A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK O N one aspect of Mr. Lloyd George's
earldom there will be uni- versal agreement : if he- wanted it he abundantly deserved it. But I find some surprise—and some regret—that he should have wanted it. He could, of course, have had it for the asking any time these last thirty years. What is there to grasp at in it at 82? His health, it is understood, will not permit him to take any prominent part in the Lords' debates, and it can certainly be no gratification to one who has been as great a commoner as Mr. Gladstone to exchange all that is implied in the plain and honourable " Mr. Lloyd George " for the style of "Earl of Dwyfor," or whatever it is. An earldom, moreover, is an awkward encumbrance to get into a family. Once there it is always there, descending on the shoulders of each genera- tion whether they like it or not. And it has collateral consequences. I cannot think, for example, that it chimes with Miss Megan Lloyd George's desires, or strengthens her with her constituents, that she should be known henceforth as Lady Megan. It is all, indeed, rather odd and out of character. And one day some industrious excavator will dig up a few of the epithets the new Earl slung; round about 191o, at the Chamber of which he now becomes a dis- tinguished ornament.
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In a letter to The Times, with which many people will sympathise emotionally, Lord Quickswood (a title which still for some people conceals the identity of Lord Hugh Cecil) expresses the hope that the Government will not be a party to any plan for deporting four or five million people from East Prussia. It quite certainly will not be, for they are not there to deport. The last census (German, of course) gave the population of East Prussia as 2,333,301. Of these, on the analogy of Germany as a whole, perhaps to per tent. have been or will be killed in battle. That reduces the figure to a little over two millions, and of the two million a large proportion, probably the majority, will flee before invading Russian armies. The deportation of the remainder would be a smaller operation than the transfer of Greeks from Asia Minor to Europe in the middle twenties. Deporta- tion is never pleasant, but to leave East Prussia German, or to make it Polish with a predominantly German population, would be worse solutions than deportation.
* * * * Whatever may be debateable and debated in regard to the B.B.C. one thing is certain ; its news services must maintain as absolute and complete an objectivity as fallible human beings can confer on them. Their business is to give hearers facts on which hearers can form their own judgements. Any attempt by a semi-official monopoly to dictate, or even suggest, judgements, would arouse every kind of suspicion and antagonism—and rightly. At the week-end the B.B.C. went very near the border of the legitimate—some might say it overpassed it—when, after reading the proclamation of the King of the Hellenes, declaring a Regency in Greece, it proceeded to add that this development justified fully the mission of the Prime Minister and Mr. Eden to Athens, and that without the visit there no conference' would have been convened, and there would have been no Regency. This may or may not be true—as long ago as December 21st Mr. Eden told the House of Commons that a Regency had been proposed by the British Ambassador, and it might well have come about even without a conference. However that may be, it is very far from desirable that the B.B.C. should inject into its news bulletin something that is not news but comment, particularly comment which (as the use of precisely similar ,phrases in some Sunday papers showed) would scent to have had some extraneous Origin. It mattered little in this case, but it would matter a great deal if the idea gained currency that the B.B.C., through its news services, was in any way disseminating views which gave a particular colour to the news.
* * * * The idea of Constable's Flatford Mill (which belongs to the National Trust) becoming the first of the Field Centres -which a group of Cambridge natura:ists are instituting is attractive. It is, in fact, more than an idea, for the Council for the Promotion of Field Studies has already arranged to lease the Mill. The Field Centres, of which this is to be the first, will take the form of hostels accommo- dating forty to fifty students, under the direction of Wardens who will be field observers with wide cultural sympathies. Workers with geological, geographical, archaeological and historical interests will be welcomed, and it is hoped that the centres w:11 serve as "field outposts " of school and university departments. As they develop after the war they should add substantially to our knowledge of
many aspects, of our own country.
* * * * I see that the Chairman of British Coal Distillation, Ltd., has been stating that Britain's coal reserves are sufficient for only forty years. He may be right, but such predictions have been fairly often falsified in the past: I was reading lately of Mr. Gladstone's agitation on the subject—a fact which I had forgotten, if I ever knew it.- As Chancellor of the Exchequer he urged the House' of Commons in 1866 to make provision for the repayment of a substantial portion of the National Debt before the chief national resource, the coal- fields of Great Britain, was exhausted. The estimate then was that the coal had a hundred years still to go, and Mr. Gladstone would have been content to pay off (on _such a scale was national finance in those days) £5o,000,000 in forty years. But rightly or wrongly Parliament refused to be alarmed.
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Malta Fund. Object : Erection of a Shrine of Remembrance in the Anglican Cathedral to the men and women who lost their lives in defence of the island. Sum required : £2,00o, but one donor has promised the last £too if L1,9oo is obtained by the end of January. Total obtained so far : £1,800. I still hold out my hat. Cheques to be addressed to Janus, 99 Gower Street, W.C. r, and made payable to The Spectator. * * * * Spitchered. The. word clearly is derived from the Maltese Spicca, meaning " finished," or something similar. Naval opinion agrees with Air Force opinon on that. But naval opinion claims credit for embodying the word in the English language. And as naval opinion can point to its use as long ago as 1903, the Air Force does seem
to be grounded, or, indeed, spitchered, on this particular point. * * * *
It is a far cry from Fletcher of Saltoun, who wanted to write a nation's songs, to Miss Cicely Courtneidge, but the moral is the same, and it has quite a substantial bearing on the question to which The Spectator is devoting so much attention—what the soldier thinks. The song of Miss Courtneidge's which, I am told, invariably brings down the house in her show " Something• in the Air " is " Home is the place where your heart is."—Tipperary or somewhere. Pan's.
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