A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
S we advance through the fifth year of war we congratulate our- selves, I think, on the extent to which the essential freedoms have been preserved inviolate. Of course there are, and must be, innumerable controls, and of course mistakes, often infuriating, are made from time to time in their administration. But as a whole they represent necessary restrictions readily accepted by a nation that has put itself voluntarily under discipline. Of infringement of the liberty of the Press there is next to no complaint, and no sound basis for complaint. As Sir Walter Layton has just been pointing out in Melbourne, the internal censorship is still voluntary ; no paper need submit an article to the censor unless it chooses ; if it does not, and violates some reasonable rule, it of course runs the risk of prosecution ; but, in fact, there have been practically no prosecutions. Nor has the right of free speech or of organisation for unpopular purposes been seriously curtailed. I was glad to see a reply by the Home Secretary last week in the House of Commons to a Member who wanted action taken against some body calling itself the Bombing Restriction Committee, which, I assume, opposes the " obliteration-bombing " of Germany. " If," said Mr. Morrison, " people sincerely hold the view that bombing should be abolished or restricted, I cannot see that it is terrible to say so. There is no danger that the bombing will leave off, anyway." That is thoroughly sound doctrine. To curtail liberty even when that seems essential in the national interest is a serious matter. To curtail it when there is not the smallest necessity for doing so would be deplorable.
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The progress of the Fifth and Eighth Armies in Italy seems slow compared with the surging advance in Russia, but no one who looks at a contour map of the peninsula will fail to realise why. General Montgomery• and General Mark Clark are fighting in country almost ideally favourable to the defence, whose difficulties the Germans have increased still further by flooding the Pontine marshes which Mussolini had drained with such reclame. But Loth armies are making progress every day, and they will not have this kind of battle all the way to Rome. There is no doubt a time- table for this, as for all such operations, and the advance, I believe, is keeping well up to schedule. I am interested to see that General Marten, writing in the Telegraph, asks, as I have been asking myself, whether it is necessary to go far north of Rome at all. The importance, military, political and moral, of occupying the capital is obvious, but whether a continued push mile by mile up to the Alps would be worth the time am] cost involved seems doubtful. That would depend in part. no doubt, on how far the industrial north could be counted on for sabotage and support. But the occupation of Italy from Rome southwards would provide a secure spring-board for various interesting operations. We are still waiting for the full exploitation of the Foggia airfields.
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The discussion as to whether the prototype of Sherlock Holmes was Dr. Bell of Edinburgh, or Conan Doyle himself or someone else, seems to me very much beside the mark. Sherlock Holmes was a character in fiction, the creation of a fertile and imaginative mind. Reminiscences of this man or that man, as probably subconscious as conscious, may have been embodied in him, but it is surely enough that he was just Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. And what a figure he was in the literature of the nineties. How the Strand Magazine of that day sold on the strength of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes alone. I picked up The Sign of Four the 0thel day and found -myself reading it, not perhaps precisely with the old boyish zest—one is only a boy once in life—but with the same sense of the admirable entertainment it provides. Of course ' dates, but we who remember four-wheelers and fish-tail gas burners rather like reading about them now and then. There have been better detective stories written since then, but no detective has ever been created to touch Sherlock Holmes—not Poirot or Lord Peter Wimsey or Inspector Frost, or any of them. He alone has become, and remains, a legend.
Newspapers sometimes treat news curiously. One night this week the B.B.C. reported a speech by Dr. Ley, the German Minister for Labour, telling the bombed-out population of the shacks they would have to spend the winter in. They could, he said, of course expect nothing in the way of electricity or plumbing. They could, of course expect no carpenters' labour, which was urgently needed for othe purposes. They could, of course, expect no timber, on which equal') the Government had a prior lien. They must build the shacks themselves out of material salvaged from bombed sites. This seems to me a speech of high significance, yet I saw no reference to it in any paper. Certainly none gave it any prominence.
The choice of Sir Henry Bashford to be head of the new medic• service instituted for the whole civil service is admirable. Sir He has been associated with the Post Office medical service since 1907 and has been Chief Medical Officer for some years, with supervisio over the health of well over 200,000 workers. He is a man of main interests, particularly literary. His first book, The Corner of Hanle Street, would have made him widely known if it had not published under a pseudonym, and The Harley Street Calendar a series of sketches of the great figures in English medicine, signally successful in telling the layman just what is calculated interest and instruct him. Add Vagabonds in Perigord and the fac that Sir Henry is an ardent fisherman, and it will be seen that th Civil Service acquires to organise its medical service no mer technician, however efficient, but a man of wide interests generous sympathies.
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Postage stamps can be made a valuable medium for legitimat• national advertisement—though that conception has rarely bee grasped by the designers of British stamps or those who direct their labours. An outstanding example was the series of 1492-189 U.S.A. stamps, picturing historic scenes in American history, and of course, there are many such. The Polish Government has jus issued a really beautiful set, of all values, some oblong, some th• normal size and shape. The drawings, mainly of scenes in Pelts land, sea and air warfare, are admirable. But I am not clear when if anywhere, the stamps can be used for postal purposes at preset
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The Vestments of Peace " In conclusion, I can only assure you that everything poksibl is being done by your Board to weather the storm of a world ls' and to be ready, at the cessation of hostilities, again to take o leading place among the manufacturers of our particular line
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