Literary Views And Reviews An Editor's Story

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30947, 31 December 1965, Page 4

Literary Views And Reviews An Editor's Story

Editorial. By Colin R. Coote. Eyre and Spottiswoode. 319 pp. and index.

The period covered by this autobiography is one which has been the subject of numerous memoirs in the last 20 years, most of them slanted by the author’s particular prejudices or loyalties. The moderation of this sage and well-balanced summing up of the events which has seen the decline of Eng-

land as a great Power will enrich the political education of its reader.

Born in 1893 of prosperous upper-class parents, whose Liberal traditions were at variance with those of their mostly Tory neighbours, Colin Coote was educated at Rugby and Balliol, and was caught up in the holocaust of the First World War at the age of 21. In the next four years he was first wounded, and then gassed while serving with the Gloucestershire Regiment; but having so narrowly survived death he found himself with the Parliamentary constituency of the Isle of Ely handed to him on a plate. Indeed this move

had already been made during the progress of the war after the selected candidate, Neil Primrose, a young man of brilliant promise, had been killed, and Coote found himself at 24, “the baby of the House.” His reminiscences of his four years in Parliament are a vivid reminder of the “coupon” election, and the wizardry (or, in less polite terms, the jiggery-pokery) which Lloyd George still exercised in the manipulations of his country’s fortunes. Young Coote, though always an alert listener, was at no time a good speaker, and when his constituency [dropped him in 1922 in ; favour of the Labour candidate he was not sorry to jump into journalism, which was his true and lasting destiny. This is where his story really begins. Representing “The Times” in Italy he was able to observe Mussolini and his Fascists at close hand. The latter he describes delightfully as resembling “Mods and Rockers” as many of them had motor-bicycles and their gang tactics were similar to those of corner-boys. While conceding Mussolini a fine histrionic talent, and a real gift of oratory, he estimated the Duce as: “vulgar and violent, with a tendency to vacillation . . . the marks of a weak character.” Part of the lasting shame to Britain of that last unhappy decade before the war was the respect it accorded to this mountebank as a “strongman,” and when the author was recalled by “The Times” ihe already knew that Mussolini hated and despised Britain.

The author’s pen pictures of personalities in what he calls “The nightmare thirties” are masterpieces of their kind. Always scrupulously fair, and a determined anti-appeaser of Hitler, Sir Colin Coote had only one immutable dislike— Neville Chamberlain. He confesses to a hatred of conceit,

and he traces Chamberlain’s successive blunders in international diplomacy with a relentlessness which he is far from showing to any other of Britain's too-vacillating statesmen of the time. His bitter reflection that the hopelessly obtuse Prime Minister did one disservice after another to his country will find an echo in many British hearts. “The Times,” proving a rather niggardly employer at a time of domestic crisis in Coote’s life, he was lucky that the new owner of the “Daily Telegraph,” Lord Camrose, came to his aid and gave him a post on the paper, of which he was ultimately to occupy the Editorial chair. This was the crown of his achievements and he devotes a fascinating chapter describing the numerous facets of the make-up and production of a really great newspaper.

It is possible to touch only the fringe of the weighty matters discussed in this book. The author’s close friendship with the late Walter Elliott is well-known, and was immortalised in his biography “Companion of Honour” which he wrote as valediction to his friend. Sir Winston Churchill’s unaccountable neglect of Elliott is not held against the great man, who in the chapter “Churchilliana” receives his full meed of praise.

Portraits of characters as disparate as Stanley Baldwin, Aneurin Bevan, General de Gaulle, “Baffy Dugdale” (a champion of Israel) and a large number of others are sketched in with a fine impartiality, and appreciation of their widely differing qualities, which must enlarge the reader’s knowledge of the great contemporary figures of our age.

The author also discusses the complexities of the Suez crisis, and the tragi-farce of the Profumo affair. In his Own inimitable way he sums up the attitude of mind of new African heads of State: “Independence does not mean to them the right of free discussions—why should it- What it means to them is power ...

a Civil Service does not mean a body of trained administrators—it means a body of nominees subservient to them. That is why they are so attracted to communism which means exactly that—a small number of bosses and a large number of helots.” This is a good example of the trained observation which illuminates the book. On Sir Colin’s retirement a friend wrote “You will now be able to call your time your own. You have always been able to call your soul your own.” The author adds “Let that be the epitaph on my working life.”