A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK
BY his Cabinet changes the Prime Minister has achieved variety without achieving visible improvement. To Lord Pethick- Lawrence, who leaves the India Office for well-deserved retirement after as arduous and anxious a term as any of his predecessors ever ex- perienced, the deepest appreciation of his services is due. There has been little to criticise in his administration, and his visit to India last year in the hot weather at his advanced age had an element of the heroic about it. That Lord Listowel should have been chosen to succeed him instead of Mr. Arthur Henderson, the Under-Secretary, seems hard on Mr. Henderson, who has had a much longer ex- perience of political life and of Indian affairs in particular. There would, moreover, have been advantage in having the Secretary for India in the Commons. The same consideration arises in connection with Lord Pakenham. His appointment to succeed Mr. Hynd as head of the Control Commission for Germany is sound, but this is a subject on which the House of Commons is exceedingly interro- gatory, and rightly, and it .is no sufficient answer to say that since Germany is now to lie under the Foreign Office one of the Foreign Office spokesmen will always be available. What questioners want is access to the man who is really doing the job and who can answer their supplementaries• with knowledge. To bring the. Postmaster- Generalship into the Commons on the other hand seems unnecessary, since the Assistant Postmaster-General, Mr. Burke, has beer doing admirably there, and will presumably now have few questions to answer. It may be noted, by the way, that the family name of the ex-Postmaster-General, Lord Listowel, is Hare. The Prime Minister, I understand, takes some credit for breaking up the Burke-and- Hare partnership. But these partners were not body-snatchers, only profit-snatchers. And that is not their fault but the Chancellor's, who insists on taking millions a year from the Post Office, instead of letting postal rates be reduced.
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