A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK
BY one of the oddities of Parliamentary procedure the Speaker, who is in many respects the most important member of the House of Commons, never hears what is in many respects the most important speech delivered annually in the House—the Chancellor of the Exchequer's opening of his Budget. The reason is that the Budget, like all financial measures, is dealt with by the House in Committee, and when the House is in Committee it is presided over by the Chairman of Ways and Means, who is at present Major James Milner. Consequently, as 3.15 on Budget Day, the moment fcr which a packed House has been waiting tensely, arrives the Speaker leaves the Chair and the Chamber and the Chairman of Ways and Mea'ns takes over. The Chancellor's able speech on Tuesday, it is of some interest to observe, was listened to by the widow of one former Chancellor of the Exchequer and the daughter of another, and for each the speech contained something of special concern. Lady Megan Lloyd George, in her place on the floor of the House' learned from Mr. Dalton, what neither she nor (I suppose) anyone else had remembered, that one fragment of Mr. Lloyd George's land legislation of 1910—a- section empowering the Commissioners of Inland Revenue to accept land in satisfaction of estate duty—was still on the statute-book ; and Lady Snowden, in the gallery, heard the Chancellor regret that her husband, when Chancellor in 1930, had declined to accept the offer of Loch Lomond from the Duke of Montrose's executors. Mr. Dalton, by the way, might have recalled that the late Lord Lothian was anxious to make over some of his Scottish estates against the heavy death duties he had to pay on succeeding his cousin in the marquisate, but the Inland Revenue authorities refused. The present Chancellor's wise and farsighted decision will change all that.
* * * * The change in the B.B.C. Board of Governors was carried out in an extraordinary way—so extraordinary that it looked as though the authorities concerned had clean forgotten that the five-years' term of Lady Violet Bonham-Carter, Dr. J. J. Mallon and Mr. A. H. Mann expired on April 3rd. At any rate, I believe the outgoing Governors had not up to April znd heard a word about any suc- cessors, and naturally assumed that they were being left to carry on till the renewal of the B.B.C.'s Charter at the end of this year ; that would, of course, have been the sensible thing to happen. Instead, the relevant Department suddenly got hectic. One of the new Governors was in Germany and got the invitation by telephone, with no opportunity to consider the matter seriously or discuss consequential arrangements. How or when the others were secured I have not heard. I am bound to say that the loss of the three Governors I have mentioned, together with that of Mr. Harold Nicolson, who retires in July, leaves a blank which the new appoint- ments inadequately fill. Miss Barbara Ward contributes youth and a vigorous and independent mind, and the Dowager Lady Reading administrative experience and decision, but the new Board as a whole looks a strange body to be responsible for the policy and performance of an institution of such vast national and international importance as the B.B.C. The Government has declined to appoint a committee to consider the future of the B.B.C. before the new charter comes up for discussion. That being so, it is to be hoped that Parliament will be both incisive and constructive in criticism, so far as any opportunity is allowed it. This is no party question, and Government back-benchers would do good service by insisting that the Government should take the B.B.C. more seriously than it seems to be taking it.
The temptation to conclude that Russians are unlike any other human beings, and that the effort to understand them is hopeless, must be resisted if possible, but it is often singularly hard to resist it. Take the latest excursion into the fantastic—an article which has just appeared (why four to five months after?) in a Moscow magazine on the tour of the Russian football team known as the Dynamos in Britain in November. The team, it is explained, was to have been housed at the Guards' Barracks, " but we found mould on the walls, cobwebs and hard bolsters instead of pillows." (This, clearly, is part of the Soviet technique of indoctrinating Russians .with the conviction that other people live worse than Russians.) The Dynamos wanted to call off the match against the Arsenal because of fog, but Mr. G. F. Allison refused " because people had paid for their seats and bets had been placed." Mr. Allison, in particular, had plunged heavily. When the Dynamos scored their fourth goal " Allison fainted; he had bet a large sum on the match and had lost." Mr. Allison, I am glad to observe, has by this time come out of his faint and expressed himself suitably on the article in question. But comment is, in fact, futile. In Soviet Russia even sport, instead of being sport, is a pawn of national policy. Hence the insistence that, though British football technique is superior to Russian, as Russian tactics are superior to British, " if both teams were to combine their technique and tactics we would still win, because the will to victory is developed in us as in no one else." A nation that cannot play a game as a game can hardly be expected to play the game in a broad sense.
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One of the most valuable exhibits in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin was a world-famous collection of coins. Numismatists in this country have felt considerable anxiety about its fortunes, and a question was recently asked on that in the House of Commons. The Chancellor of the Duchy, who is responsible for the civil side of control in Germany, could not answer at once, as the Museum is in the Russian sector of Berlin and inquiries therefore take time. Now it appears that the coins are no longer in the Museum, and their whereabouts are undiscoverable. Berlin was not particularly rich in antiquities and works of art, but it is disconcerting that such as there were should vanish without trace. The•whole question is to be raised, as it should be, with the other occupying Powers. It is possible, of course, that some art treasures were removed from Berlin by the Germans as a safety-measure and have not yet been brought to light.
* * * * One of the unhappy consequences of the unpopular and undesired Victory Parade—for I find universal evidence of its unpopularity— is the expulsion of the public from large areas of the London parks just in the spring weeks when the parks are at their best. Kensington Gardens is already desecrated by miles of barbed wire—a plain out- rage on the rights of the people of London—and there is a threat that Regent's Park is to be treated likewise. For London, at any rate, this is a heavy price to pay for the officially-promoted jubilation
that the Government is imposing on it. Jims.
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