A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
ONE can never cease admiring the perfect poise and self-possession of President Roosevelt as he calmly moves forward from one phase of activity_ to another. Having been through a year of strenuous work, having made all the appropriate preparations for the continuance of the campaign, and delivered a farewell broadcasting speech entrusting the destinies of the next Congress to the nation, he sets off on a cruise. For five weeks he will be free from politicians and political talks and cut off from public affairs—not so much merely resting, we are given to understand, as turning things over quietly in his own mind—in just such a spirit as the artist, according to Mr. H. G. Wells's prescription, will periodically retire into the desert for contemplation. It hag often been pointed out that a radical defect in our British political system is that our Ministers in office have no leisure for thinking. President Roosevelt, who is perhaps the busiest man in the world, insists on creating the leisure for thinking ; and he gives the impression when he goes off for a holiday that it is not because he needs a rest but another form of activity. Perhaps Mr. MacDonald, in his long enforced absence, will have opportunities for thinking such as have not occurred since 1929 ; but I do not think we must count upon his coming back with a national reconstruction programme in his pocket.
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