It is a disappointment also not to be able, by
constant attendance, to assess the value of the new House of Commons and of the new Members who have been elected. However often one may visit the House as an outsider, it is never possible, unless one forms an actual part of it, accurately to follow the rise and fall of reputations, or to be able to assess which of the new men elected are likely to prove early or late flowering plants. I should have liked to watch with sympathetic interest the career of the boyish statistician, Mr. Harold Wilson, whose success, both in the Civil Service and at the polls, has been so meteoric. I should have liked to gauge whether Mr. Mallalieu is likely to make the same appeal to the House of Commons as he has made to a wide circle of readers. How interesting it would have been to observe whether General Mason Macfarlane is able to maintain in face of the polite but searching criticism of the House of Commons the same equanimity with which he defied the last of the many bombs that dropped upon the beaches of Dunkirk. Will Mrs. Braddock really prove, amid the subtle amenities of the lobbies, as obdurate and unbending as she seems? Will Lord Corvedale, after his long absence, adopt the manner of a highly responsible veteran or will he, as I suspect, be lust the same gay and friendly youth that he was in 1931? Will Mr. Tom Driberg, now that he is a member of the governing party, find in the support of a majority the same opportunities for unflinching provocation as he enjoyed with such ability when he played his lonely and quite irrepressible hand? Will even Mr. Stokes agree with someone sometimes? How long will it take Mr. John Maude to conquer his natural modesty and to impress the House with his gifts and personality? And how long will it be before a young man such as Mr. Anthony Nutting adjusts himself to this strange and incalculable atmosphere and acquires the preoccupied but confident manner of the rising politician? How sad that I shall not be able to watch these interesting patterns forming and reforming beneath my eyes !
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