Feb. 2 faculty has given his Government some measure of diplomatic anxiety. For himself it has Drought the uncomfortable experience of having to face a court-martial. The course which the Government of the United States have taken has, no doubt, been dictated by correct solicit tude for the susceptibilities of the head of a friendly power. The apology has been gracefully accepted by Signor Mussolini. Whether the addition of a court martial to the tribute of disclaimer is necessary it is not possible for outsiders satisfactorily to determine. The immediate outcome seems, however, to be unfortunate. Instead of closing the incident, as Signor: Mussolini has declared the apon logy has done, it threatens to magnify it into a national controversy to which the pictures-ne volatility of the alleged de= Unguent adds piquancy. Poli tical animosities are being canvassed; sides are being taken and the echoes of the affair are resounding across the Atlantic and the Pacific. This may, of course be very gratifying to General Butler, assuming that the label of infant terrible has been rightly applied to him. It certainly gives supreme importance to what otherwise would have been a passing eccentricity due to the vagaries of the lying ie. It recalls the indiscretion of another soldier, General Charteris, of the British Army, who, in a moment of expansiveness indulged in a war-time reamininscence which, besides being shorn of the virtue of accuracy, was immediately resented not only by the General's own colleagues but also by the quondam enemy principally concerned. Fortunately he was prompt-corrected by means of that never failing help in time of official trouble—a question and answer in the House of Commons—and the misunderstanding subsided almost as soon as it arose.
Here is a lesson for the world of to-day. Gifted as it is with means of communication unknown to its predecessors—means of communication of the most varied and efficient kind—it has been turned into a whispering gallery the confines of which extend from China to Peru and-even further. States men and other public figure who indulge in that fatal habi of thinking aloud, have to bear this fact in mind. In the olden times it mattered little what Mr. Burke said in the House of Commons even about the dictate ors of revolutionary France, or what Mr. Gladstone thought of the Sultan of Turkey. Tt was also possible to - speak disrespectfully of the Equator. Nowadays the public man who endeavours to sparkle by means of lively allusions to the foibles—real or imaginary—of even the most distant races has to watch his step and choose his epithets with the greatest care. Mr.
Thomas may tell the House of Commons that Mr. Bennett has been engagingly indulging in "humbug." The explanation that the word is used in the Pickfwickian sense no longer holds water. The offending express sion is cabled to the ends of {the world; comment in like vein is evoked and, but for the fact that Mr. Bennett turns out most accurately to appreciate the quality of Mr. Thomas' terminology, it might still be rankling in the bosoms of the people who, for a long time, could not forgive Kipling for his well-meant tribute to "Our Lady of the Snows."- It would be easy to set all this down to the wicked pro-density of the Press in its ministering so-faithfully to the human desire for criticism. The gossip-writer is often thought ito be a modern porter, The truth is that he—or she—is pai fully old-fashioned. Indeed, in comparison with his or -her ancestors, the gossip-writer today is terribly discreet and most chastely reluctant to dispense slander. The difference les in the existence of those mechan ical means for amplification and intensification. Million circulations, multifarious processes for spreading abroad opinions, limelight reinforced by Mr.' Sam' Weller's "patent double milieu magnifying gas microscopes of extra power" all give to the mildest -tit-bit of gorsip_ the portentous proportions of a flaming indiscretion. It is blared in print, in the raucous megaphone of the popular Press, in the spluttering hiccough of the radio, in the staring rectangularity of the tape machine. 'The whisper, in fact, becomes a shout. "The public, like the White Knight, has' become responsive only to the shout. The result is that the broad effects of the purveyor of the anecdotal Jest are distorted to the exelusion of truth and, worst of all, that essential ingredient humour. It may be objected that this should enable the world to learn more readily of the virtues of its inhabitants. T) unhappy fact remains that virtues are not the qualities which mankind likes most to detect in itself. The amiable rectitude of [Signor Mussolini would leave most after-dinner audiences cold, His weaknesses and his lapses from model behaviour, on the other hand, must stir the bosom of his fellow-men who, conscious of their own Jack of mental stamina, would find, in the discovery of his possession of some. slight defect, balm to their souls. ' This constitutes in itself a tribute to the object of attention. It probably causes him private amusement, if mot gratification. But then he is surrounded too by weaker vessels, who in their turn derive strength from his immaculate bearing. So he has to be guarded on their account. This has been emphatically achieved, The whispering gallery is. tempora arily turned to a good use. But its echoes seem likely to give unpleasant reverberations all the same.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.