In the Public Eye

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 1, 2 January 1937, Page 19

In the Public Eye

ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.

The Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Cosmo Lang), who made an eloquent "recall to religion" in a broadcast address, has had a notable career. By upbringing Dr. Lang was a Presbyterian. His father was principal of Aberdeen University. His beliefs took on a High Church colour, while he was at Oxford. He had come to Balliol in 1882 .with a scholarship, and he left it with a second-class in "greats" and a "first" in history, to which must be added a fellowship of All Souls' College and the presidency of the Oxford Union. Coming down from the University he studied for the Bar; it was said that no one in his year was more certain of the Lord Chancellorship if he had remained in the profession. He had all the qualifications—a legal mind, fine powers of oratory, intense self-possession, a fine presence, and a telling voice. To everyone's surprise, he suddenly removed his name from the list of men to be called to the Bar and entered Cuddesdon College as a theological student. From the hour he entered Cuddesdon College he . passed from success to success. As vicar of Portsea he was a highly effective parish priest; as vicar of St. Mary's, Oxford, he was as influential among under-graduates as any churchman of his generation; as Bishop of Stepney he made himself known and loved throughout the poverty-stricken areas of East London. When preferment to the See of York came everyone prophesied a great success, and the prophecy has not proved inaccurate. If Dr. Lang has made few close friends he has made no enemies, and all acknowledge his gifts as an organiser and ecclesiastical statesman. Though he is not a preacher of the spiritual type, he is a truly great orator, and he rises to an occasion as few speakers do nowadays. Lord Morley said that the Archbishop of York's Coronation address was the most masterly example of compressed eloquence he had ever heard. His sermon at the consecration of Liverpool Cathedral was another masterpiece. So was his speech in the House of Lords in the first Prayer Book debate. The Archbishop's addresses to the Church of England Men's Society, of which he is the founder, often reach a high level *>f beauty and effectiveness, the beauty being largely a result of his voice, which makes it easy for him to make himself heard in the largest gathering. He has courtly manners and immense powers of work. Queen Victoria, when he was vicar of Portsea, advised him to marry, and thus dispense with one or r» ore of his many curates. Dr. Lang's reply was that he could dispose of one or all of his sixteen curates at any time if they did not suit him, but that an unsuitable wife might offer a much more difficult problem. Another human story of the Archbishop is the statement of a mother who had listened to a searching address at a Mothers' Union meeting given by the bachelor Archbishop, "Don't tell me he's not a married man!"

He was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 1928. Archbishop Lang was formerly honorary chaplain to, and a personal friend of, Queen Victoria. He has published several books, including one on the miracles of Jesus and another on the "Opportunity of the Church of England." He was a member of the Royal Commission appointed in 1909 to inquire into divorce law, and signed the minority report.

Dr. Lang revealed some of his early life during the course of an address recently. "When I left Oxford," he said, "I was filled with ambitions for a political career, and I went to Yorkshire to make a political speech—l won't say for which party. The train was delayed outside Leeds Station, and I looked down upon a collection of slums and hovels the like of which I have never seen even in the East End of London. I saw a black-coated figure moving there, and I said to myself, 'There is a poor devil of a parson spending his life in hovels like those.' Within less than two years I was myself the black-coated parson in charge of those slums. As I saw the trains passing I used to say, with a smile, T suppose there is some superior young politician there looking down on me and saying, "Poor devil.'" Those were the very happiest days of my life, and not all the pleasures of youth could compare with the pleasures of feeling that my life was not wholly spent upon myself." Captain O. Scharf. Captain Oskar Scharf, master of the Europa, started his twenty-sixth year with the North German Lloyd Line when his ship sailed recently for the Channel ports and Bremen. In his quarters aboard ship he has scores of messages of congratulations from friends, including Hans Luther, German Ambassador to the United States, and former passengers, on his completion of a quarter of a century of service. Captain Scharf went to sea as a Iboy on May 11, 1901, on a schoolship, and then spent three years on a four-masted barque, sailing around Cape Horn to San Francisco. He remained in sail until 1905, then was engaged in laying cable between Shanghai and the Island of Yap. He served next on the tanker Washington and returned to navigation school for training. He joined the North German Lloyd Line in April, 1907, as fourth officer of the steamship Rhone; spent two years in service operating to CJiina, and then left the Lloyd Line for four years, returning in April, 1922. He has remained with that line with the exception of the period immediately following the World War, when the line was not in operation. Captain Scharf observed his fiftieth birthday on October 2. During the west-bound crossing of his ship recently he sat for his portrait by Marie von Pantz, a German painter.

