A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
TO have known Ernest Bevin was to have known a great man. Agree or disagree with him, you could not doubt that. He was at his greatest, I think, as a leader of labour ; in that role he has had few if any equals. As Mr. Attlee said on Sunday, Bevin came into Parliament too late to become a real House of Commons man. To the end he would turn on his critics and address them as "you," the Speaker, who alone can be addressed in the Commons, countenancing the breach of order indulgently. Within that ponderous frame there was a mind that worked by no means ponderously. It could coin a neat phrase, as, in reference to a Labour Member whose views were mobile: " The worst of the hon. Member is that he is always meeting himself coming back," or an equally neat repartee ; when he was speaking one day on Mussolini and the Abyssinian affair, an Opposition Member for some reason ex- claimed, " Ah, that's where I came in." A genial smile broke over the Foreign Secretary's countenance. "It's where one of my predecessors went out," he observed without a moment's hesitation (referring, of course, to Sir Samuel Hoare's resignation). He had a strong and characteristic sense of humour ; the best remark I ever heard him make I unfortunately cannot quote, as it involved another public man. He looked .back with strange satisfaction to his Bristol days. " He was a Bristol boy," he said of Sir Oliver Franks, as if that was sufficient reason in itself for appointing him to Washington. And he used to tell with glee how, when he was driving a mineral-water van, he would stop on the way to villages round Bristol and soak the labels off some bottles and transfer them to other/ to meet the shop- keepers' differing tastes ; the colour of the liquids was the same, so who cared?
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