A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
THE Conference of the British Medical Association at Plymouth opened with the announcement that a Committee of members had been chosen to advise the Home Secretary concerning the admission of refugee doctors to practise in this country ; 264 foreigners, mostly non- Aryan, have been admitted to the medical register since 1934 ; and owing to the drive against Jews in Austria more applications are to be expected. Evidently the profession throughout the Empire cannot without some sacrifice take up the slack as fast as Central Europe pays it out. Evidently, too, the refugees are not all men of the highest qualifications. But when it is remembered that before starting in practice here or in the Dominions they must re-qualify, in a language and according to standards not their own, there seems a way ready-made of determining their eligibility. By an extension of the time of clinical study at present necessary before the final examinations may be taken it should be possible, as the Treasurer of the B.M.A. suggested, to instil into aspirants some consciousness of the traditions of the profession in this country before allowing them to co-operate or compete with it.
* * * *
The Ministry of Transport's most recent casualty list shows no sign of any truce in our road war ; 106,569 persons were killed and injured between the first day of January and the end of June this year. The experts are ready with their explanations. Sir Malcolm Campbell lays his blame on the roads, narrow, twisting, with surfaces that vary to the confusion even of the skilled driver. Mr. Claude Muffins, the Metropolitan Magistrate, giving evidence before the Lords' Select Committee, finds that recklessness is encouraged because, in the present state of the law, there is a good chance of escaping the consequences of rash, idiotic or criminal conduct. He suggests that the proportion of acquittals by juries in motoring cases is far too high, a fellow feeling making the average juryman wondrous kind. Another witness deplores the Post Office's bad habit of planting telegraph poles close to the carriage-way, an apparently innocent fact which has already been responsible for 1,290 accidents.
* * * * Meanwhile a nation of realists, which has dispensed already with the use of the horn in towns, approaches the problem from another angle. Stockholm's chief of police invites school-teachers to consider how road-sense may best be imparted to the young. He recommends that just as children have to be taught to walk they should be taught how to protect themselves in traffic. Classes must be held in school playgrounds and corridors ; the rule of the road must be learned at the same time as the rule of three. A generation which has accepted the internal com- bustion engine much as an infant accepts a box of matches, may at least be trained, thinks Herr Gunnar Biorklund, to recognise the formula that implies safety.
* * * * The Parisian correspondent of The Spectator denied last week that what England accepts as typical French cookery could ever have been invented by un chef genial. The policy of a slow expression of savours is more likely, he thinks, to derive from lack of fuel or poverty of material than from any considered plan. I should like to offer in rebuttal a quotation from the great master Careme, whose name, as opposed to his fame, makes up one of life's pleasanter little ironies.
- * * * * " I recollect one day hearing two master cooks discussing how to render down and season the juices of meat. One of them declared that by his method (which was to use little seasoning and hardly any spice) he kept the very quintessence of these nourishing juices and so maintained the purity of the blood, which is the true elixir of life. He went on to say that if it were possible to discover two gourmands of similar temperament, age, fortune and style of living, and if he were chef to one of them, his gourmand would live at least ten years longer than the other. Which," says Careme, " is an observation of some importance, and makes a good com- mentary "—upon the dogma which ruled in his day : " Sans boeuf point de cuisine ; sans epices, point de cuisine ; sans beurre, point de cuisine." That, surely, is geniality run mad.
* * * * In the foundations of a house at Colchester two coins of the time of Nero have been found. Behind some panelling in a house at Windsor a picture of Nell Gwyn, painted on glass, is discovered. Britannia, like a forgetful elderly lady, is forever losing and re-discovering her treasures. Coins may be lost easily enough, but how came a portrait on glass to be thus concealed ? The panelling dates from the time of Queen Anne, and it is not impossible to deduce the state of mind of the householder at whose orders Nell Gwyn was walled up in the manner of the traditional erring nun. To destroy her picture would appear to him anti-social, the lady having her place in this island story as the foundress of a ducal house ; by exhibiting it other susceptibilities might be offended. The householder therefore chose a middle way in the best British tradition of compromise, a tradition which has given to so many English houses their distinction as palimpsests of history.
* * * * Signor Mussolini in his Preface to the Acts of the Fascist Grand Council observes that the new order in Italy must now and then run counter to custom, and he instances the use of the third person form of address. The "lei," foreign, servile, detested by such great Italians as Leopardi and Cavour, must go from general usage. It is part of the older Italy, easy- going, disorderly, amusing, " mandolinista," which foreigners still sigh for, and which has ceased to exist. He is correct, no doubt. But a Spaniard using this same locution does so on the assumption that every individual, no matter how abject, has the right to be addressed as though he were a lord.
The Duce refers to the goose-step as a novelty singularly important, symptomatic of the revolution in manners. He misses a chance, however, of accounting satisfactorily for its origin, still obstinately linked in many minds with Germany, when he omits all reference to the patriotic manoeuvres of
Previous page
