Sir Arthur Leo, unlike many donors, has remembered that a
great house means considerable expenditure. He has therefore given a trust fund yielding £2,203 a year, which, together with the profits from the surrounding farms and woods, will keep up the establishment and provide a "residential allowance calculatod in a fashion deliberately designed to encourage regular week-end visits." We are inclined to think that future Prime Ministers will need no inducement to go to Chequers under such conditions; the difficulty will lie in inducing them to return to London on Monday mornings. The Trustoes of Chequers will include five Ministers, the Speaker, the Chairman of the Executive of the National Trust, and the Director of the National Gallery. By an interesting clause in the scheme, if the Prime Minister does not wish for the house, the tenancy will be offered in turn to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose twelfth-century predecessor lived in the place, to the Foreign Secretary, and to the American Ambassador, whose ever-increasing importance in our official world bi thus delicately emphasized.
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