A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
SIR JOHN SIMON does not always sense the popular mind with great accuracy, but his diagnosis of popular opinion on the Popular Front seems to me perfectly sound. The idea has been thrown out, and worked rather hard, by one or two newspapers (quite a useful service to perform) and emphatically rejected in quarters where support was essential if the movement was to make any way at all. Many Liberals would like a Popular Front with Labour for obvious reasons ; it would provide them with the only hope visible of in- creasing their representation substantially in the House of Commons. But Labour has always been resolute about fighting under its own banner, and is still. More- over the raison d'etre for a Popular Front is lacking in this country. If Fascism in one form or another were a real danger, no doubt a Popular Front could and would be formed against it. But you are not going to rally new millions to a new banner by descanting on the perils of Mr. Baldwin—or even of Mr. Chamberlain. Of course people who really do think, with Mr. Ramsay Muir, that Mr. Baldwin's administration is " the worst, the weakest, the most timorous, and the most incom- petent Government that Britain has known since the days of Lord North," will be prepared to do something desperate about it. But not many people do. And Mr. Ramsay Muir himself, oddly enough, is against a Popular Front.
No one can pretend that the total of /250,000 towards a memorial to King George is a satisfactory yield for the eight months since the King's death. Something much nearer a million might have been hoped for, and it is significant that the Memorial Committee is said to be contemplating a less expensive, and certainly less impressive, treatment of the area opposite the House of Lords where the King's statue is to be placed. Why the response has not been better is a question of some importance. There was never a King whom all classes of his subjects would more desire to honour. But playing-fields, important as they are to the nation's life, hardly strike the imagination, and the precedent of the Jubilee Trust is not encouraging. What money did it raise ? Who is directing it ? What ' is it doing ? All these questions could, no doubt, be answered with a little research. But the point is that they need asking. No one should .have to ask them, any more than he asks where Trafalgar Square is. King George ought not to be commemorated in a corner.
* * Professor Gilbert Murray and Mr. H. G. Wells have stood together in too many crusades for their little difference over the Committee of Intellectual Cooperation to affect their relations. Mr. Wells' position is clear. He cannot say, it is true, " I am the Master of Balliol College " (tant pile for Balliol College), but he can, and doe's, say " And what I don't know isn't knowledge." And he :doesn't know about the Committee of Intellectual Cooperation. So there you are. Professor Murray is keeping his end up all right against Mr. WeHs, who has given him a -useful' opportunity for cataloguing the committee's activities-,--and also, incidentally, for demon- strating the continuity of British policy' in other fields than foreign. When the intellectual cooperation idea was first broached at Geneva in 1920, the British Delegation and all the Dominions said with one voice." No damned nonsense about intellect," and they have said it ever since. All except India. The Maharajah of Na)vanagar- none other than " Ranji "—made an eloquent and effective Plea for the new movement. Ex Oriente Lux?
The withdrawal of the British Consul, Captain Erskine, from Gore,. in Western Abyssinia, is a real blow to the stability of that threatened district, for Captain Erskine, who had been in Gore for six years, exerted a remarkable influence over the Galla chieftains in the region. In a remote and dangerous post, with the obligation on him to keep his friendly relations with the Abyssinians such as to lend no colour to any charge of anti-Italian activity, he has (my Information comes frorii a recent visitor to Gore) held the kind of position of trusted unofficial adviser. which in every period some Englishman has made for himself in Africa or Asia, or eVen, some- times, in Europe. If he is aver able to tell the full story of his years of service at Gore, it will be sothething worth hearing. .* * *• If anyone wants to know why the beet-sugar subsidy system is sometimes known as the beet-sugar ramp a story just told me may be enlightening. ' A friend Of mine bought a thousand £1 shares ' in 'a beet-sugar company at par in the early days of the subsidy. It paid a steady 10 per cent. and then out of its affluence presented bonus shares in the proportion Of three for every five already held. My friend thus got an extra 600. These a little later (the dividend having been in the meantime raised to 15 per cent.) he sold at a figure which recouped him for all his original outlay, and last week he parted with his original thousand shares for "11,950. As taxpayer he grumbled, as investor he Manages to keep cheerful. * * * * - A question reaches me which seems worth passing on : " What in your opinion is the best book in any language to give as a starting-off present to my daughter, who goes up to Oxford this term." Well, what is ? Books presum- ably familiar, like the Bible and Shakespeare, may be considered barred. I invite suggestions ; the subject is interesting.
* * * * The Ambiguous Wireless " Halifax Town, too, won, beating Tranmere Rovers 2-1." All right in print, but try listening to it Halifax too, won-----Halifax 2-1=-Tranmere 2-1. So which 1
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