A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
EXCEPT for the singular suggestion of a referendum on whether the Coalition should continue, the Prime Minister had a great deal the best of it in his exchange of letters with Mr. Attlee. There was, indeed, one passage in the latter's reply which is almost incom- prehensible. For Mr. Attlee is an honourable man, and it is hard to believe that he would quote the Prime Minister as saying that " we must look to the termination of the war against Nazism as a pointer which will fix the date of the General Election " and deliberately omit the preceding and governing words " unless all political parties resolve to maintain the present Coalition till the Japanese are defeated." Yet that is what did happen. And to Mr. Attlee's suggestion that this was " a rush election " (we are likely to hear a good deal of that) Mr. Churchill is able to rejoin with the important disclosure that the interval to elapse between a dissolution and the election was unanimously fixed by the War Cabinet, on the proposal of the Labour members of that body, at thirty-eight days instead of the usual seventeen. If Mr. Attlee has his letters .drafted for him he is indifferently well served. If he drafts them himself —.
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Convinced admirers of the Prime Minister (among whom I plant myself firmly) will welcome any compliment it may be proposed to pay him. But when I see it suggested in all seriousness that he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize I begin to wonder whether the Anti-Nicotine League has an honour in store for him too. For if Mr. Churchill will be- remembered as anything by succeeding generations it will be as one of the greatest organisers of successful war in all history. If the Nobel Committee are at a loss for a recipient of the prize what is wrong with Doenitz?
* * * * The Times was unfortunate in its message from Marshal Stalin. After its correspondent in Moscow had been enterprising enough to secure a reply from M. Stalin to his very pertinent questions regarding Russia's relations with Poland, his cable on the subject evidently reached his paper just too late for its issue of last Satur- day. That in ordinary cases would not have mattered. The message would have been just as valuable on Monday. But meanwhile Marshal Stalin's statement had been broadcast from Moscow, with the result that the B.B.C., the Saturday evening papers and the Sunday papers all gave the statement in full before The Times was able—on Monday—to publish a line of it. Such accidents must sometimes happen, but it was singularly hard lines on the paper and its enterprising Moscow correspondent. However, all other papers were careful to give The Times full credit for what it had elicited. * * * * No one can fail to feel considerable sympathy with Mr. Montague, the Labour Member for Islington West, in his exposition in the House last week of the situation of M.P.s who try to live on their £600 a year. What he said, in brief, was that the £600, after taxa- tion, amounted to some £8 los. a week. Out of that has to come postage, of anything from £2 to £4 a week, extra expenses for meals, travel, &c., and some secretarial assistance, with the result that in this particular case the net income remaining is under £3 a week. The answer, or a partial answer, is no doubt that the £600 was never meant to provide complete subsistence. But if the £400 voted in 5911 was raised in 1937 to £600 on account of the general rise in costs there is logically some case for a further rise now—though
there are obvious objections to an increase after only eight years. The Government spokesman was clearly right in saying that the matter was one to be dealt with after, not just before, a General Election. A Senator or Congressman in' the United States, where all prices are on a higher scale than here, gets to,000 dollars a year (about L2,500 at present exchange rates) and certain allowances.
There was not very much new to be said about euthanasia and compulsory sterilisation. The Bishop of Birmingham tas given both subjects another run, but they do not so far seem to have been much taken up. It is a case where sentiment and logic are at variance, and it would be a mistake to underrate on the one hand the strength of the sentiment or, on the other, the consequences to the race of a defiance of logic. It is obviously better from the point of view of the community that an obviously imbecile child should not live, but it may easily be the object of its parents' -special affec- tion. (Wordsworth's The Idiot Boy is familiar enough.) The Bishop was no doubt thinking only of cases where it is not, and would not think of advocating euthanasia except when the parents desired it. But public opinion would as a rule look askance at them and regard them as unnatural. Sterilisation of the mentally defective to prevent their propagation seems to me a much more open question. But a decision on the degree of imbecility that would justify such treatment would be very hard to determine. Here, as in so many other cases, Hitler's practices have created such aversion as to make dispassionate judgement difficult.
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The achievement of Sir Harry Selley, M.P., in laying 200 bricks in under an hour (at the age of 73) in the yard of the House of Commons last week was, of course, a tour de force. The Hon. Member, that is to say, would pretty certainly not have been able to maintain that rate for a second hour, much less a fourth or sixth or eighth. But all he had set out to show was that 800 bricks in an eight-hour day would lay no excessive strain on an efficient brick- layer, whereas the Essential Works Order, I believe, fixed 32o—which is as much as the average bricklayer achieves. It is, of course, perfectly right for the trade unions to insist on a rate which the average workman can reasonably maintain without overdriving himself, but to make the pace of the slowest the pace of all can only have disastrous results, as much in the building of workers' houses as in the building of mansions. It would raise the repute of the building trade unions considerably if they would raise the rate of bricklaying of their own volition. It is not only the prices of materials, some of them no doubt unnecessarily' high, which keeps up the cost of housing. Restrictive practices need attention.
* * * * When, a year or two ago, I gave a list of the still surviving editors of the old Echo, which expired in 5905, W. M. Crook, who died last week, at 85, was, I think, the oldest. (Another, Sir Percy Alden, was killed by a flying-bomb last year.) Crook was a familiar, and universally respected, figure in Liberal circles—he was secretary of the Home Counties Liberal Federation for close on thirty years —and Methodist circles a generation ago, and his wide literary knowledge made him an active and valued member of the Liter,ar!, Circle at the Devonshire Club. Lingering traces of an Irish accent
lent marked attraction to his conversation. Jalms.
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