A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
THE Conference on refugees has made evident one fact : that the British Dominions are not prepared to accept any but hand-picked immigrants. Australia seems reluctant to welcome non-Britons of any kind, an attitude which is unfortunate in more ways than one. The Germans in South Australia have made excellent colonists and loyal citizens of the Commonwealth. The Italians in Queensland have been able, thanks to their national frugality, to stand up to a climate which bears hardly on those who keep an English way of life. Germany and Italy are blowing their lids off with surplus population ; Australia's natural increase is slow. There was the chance, here, of making a genuine contribution to world peace. Opposition to immigration on a large scale comes as a rule from organised labour in the secondary industries, whose scarcity value maintains for it a high standard of living ; but unless this policy is modified, and soon, there is danger that it may one day be changed for an equally high standard of dying. Land-hungry Powers will be slow to believe that 2,974,581 square miles can support no more than seven millions of people.
Sir Stafford Cripps has, for a lawyer, an unusual turn of mind. He told the House of Commons that ordinary English words should be used in framing Bills ; and after it had been proved, by reference to The Concise Oxford Dictionary, that the word he disliked was nothing out of the way, he persisted that it was fantastic to include in an Act of Par- liament words of which, off-hand, nobody knew the meaning. Sir Stafford thus joins the company, long and brilliantly led by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, of those who hate jargon and are prepared to assail it in its strongholds. Medical, legal, Parliamentary jargon—each one of these maintains the ancient tradition of making understanding difficult for the layman, and so keeping him in his place. The insider's language is treasured by those who write or speak it, and any irreverence bites deep. Even Herbert Spencer, that tolerant philosopher, was indignant when Professor Tait translated a famous definition of evolution into what he called plain English as follows :
" Evolution is a change from a no-howish, untalkaboutable all- alikeness, to a some-howish and in general talkaboutable not- all-alikeness, by continuous somethingelsifications and stickto- getherations."
Sir Stafford was told that he came too late with his suggested alteration to the Lords' amendment. There might still be time to let him run through next year's Income Tax forms.
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A Conference of jurists and historians has ended its session in the island of Guernsey. La Semaine de Droit Normand, an institution which attains its majority this year, brought forward for consideration of its members the Coutumier de Normandie, a code to which English Law still owes something and by which (with some few adaptations, inevitable as the centuries pass) the Channel Islands still are governed. Islanders owe allegiance to King George VI under a title long since abandoned by his ancestors, that of Duke of Normandy. They see no need for representation at Westminster. They rule themselves. They tax them- selves. In cases of unbearable justice they have only to cry thrice and publicly : Haro ! a ?aide mon prince, on me fait tort, and the complaint must be heard. Victor Hugo, the exiled Romantic, surely felt at home in Guernsey in a house whose tenure obliged him to pay yearly on St. Martin's Day to the Duke's deputy some pairs of live pullets in addition to the rent. The French jurists, on the contrary, cannot have been at their ease among all these anachronisms. One or two of them may have sighed. There is nothing picturesque about the Code Napoleon.
* * * In Italy another Conference of jurists seeks to create a Berlin-Rome axis upon which International Law may spin, and appears to be finding the task simple enough. Says the Commentator of the Corriere della Sera :
" The characteristic of this convention may be described as a common spiritual orientation. Discussions are brief, agreement soon reached and unanimous, for the reason that there is no funda- mental divergence of opinion. The ground has been well-prepared by two notable events—the visits exchanged between Duce and Flihrer ; the goodwill of our two leaders has polarised thought."
He goes on to say that nothing has been put on paper, no legal scheme is to be drawn up. The lawyers are content with " reciprocal comprehension." It is not stated in what light these gentlemen regard the existing body of Inter- national Law. Probably they see it as a quaint innocent compendium not unlike that which orders the lives of the Channel Islanders : a Coutumier des Faibles.
* * * * The American Postal Telegraph Company is prepared, in honour of special occasions such as Fatfiers' Day or the Fourth of July, to send out a new kind of telegram. The recipient is summoned by his telephone bell in the ordinary way, but instead of a request to hold the line, or the voice of some business acquaintance, he is greeted by an outburst of song from a perfect stranger assuring him of affection and regard. Should our Postmaster-General consider this novelty and adopt it as an aid to revenue, it is interesting to guess at the ditties which thus might raid unwilling ears in Downing Street. Shipowners would almost certainly serenade Mr. Chamberlain with " Drake's Drum "; Count Grandi could not do better than adapt the once famous song from Floradora—" It's Pact, Pact, take it for a fact "- while the Chancellor of the Exchequer's waking hours might be made hideous by a chorus of taxpayers and tea-drinkers reproachfully chanting : " Oh, no, John !"
The comic strip, having served purposes of amusement and advertising, now enters the field of education in the record of Canuto, an unwary little soldier who serves as Awful Warning to the armies of Republican Spain. He is shown in various predicaments : neglecting personal freshness to a degree that causes his comrades-in-arms to be carried away on stretchers, tunnelling in the wrong direction as a sapper, and generally behaving in a manner calculated to cause despondency and alarm. He comes as a timely reminder that the Spanish common soldier, no matter on which side of the barricade he stands and though like Sancho he may scarcely know A.B.C., still can take and learn from
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