SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

STRIX

When King Henry VIII met King Francois I in 1520 at the Field of the Cloth of Gold the administrative problems must have been con- siderable; nor can they have been much simpler when, in 1807, the plenipotentiaries of Russia and France negotiated the Treaty of Tilsit on a raft moored in the middle of the River Niemen. But at least both occasions had a certain panache, an aura in which protocol blended agreeably with eccentricity and ostentation; both added colour to the pages of history, and though we cannot all remember the precise significance of either confrontation we are un- likely to forget the manner in which they were staged.

Style was conspicuously lacking from the Russian-Czech negotiations at Cierna nad Tisou. By all accounts this dim Slovakian vil- lage is the sort of place which even the organ- isers of a church fete would, if possible, have shunned; and it is difficult to see wisdom, let alone dignity, in the choice for a vitally im- portant conference of a venue offering so many inconveniences and so few amenities. The supreme political leaders of a world power make themselves ridiculous by fixing a rendez- vous as though they were schoolboys meeting for a clandestine cigarette in the shrubbery; and although eleven men, plus one or two re- serves, may be the right number for a Politburo, as for a football team, delegations of this size are unhandy when it comes to negotiating. Not the least of the problems with which the Rus- sians lumbered themselves and their opposite numbers was that of sanitation. The delegates, their staffs and their personal guardians could use the lavatories in their trains, though the sidings in which these stood must have quickly become maladorous; but the small army of police, security guards and other myrmidons who surrounded the place were hardly a cor- don sanitaire unless someone put up latrines for them. This particular problem seems to be endemic in the Communist world: when hun- dreds of thousands of Red Guards were drafted into Peking for mass demonstrations nobody

had foreseen that they would need to relieve themselves and the city stank for days after- wards.

Fagged out

The bit I liked in the Newsom report on the public schools was the paragraph on fagging. 'Personal fagging,' the committee concluded, 'like beating by prefects, is a type of excessive authority which would be deeply resented by the vast majority of children in the maintained sector, and by their parents.' The committee does not say what evidence, if any, led it to make this sweeping generalisation; but if, as here appears, it felt it its duty to base its findings on the likes and dislikes of twelve year olds, whether in the maintained or any other sector, I feel it could have gone further than it did. Among the things which are deeply resented by the vast majority of these children are getting up early, going to bed at a reason- able hour, having to pass examinations, and indeed almost all forms of compulsion. A lot of them are not at all keen on washing, either.

Spare the toasting-fork . . .

In the distant, relatively barbarous days when I was at Eton none of us, until we got there, had performed any of the minor domestic chores of which today even the most privileged, even the most unfilial of our successors, has some experience. It did us nothing but good to learn, under the guidance of the estimable boys' maids, to cook eggs and bacon and sausages for our betters. When what I suppose Newsom would call an impersonal fag was wanted to run an errand, we all raced to answer a stentorian shout of 'BOY!' and the last to arrive got the job; this seemed to us a perfectly fair and indeed rather a sporting way of dis- tributing the work-load.

The whole system was, moreover, one under which, as well as fleetness of foot, intellectual merit (at that age, in those days, not held in

high regard per se) was rewarded; for you stopped fagging when you got into the Upper School, which if you were clever you could do in a year but if you were stupid and/or idle took more than twice as long. New boys were excused fagging during their first fortnight, at the end of which they were required to pass an oral examination in the local topography and be able to identify a reasonable proportion of the forty or fifty colours awarded for cricket, rowing, football and so on; this was a sensible arrangement, for it obliged the desorientes new boys to pick up their bearings in a strange new microcosm more quickly than they would otherwise have done. If our de- grading thraldom did arouse in any of us a burning sense of injustice, no trace of it re- mained when, a few years later, we earned the right to have fags ourselves.

A right and left

Singularity is almost always pleasing, and I was delighted to re-encounter last week my neigh- bour Mr R—. Apart from being an ex- tremely nice person, a good farmer and a staunch supporter of the South Loamshire Hunt, he is the only man I know whose uncle was hanged for murder (a crime passionnel in 1878) and whose Christian name is Coriolanus.

The economics of bumbledom

Like all owners and/or users of land, I see every day two kinds of machinery in operation. The first is the machinery for which I have paid out of my own pocket; over the years this machinery has become more expensive, more efficient and more capable of productivity. It has required fewer men to handle it. The second kind is the machinery of government. This (for which I also pay out of my own pocket) has become more expensive, less efficient and less conducive to productivity. Every year it re- quires more men and women to handle it. I believe that few farmers or landowners would dispute these assertions.

What prompted me to make them was the receipt from the local authority of a document, four foolscap pages in length with a map attached, from which, after wading through identical extracts from amendments made in 1949, 1954, 1959, 1965 and 1966 to the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, it was at length possible to deduce that two small, in- conspicuous woods, with a total area of fiN e acres, were no longer subject to a Tree Preser- vation Order. The little woods, though planted by my grandfather, came into my ownership only recently. I had no idea that they were subject to a Tree Preservation Order, which must have been imposed by some lunatic in the last war; nor, since the larger of them has just been clear-felled and replanted, does this Order seem to have had much force.

Nevertheless, it formed part of the machinery of government; in order to rescind it, the mechanics were obliged to produce a document some 2,000 words in length, a map, the signa-. ture of an overworked official, and a four-

penny stamp. I do not know how much, over

the last two decades, it has cost the state to make this particular bit of machinery work —the survey on which the original Preservation Order was based, the passing of the five amend- ments to the Act, the typing, printing, filing

and indexing of the resultant paperasserie, and all the rest of it; all I do know is that every penny of the money has been wasted.