A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
THOUGH it is rightly to be marked by no special celebrations, Princess Elizabeth's eighteenth birthday is an event of note. Till this week the death of the King would have involved a Regency. Now the succession would be immediate and automatic ; when it is realised what responsibilities that would lay on the Princess's young shoulders, the reason for thankfulness that a change of sovereigns is in all likelihood far distant is doubled. It is re- assuring, none the less, to know that whenever the moment comes for assuming the burden the new Queen will be equal to it. About that there can be no doubt. She has been educated with singular wisdom ; the subjects she has studied particularly, English and American history, the French and German languages, are just those in which it is most important that she should be well versed ; and physical culture has kept pace with mental. What is most worth remembering is that the Princess represents essentially the post-war generation. She is of the age at which men and women are entering the Services now. The outlook of the daughter of a palace can obviously not resemble closely the outlook of the daughter of a wage-earner's home ; but in fundamentals, in the relegation to history of events which for older men and women are matters of personal experience, the consciousness that the post-war world. will be different from the old, the Princess may be counted on to share the outlook of her generation. She follows closely on the wireless and in the papers the events that make contemporary history ; and personifying by her position the great evolution of national progress through the past into the present, by her individuality she personifies the adventurous transition into a future undisclosed, It is a good com- bination in a future sovereign.
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Mr. Churchill, like many other people who believe profoundly in the League of Nations principle, has felt free, or felt it necessary, to criticise the League on occasion, but in his general support of it he has never wavered. He is still, I believe, Honorary President of the League of Nations Union. His appreciation of the League in the House on Tuesday was valuable and opportune. Mr. Hull's references last week to a future international organisation suggested that the Secretary of State had in mind something closely resembling the existing League, and it was perhaps significant that in referring to Mr. Hull the Prime Minister went out of his way to recall that a year ago he himself had expressed the hope that "the great body of work achieved by the League of Nations and embodied in the League of Nations" would not be lost, and when this evoked from a Cornish Member an acidulated caveat against any attempt to " revivify the League," Mr. Churchill observed decisively that " if the League had been properly backed up it would have been successful." That is the first and last of the whole matter. Any League that is not properly backed up must fail. Almost any League that is will succeed.
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The Manchester Guardian has had bitter fortune in losing its last two editors by sudden death, E. T. Scott in 1932 by a boating accident on Lake Windermere, W. P. Crozier last Sunday by a heart-attack. No higher praise can be given to Crozier than to say that in all respects he maintained the great traditions that C. P. Scott created, and nothing less would do justice to his achievement. The Guardian in the main encourages anonymous journalism ; certainly • its late, editor did, and except in Manchester and in journalistic circles generally, Crozier was not a well-known figure. He wrote little except leading articles. His only book, Letters to Pontius Pilate, published in 1928, revealed that fine classical scholarship by which so many past and present members of the Guardian staff have been distinguished ; and the chapter on C. P. Scott as editor which he contributed to J. L. Hxmmond's Life of C. P. in 5934 showed convincingly how brilliant and how easy a pen he wielded. It is hard to see how the Guardian can replace him adequately, whether it looks to its own staff or to a wider field. Mr. W. J. Haley, late editor of the Manchester Evening News, might in the ordinary course have trans- ferred to the morning paper if the B.B.C. had not annexed him, but now that solution is precluded.
* . * * •* The same week brings news of the death of an older, an .equally distinguished and a very different journalist. Older readers of The Spectator, whether they know it or not, owe an incalculable debt to Charles Graves. St. Loe Strachey knew it well. Not only did Graves write an immense quantity of first-rate anonymous articles and reviews, but their quality influenced the whole paper pro- foundly. His criticisms of books, particularly of fiction and verse, were directed, above all, to encouraging promising young writers. His musical comments were of a high standard, as became the inti- mate friend of Parry and Plunket Greene. He was an accomplished scholar of Greek, Latin, French and German as well as of English, as he proved in his unerring correction of other men's work as well as in writing his own. Through most of his years with The Spectator Graves was a member of the Round Table of Punch, and he became one of Sir Owen Seaman's most trusted colleagues. Out- side journalism he wrote lives of Parry and Grove, Punch's History, skits with E. V. Lucas, and several volumes of light verse, beginning with The Hawarden Horace. All his life he was passionately loyal to good causes and to his friends, most of whom, from Meredith Townsend and his gifted daughter down to Lord Byng and younger men, he outlived. He was the last of the remarkable sons of the Bishop of Limerick—R. P. Graves, always the Irishman first, and Robert, who served this country so well in the East. One son was killed in the last war, and since the death of his wife, a sister of Lord Grey, he lived as a semi-invalid in the country. He was immensely proud of the success of his surviving son, Sir Cecil, now the inheritor of Falloden, at the B.B.C.
* * * * One secret of the first importance is being admirably well kept. I heard last week of an extremely elevated personage who might be expected to know all there was to know about the" Second Front." He admitted that he did know a great deal—in fact, nearly every- thing. "But about the date," he said, "I simply haven't an idea."
* *, * * I mentioned last week that my apocryphal story about Stalin's telephone call to the Prime Minister had probably been heard by some readers before. I understand it had—in Wandsworth Prison. That, I should desire it to be clearly understood, was not the locality in which I heard it myself. ANUS.
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