I raised a question last week as to the meaning
of a state- ment in a letter by Neville Chamberlain to his brother Sir Austen: "I have had my time of scorching humiliation," and suggested that it might refer to the late Prime Minister's experi- ence as Director-General of National Service in 1916-17. One or two correspondents have made alternative suggestions, but a Birmingham friend of Mr. Chamberlain's writes that my inter- pretation was to his knowledge the right one. Meanwhile a story has reached me of the occasion when Mr. Chamberlain had an honorary degree conferred on him at Cambridge. Replying to a toast at the lunch afterwards he observed that, suffering as he did from a defective education, he had found some diffi- culty in following the Public Orator's Latin. "So," he pursued, "I resolved in this, as in other things, to follow my leader, and kept my eyes on Mr. Baldwin's face. [Lord Baldwin was, and is, Chancellor of the University.] When he looked serious I was grave. When he smiled I permitted my features to relax. And when I couldn't make out what he was thinking I put on an indeterminate expression." My authority for the facts is the Public Orator of the day.
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