THE DON AT WESTMINSTER

Evening Star, Issue 17323, 10 April 1920, Page 8

THE DON AT WESTMINSTER

OPEN LETTER TO SIR AUCKLAND GEDDES. [By R. L. Dxsok, in the ‘SundayChronicle,’] Sir, —Most men are more or less impeded in life by the defects of their qualities. You seem to have a comfortable sense of flourishing on yours. The fly in amber is a homely problem compared with the spectacle of you seated oa the Treasury Bench in the British House of Commons. How a Professor of Anatomy in a Trans, atlamio University became our Director of Civil Recruiting during the world war, end successively President of the Local Government Board and President of the Board of Trade—this still -leaves the average M.P. wondering. Add to this the fact of two brothers, untrained to English political life, dividing between them responsibility for the control of trade and transport, and the question becomes even more complicated. No wonder we laugli and applaud when Old Crowley, in the Drury Lane pantomime, lays alcoholic stress on his repeated insistence to the Prince that “the Geddes” must not be left- out of the hall. THE PREMIER’S FIND. You were brought in as an organiser and* administrator timing the war. The Prime Minister had somehow “discovered” you, and there' was nothing more to be said. But twice have we celebrated the birth of a Nyw Year since the armistice, and you are etili with us. M’Gill University has called you, and we have been told more than once that you were returning to its academic shades. Yet M’Gill University, bereft and disconsolate, has to put up with soma shadowy substitute. As a brigadier-geueral you were for a tune engaged on patriotic mysteries on the western front. As a British Minister you lav-' achieved fame by the moral and intellectual calm with which you can eec loudlyhera’.dcd legislative bantlings done to death. Tncm is nobody remotely resembling you on the Tioavmy Bench, a-nd I assure you, with all courtesy; that you have been a cause of great refreshment to some of us who, though daily in the House of Commons, are not of it. You have a great reputation as a worker and as a man of ideas. We have been aseured that more Ilian one member of tho Government comes to you when tied up in a knot. NOT A COMMONS MAN. The belief of the Prime Minister in your nigh capacity and his confidence in. -your judgment and strength of character are eppareiuly unabated. But the House of Commons likes what is called a House of Commons man, and you must be aware, in vour composed, detached way, that you are r” gained as not quite filling iu * lOoked ' ", ; a bl -d °f passage,” so you with a-d f Cademio Career he£ind you 1 Enil to come, are thought of as a trammut vision, with, however: fids consideration, that vou are fiilintr an wfi POSt - whlch a g°°d many other people have yearning eyes fixed upon. P P l oes nofc understand——i- ? tk er detached people do ~ Dio placidity with which you iraore aU uncomplimentary hints. “N 0 office a 3 t Barnabv% 0! ? e Dickens’s characters in Burnaby Rudge, and this seems to be vour attitude towards the critics. 7 ' - V; JUr fellow-legislators have an uneasy teeing that you do not cease to be the ana" lomist, even on the Treasury Bench. Your <i anemic calm, your analytical neutrality ;- hj", Coo * complacency when things are <mmg -igm. and your philosophic indifference t'i“5 n +w% ar ° g ?. ln = wrong-theso ar e qualinot i' 1 ; ta f T Qmary British politician cannot get on to-terms with. There are people who call you pedagogic but tis a feeble word. You are much more than pedagogic. You are the same all the ume—whether you are calling a Bill into birtn or burying it. whether you are looking at the clouds of war or gazing at the rising sun of peace. ° If only you would show some feeling or recognise and even resent the feeling shown by other people, the parliamentary appraisement of you might be rather different. But you ao not. Therefore you are provocative—much more so m later days than the burly, muscular, heavy-browed, masterful Eric. You have tho “ cross-bench mind ” in excclsis, and that is a type of mentality that has ever been abhorrent to the political man of action. I confess that personally I would like to see you remaining at Westminster until wo get into tho rough-and-tumble of party politics again. That old-fashioned game is not to be revived, you think? Well, an increasing number of people seem to bo straining towards it, both at Westminster and in the country, but probably by tho time It fully comes you will bo lecturing the hopeful students of M’Gill University in just the tone and manner in which youhave lectured that big, baf’led, restive “class" at Westminster. THE BURIAL OF THE BILLS. Often, doubtless, the House of Commons has made you think of M'Gill University, and often, I fancy, M'Gill University will in future make you think of the House of Commons. And I promise you that gome of us will sometimes think of you with both edification and amusement. You are a personality. You have imperturbably come through personal crisis during your career on tho Treasury Bench that would have sent any Minister into reflective seclusion before the war. Your speech on the Goal Bill just before the close of the parliamentary session was an amazing performance. The way you stretched that poor Bill on the rack, and tiien, almost in so many words, invited others to come in and give it the happy despatch will not- soon bo forgotten. Some disgruntled people renewed their demand for a reconstruction of the Government. You, as if nothing had happened, went on with the reconstruction of the country. In your philosophy the disappearance of the Anti-Dumping Bill and the killing of the Coal Bill were, apparently, negligible incidents. A lot of work was awaiting you at the Board of Trade, and, with one more casual glance at an astonished House of Commons, vou turned to it. Of a certainty, Sir Auckland, you have refreshed the jaded spectator of Parliaments. We shall miss you when you go hack to M’Gill University. [Slr_ Auckland Geddes has been appointed British Ambassador to the United States.]