A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
additional censorship, over and above the ordinary machinery, is needzcl, which I doubt, why not have messages to America censored by competent Americans? They would know much better than any Eng'ishman can what effect a particular message would have in their own country.
* * * *
I had something to say last week about a widely-read book called World in Trance, in connexion with an ill-conditioned attack by Mr. H. G. Wells on Professor D. W. Brogan, who wrote a preface to it: I expressed no opinion on the book itself, for the good reason that I had not read it, but I observed that some of the best judges of literature and politics were profoundly impressed by it, and that it was possible, but unlikely, that they were all wrong in praising and Mr. Wells right in condemning it. Since then someone has lent me the book, and my conscience, almost atrophied though it is, compels me to affirm that I differ from the best judges—without, however, agreeing with Mr. Wells. He describes World in Trance as "super- ficially clever and massively stupid." Superficially clever, if you will—for it is written in that peculiarly irritating, superiorly cynical, style so characteristic of much modern German and some modern English literature. But stupid it most certainly is not. I should prefer to call it astutely tendentious—a thesis being adopted, and the facts carefully selected (or ignored) to give body to it. The first section of the book, on the last Peace Conference, designed to depre- ciate President Wilson and denigrate the League of Nations in every way possible, deals with a subject of which I have some knowledge. The author's treatment of that makes me profoundly distrustful of his conclusions on other matters, such as Germany's internal politics, which are less familiar ground.
* * * *
In writing recently of the working of E.P.T. I said that though there was a strong case for amending the present enactment, some measure of the kind was necessary because "the spectacle of any- one making and retaining far larger profits out of war-trading than he can make out of peace-trading would have the worst effect on national morale." What, a very much respected correspondent asks me, do I think about the spectacle of thousands of workers who are earning far higher wages under war-conditions than they ever earned in peace-time? It is a fair challenge, and though the subject is far too large to be dealt with in a note, I can state my general opinion
quite briefly. Broadly speaking, there is as little to be said for war- .
profiteering in the one case as in the other (assuming hours and con- ditions of work in peace and war to be substantially the same), and the pressure some unions are exerting for perpetual rises of wages is grossly unsocial and might easily become financially disastrous. To say that increases are needed to meet the rising cost of living is equivalent to claiming that large classes of the population .(whose brothers and sons are exposing themselves to be killed for a few shillings a week) should bear no part of the war-burden which rising prices impose. The case of the lowest-paid workers, who might be driven by rising prices below a reasonable subsistence-level, stands by itself, but some of the claims advanced in the higher-paid quarters are blatantly unpatriotic. The claims usually have to be conceded, because in the national emergency the work is indis- pensable. The reason the effect on national morale is not more serious is that the vast total of the increases is never so presented as to strike the public eye as a company balance-sheet does.
* * * *
I was very glad to read the tribute Mr. Eden paid in the House of Commons to the success Mr. Malcolm MacDonald is achieving as High Commissioner in Ottawa, for it confirms what I have heard repeatedly from various unofficial and very reliable sources in the past year. I imagine that Mr. MacDonald accepted rather as a public duty than as "a thing to be grasped at" the translation from an administrative office and a Rouse of Commons career at home to the post he at present holds. But he is still young enough to regain the ear of the House quickly, and meanwhile he is beyond question doing invaluable service where he is. There have been plenty of opportunities for misunderstanding and friction between the United Kingdom and Canada in the last year or two, and though credit for avoiding, or minimising those evils is shared by Mr. Mackenzie King and successive Dominion Secretaries here, the major part of it. from all I can hear, should go to Malcolm MacDonald. He has presented Great Britain at its best to Canadians, and it will be remembered how effectively he placed the facts about Canada's war effort before this country when he came home recently on short leave. Some of his most valuable services must be left unrecounted. but it can be well understood that Canadians regard him as the best High Commissioner they have ever had.
* * * *
It is a little disturbing to learn that the B.B.C. in its French transmissions is accustomed, in the course of a feature called "Au Pilori," to denounce individual Frenchmen now in France as "collaborationists," with the obvious effect, and presumably the intention, of exposing them to attack by patriotic partisans. I have no softness in my heart- for collaborationists, but their names are clearly supplied by agents or informers of some kind, and it is easy to conceive how private hostility or animus may in individual cases be the cause of denunciation ; in Germany that is a commonplace. The B.B.C., of course, is only an agent in the matter, acting for higher authorities, French or British. But surely this kind of thing could be left to the Algiers radio, which is controlled by the French themselves. Incidentally, by what freak of mismanagement does it happen that the only Algiers paper obtainable in London (so I am told) is the Marseillaise, whose publication here was banned last July on account of its violent and extreme attitude? There are three or four more important and. responsible Algiers weeklies, but they, it appears, fail to reach London. ANUS.
Previous page
