A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK W ITH the newspapers full daily of references

to the House of Savoy, it is not unnatural that readers of the papers should ask why the Italian Royal House takes its name from a French Depart- ment. The question recalls the most important episode in inodern Italian history. Savoy has been French for little over ninety years, and the House of Savoy goes back more than nine hundred. When Cavour organised the Risorgimento movement Victor Emmanuel of Savoy ruled over Savoy itself, Sardinia, Piedmont, Genoa and Nice, with his capital at Turin. His father had fought the Austrians, been defeated and abdicated. Under favour's leadership foreign support was sought, and with the aid of the Emperor Napoleon Lombardy was added to the Sardinian kingdom by conquest, and the duchies of Tuscany, Parma and Modena by free choice, in 1859. The first step, and no inconsiderable one, towards a United Italy was taken, and the transfer of Savoy and Nice to France was the price of French help_ It was a bargain freely entered into, and Italy has never had any title to claim the return of either territory. Without the loss of Savoy there would have been no House of Savoy ruling all Italy since 1870 and almost all of it since 186o. By next week, Italy may have neither Savoy nor Savoyan Royal House. She can fare very well without either.

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It is hard to strike a balance between the advantage of having in a place of influence at Moscow a man who understands Britain as well as M. Ivan Maisky and the disadvantage of losing M. Maisky from London. About the latter there can be no question. In the eleven years he had been here the Soviet Ambassador had converted an initial suspicion and aloofness (except on the part of a limited Left Wing coterie) into general regard and genuine respect—and that far more by the force of his own personality than through changes in the political relationship between his country and ours. That was reflected visibly enough in a comparison between the character of the guests at an At Home at the Soviet Embassy in 1933 and in 1943, and it is the highest testimony to the esteem in which M. Maisky was held that it survived both the Russo-German understanding and -the Russian attack on Finland unimpaired. No diplomat accredited to the Court of St. James's would be missed so much. It is apparently not yet quite certain, though very probable, that his successor will be the largely unknown M. Gusef, recently appointed Soviet Minister at Ottawa. He will have high traditions to live up to at Harrington House.

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" Lord Woolton, speaking at Bedford College, Regent's Park, yesterday, said:

There are thousands and thousands of unfortunate people who have not taken the advice of the Government to spend their holidays at home.

' I should think that most of those who have not done so now wish that they had obeyed the request of the Government and not used the railways in going away at this juncture. Those who have gone away have got what they deserve.'" —Sunday Times.

So one Minister at least means to spend his holiday at home. And if any of his colleagues do otherwise they will know what he thinks of them. They have been warned.

I have more than once touched on coincidences in this column, though I realise that, like dreams, they have an interest that is largely personal_ Here is the latest. On Tuesday morning I was dictating a letter to Sir Halford Mackinder, the distinguished geographer, in reply to one of his, in which he mentioned that his book Democratic Ideals and Reality was shortly to be published in the Penguin series. I had, I am sorry to admit, never seen the book. Two hours later I came on a copy outside a secondhand bookshop, and of course bought it. Its interest today is considerable, for in it (in a chapter drafted in its original form as long ago as 1904) the writer focussed attention, as I think had never before been done, on what he called the "Heartland," the vast tract of flat, low-lying country stretching from west of the Urals to the Pacific, and indicated something of what its potentialities might be when it was opened up to commerce by railways. The best comment on that speculation is the fact that it is that Heartland, and the immense industries that have been developed there, that has since 1940 made the difference between a Russian defeat and a Russian victory. Mort credit has been given to Sir Halford for his foresight in America than here, in consequence of an article he published on the subject in the last issue .of Foreig Affairs, which has just reached this country.

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A quotation from another article in the same issue of Foreign Affairs has an interesting bearing on a question touched on in this column three or four weeks ago—religion in Russia. In an article on that subject Sir Bernard Pares writes: " The famous Iberian chapel, over which was once placed the Mandan motto, Religion is d for the masses,' has been reopened. Polish priests, and apparent even Russian priests, could hold their service in the front line ; som are serving in the Russian guerrillas. The Godless had to publi an article by one of Stalin's publicists stating that Sunday must restored because that is the wish of the majority of the people. An The Godless has since been discontinued in view of the shortage Paper.' "

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I have lately been watching an O.C.T.U. Commando detachmen performing its evolutions. In the course of them the men, all fu officers, had to jump off a pier into a lake and swim ashore full equipped, rifle and all. They made in the main a good job of it those who could swim. But what was surprising was the num who could not swim ; the instructor, a major, told me that of th men who came to that particular locality for short courses non swimmers averaged 3o per cent. or more. Ile added that the were some men who could not ride a bicycle. The latter may freaks, but the high average of non-swimmers among the type men of whom officers are made is surprising—and unsatisfactory

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An epigram with more truth in it than many epigrams has .jus come my way, from a source that.bespeaks respect for it: " Scrat a Fascist and you find an Italian ; scratch a German and you fin a Nazi."

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Readers of Canon Robins's article on " War-Time Morals " last week's Spectator may have observed that on the day the artid appeared the writer's appointment as Dean of Salisbury wa