A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
THE Socialist member of Parliament who stigmatised as " disgracefully flippant " Lord Montgomery's reference, in an after-dinner speech, to the next world war as the " next party " would presumably have been satisfied if the Field- Marshal had called it " an eventuality so horrible to contemplate that I prefer not to give it a name," or words to that effect. I am afraid I cannot bring myself to disapprove of the human race's tendency (which is particularly strongly marked among the British, and nowhere more so than in their fighting services) to take the perils which confront them down a peg by speaking of them frivolously. If a man has to face the possibility of his tank being set on fire or his aircraft being shot down into the sea, it is natural, and in a small way helpful, for him to speak of these contingencies as being brewed up or going for a Burton. And I do not recall that many were shocked when Sir Winston Churchill described our hard-pressed nation in its hour of travail as " some chicken.". The world's stock of fear, which Heaven knows is large enough, would be even larger if everyone always made a point of calling the things they are afraid of by their right names.
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