"UN-BRITISH"

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 120, 23 May 1930, Page 8

"UN-BRITISH"

In -a dispute between doctors and the matron of a prominent hospital, a member of the Hospital Board concerned is reported .to have referred to the conduct of the doctors as "unBritish." On 'the merits of the dispute we do not wish to comment; but the use of the term "un-British" suggests a loose application of the adjective. When a trait of character or a form of conduct is described as British it means, or should mean, that it is distinctively so and that the same attribute is not shared equally by the people of other nations. We consider politeness as distinctively French, thrift and perseverance as Scotch, and humour as Irish. So far as we can see the conduct of ihe doctors in this instance, whether right or wrong, did not involve observance or disregard of peculiarly British qualities. One is reminded of the habit which politicians somelimes form of condemning as "unpatriotic" something which is merely contrary to the party belief, and the use that (according to a lrdmorous writer) is made by elderly colonels in clubs of the term "not cricket" to describe those deviations from the moral code which are not countenanced by 'the best people: Certainly there are British ideals and British standards of conduct, but no individual can arrogate to himself the right to determine those standards, and condemn as "un-British" everyone who fails to agree with him. Indeed such condemnation in itself is a contradiction of the national quality on which we most pride ourselves —British justice.