A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
THE words " No one but Baldwin could have done it " came instinctively to thousands of lips up and down the country on the morrow of the abdication. negotiations last December. Precisely those words were used to me on Tuesday by a politician who had just come from the un- veiling, by the Prime Minister, of the medallion in memory of Lord Grey at the Foreign Office. That they are as true in the second case as in the first can be seen by anyone who takes the trouble to read a verbatim report of Mr. Baldwin's brief but moving tribute. There was a likeness between the two men that made them very intelligible to one another —the same simplicity, the same absence of ambition, the same love of the countryside of England, the same sacrifice of inclination to public duty. That Grey, " tried in the fire " as the Prime Minister put it, was the more impressive figure, in his austerity, his courageous emergence from the ordeal of suffering, in the " poise " which Mr. Baldwin attributed to him as his finest quality, Mr. Baldwin himself would admit with a sincerity beyond all suspicion. But of all men in public life today the Prime Minister is likest to the man he was honouring. And to say that is to pay as high a tribute to him as he would ask.
* * * * A writer in the Daily Mail, forestalling other alert critics who have been diligently comparing—on the parallel-column basis—the two versions of Mr. Hector Bolitho's biography of King Edward VIII, has thrown into relief one of the most remarkable cases of a revision of literary judgement on record. Last year Mr. Bolitho wrote in the columns of a periodical called Leisure, which has since suffered decease, a glowing eulogy of the new king. The story ended in June. In December came the abdication. And shortly afterwards came Mr. Bolitho's new book Edward VIII, His Life and Reign. Quantum mutatus. The paragon of last spring had shocked his admirers, and left at once his office, his home and his country. In the Leisure biography " many times he showed that he understood not the word expediency, but only the difference between what was right and what was wrong " ; now, " uncertain of values in living, confused over the strength and weakness of human nature, and bitterly resentful of all interference and affectionate advice, the Prince became a law unto himself He became increasingly stubborn and conceited over his popularity." In last year's version, " the Queen's influence was strong enough to survive the long gaps of separation " ; in this year's, " even Queen Mary's infinite tact and wisdom could not survive these gaps " ; and so on. Well, well. Quot homines, tot sententiae does not of course necessarily mean " one man, one opinion."
* * * * It is hard enough for anyone with strong democratic sympathies to maintain anything like a detached attitude in regard to the Spanish conflict. But there is every reason why humanitarian considerations and political considerations, still more military considerations, should be kept distinct. Nothing could be more welcome on humanitarian grounds than the dispatch of the ship Backworth ' with a cargo of foodstuffs, paid for by the generosity of many voluntary subscribers in this country, for the relief of hungry women and children in Spain. It is natural, moreover, that the food should go to some point in the Government area. But it is apparently going to the one single spot in Republican Spain—Bilbao—where food ceases to be merely food and becomes a vital factor in a military struggle. The foodships that are running the blockade are doing it frankly as a matter of business, and their success is saving Bilbao from the danger of surrender through starvation. But it is not altogether wise for humanitarians, as humanitarians, to throw their weight into the military scale. Why not Valencia ? The announcement that a meeting of the International Control Committee is to be called in the near future to discuss the dangers to which ships of small neutral nations in Spanish waters are subject draws attention to a situation to which I have seen hardly any reference in print. It is a fact, I believe, that up to the middle of last week fully 3o Norwegian ships and about half as many Danish, not necessarily bound for Spanish ports at all, had been stopped in the Straits of Gibral- tar by Spanish insurgent warships, taken into Ceuta and their cargoes confiscated. As things are the Scandinavian States have no redress. They have no navy capable of defending their merchant shipping and there is no one to whom they can appeal against what is, on the face of it, sheer piracy. There can be no very great expectation that the Control Committee will undertake the defence of merchant shipping generally on the high seas, but the question is at least worth raising.
* * * * The complaint of Stanmore and Edgware and other Outer London suburbs that the Tube is going to run out beyond them, with the result that more passengers will be carried and the already appalling congestion in the rush-hours accen- tuated, hinges on one of those problems which, like Palestine and the Polish Corridor, seem incapable of being solved without injustice to someone. It is plausible enough to say, as speakers in the discussion in the House of Commons on Monday did, that you should have a green belt outside the Edgware and Stanmore circle of suburbs. So you should. But if workers who find Edgware and Stanmore already full have to jump a green belt, so to speak, before they can find an abiding-place they will be landed at a very considerable distance from their work. Stanmore has an able advocate in the Leader of the Opposition, who lives there and has to strap-hang most of the way to London, but it is not he, I am glad to say, who said that Stanmore people objected to the tube extension because it meant that they would have to Stanmore still.
* * * * My note of last week on the vigorous endeavours of Lord Rothermere's papers to write up the price of newsprint and shares in newsprint companies and of Lord Beaverbrook's papers to write them down does not quite exhaust the subject. Since the Rothermere papers own their own sources of supply and the Beaverbrook papers do not, the more the price rises the worse for Lord Beaverbrook, while Lord Rothermere is left unaffected. Price of the raw material might thus become a factor in deciding the Daily Express, for example, to reduce its size by a couple of pages in marginal cases, and handicap it to that extent as a hot competitor of the Daily Mail. This is not, of course, to say for a moment that the writers in the two camps are not perfectly sincere in their opposing beliefs. But the degree of prominence given to those beliefs is none the less surprising.
* * * * The projected trip of over a hundred Members of Parlia- ment to Germany (now postponed till the autumn) is a curious business. The invitation appears to be general, though Labour Members are in the main, if not universally, declining it. One feature of the invitation is that those accepting it will be put to no expense from start to finish— that is to say, not only hospitality and entertainment but travelling expenses will be paid. Who the hosts are to be is not entirely clear, but the general assumption at West- minster is that it is the German Government. How far it is desirable for British Members of Parliament to be indebted to this considerable extent to a foreign Government for what is popularly described as a propaganda joy-ride is a matter on which opinions appear to differ pretty considerably among M.P.'s themselves. They very well may. - Jews.
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