dependants financially straitened, and some others—where an exception may properly be made. For the rest, I should hope presents might either be dropped or kept to well under half-a-crown apiece, and a general understanding established that we are thinking of our friends and know they are thinking of us, without the need for tangible proof of it.
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Incurable in its penchant for cheap and childish gibes, the B.B.C. News Department on Sunday night, after giving full particulars of the R.A.F. raid on Turin and then various other items of news, came to the raid by R.A.F. fighters on objectives in France, pre- fixing to it the completely gratuitous introduction, " While Turin was having a taste of our 8,000-lb. bombs, which Stuttgart experi- enced last week, R.A.F. night fighters.. . ." If anything was needed to emphasise the pettiness of such embroideries on honest news it was the tone and temper of the speech the Prime Minister had just finished delivering. And since Mr. Churchill quoted Kipling, I might recall once more that by no means prim-lipped writer's con- tempt, during the Boer War, for those who gratified themselves by "killing Kruger with your mouth."
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I commented a week or two ago on the rival claims of Lord Londonderry and Lord Swinton to credit for the adoption of the Spitfire. I learn now that it would be erroneous to attribute it to either. The Secretary of State for Air has nothing to do with the adoption of types; nor has even the Air Council. It is a matter which falls exclusively to the Air Staff. Having decided what it wants, that body in pre-war days gave the necessary orders to the firms of its choice. At present, of course, it puts its requirements before the Ministry of Aircraft Production.
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"When a woman in the dock at South Western Police-court yesterday, charged' with shoplifting, said she felt ill, Mr. Mullins, the magistrate, replied, ' Of course you do, you thief. You will feel worse by the time I have done with you! "—News Chronicle, December 2nd.
Reminders to be duly thankful that there is only one Mr. Mullins in the London Police-courts turn up periodically. This is one of them.
" I don't like this word housekeeper. It usually means some- thing immoral,' said Mr. _ Claud Mullins yesterday."—News Chronicle, December 3rd.
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