Captain Scharf has commanded the Europa since December, 1932, when he succeeded the late Commodore Nickolaus Johnson.

SENATOR A. H. VANDENBERG.

Senator A. H. Vandenberg, of Michigan, who has proposed action under the neutrality policy to halt all loans, credits, and munitions to belligerent nations, is a politician who puts his party first, but is open-minded on constructive issues. Senator Vandenberg is not intensely partisan. He would not follow his party to extreme lengths simply for the purpose of discrediting or defeating constructive efforts or policies championed by an opposing party or a Democratic Chief Executive. He is quite definitely committed to the effort being made to extend American trade by means of reciprocal arrangements with responsible neighbours, near or remote. He presents that strange yet welcome incongruity of a layman legislator— not a lawyer—who is more jealous, of the power of the Courts than of the prerogatives of the law-making branch of the Government. He is entirely free, it would seem, of that modern phobia which finds expression in the insistence upon the. supremacy of impulsive mass rule. He doubts the wisdom of decisions made by combined minorities constituting, for the moment, a numerical majority of the whole. His long experience as newspaper editor and publisher has schooled and seasoned him in the faculty to judge deliberately and calmly.. Senator Vandenberg, like Senator Borah, is, perhaps above all else, a constitutionalist. He has no vague or uninformed theories of a new freedom which some believe may be realised by a departure from the form of government now existing. He believes the liberties which the American people enjoy can be safeguarded only by strict adherence to the reasonable rule which has stood the test. It is, under this form of Government, the Supreme Court that protects the people against tyranny. That is the Senator's simple declaration of faith. This tyranny is not that imposed, or to be feared, as a result of the assumption by some person or group of persons, through, force, of supreme dictatorial power and authority. It is, rather, a dictatorship created by the impulsive action of combined minorities seeking economic or social remedies prescribed in time of some national or regional emergency. There is no more consistent or eloquent defender of the Constitution than the Senator from Michigan.

"It is our theory of government," he says, "that the Constitution belongs exclusively to the people. . . . They wrote its guarantees. Into it they put those inalienable warrants which set American liberty apart, and made it the grandest thing on earth. To make certain that the people should never be robbed of its protection, the founders provided that none but the people can ever change it. They prescribed, in the great charter itself, just how it may be amended. It has been amended twenty-one times. That makes it a living, progressive thing. But it is impregnable to any attack save by the people themselves, and any time it loses that granite character it will be the people who have been victimised. It may be changed, but it must not be cheated."

Miss Beatrix Lehmann. I would like to say a few words of Beatrix Lehmann. I cannot claim a special right to write about her. I have seen her in only a small selection of the many parts she has played, but my esteem for her qualities remains none the less certain and deep, writes the dramatic critic of the "Daily Telegraph." My latest experience of her ability in holding the attention of an audience was at the "Q" Theatre. We were watching a poor play. It commended itself to me by only one scene, its last. It professed to be „ about Charlotte Corday, otherwise Marie Anne Charlotte Corday d'Armans, that strange heroine of French history, famous for having stabbed the most bloodthirsty of the Terrorists, Jean Paul Marat, in his bath. Dreadfully handicapped though the actress was by an ill-conceived part in a worse-conceived drama, it was yet possible for her artistry, like a gleam of sunshine through a glowering mass of cloud, to penetrate the mists and murks of unenlightening dialogue and obvious dramaturgy and lighten up the scene in which she appeared. It may be worth while to reflect upon how this was achieved. Miss Lehmann is a mistress of quietude. Her aims are not spectacular, ultra-ambitious. There are no airs and graces sported demonstratively for public entertainment. Her work is based upon the solid foundation of sincerity. Each accent has the ring of truth. We believed in the patriotism of this woman, her quietly angry resolution, the exalted determination of her purpose, the spiritual and unimpeachable impulses by which her fanaticism was inspired. Her horror was genuine, her detesttation of injustice irremovable. And her handling of an ugly knife that reminded one of a butcher's block was pregnant with nobility and tragic uplift. Do not mistake me. The part is a small one, unworthy of the actress. Yet it serves its purpose. Miss Lehmann's success serves also as yet another instance of the benefit of an R.A.D.A. training, of the skill as a teacher of the late lamented Rosina Filippi, and also of the help given by Sir Nigel Playfair when he was among us to those who worked for him.

Think of her Elizabeth in "The Tudor Wench," her Stella Kirby in "Eden End," her Emily Bronte in that illfated "Wild Decembers," and whatever other impersonations of hers that come to your memory, and you will confirm the impression of a fine actress, one who is destined some day to make an even grater mark upon her public than as yet fortune has -sanctioned.