Nov. 11.
Miss Ellen Wilkinson, former schoolteacher, once a' Labour MP, now a journalistic politician of roving habits, has been told by distinguished Spanish leaders to mind her own business. The message of exhortation has been extended to her brother in poli tical perversity, the Irish Earl of Listowel, who can sit in the House of Lords as Baron Hare and for whose education Eton and Balliol were partly responsible. Spain famous for its politeness, so the plain-speaking is all the more marked. Other administrations which have suffered under "the charming Ellen's incurable dovotion to peregrinatory inquiry must envy Senor Santiago Alba, the Speaker of the Cortes, for his flash of genius. He is likely to be asked to communicate his recipe for dealing with meddlesome missioners. It Is possible that he may blandly explain that as the home of the Inquisition, Spain is eminently fitted to call the bluff of modern inquisitors who assume the burden of satisfying curiosity without asa rule taking the pre= cautionary step of ascertaining whether their services are likely to be attractive to their victims. phis habit of travelling abroad to put other nations under the micro scope of solicitous rectitude is not peculiar to people of Miss Wilkin= son's frame of mind. Yet it must be confessed that it seems to be more sedulously cultivated those who affect her pervasive Uberalism in all its varying shades jot red and pink. If the present world ts short of money or, to put it, more accurately, of the means of making two ends meet, it is not short of instruments of corporate Inquiry. There are organs of international concert on all manner of subjects. Nothing seems to be easier than to suggest a conference ranging from Pole to Pole, dealing disrespectfully with the ' Equator and handling subjects so far apart as gold standards, drugs, aesthetics for infantile complexes. The pererogatory labour of adding to these amiable assemblies of the human brain by launching what 60 often is termed an "unofficial inquiry" is therefore surprisingly popular.
The Spanish view evidently is that there can be too much of a good thing. This view will find weary endorsement in other countries. They will assert that here is a Spanish custom which is worthy of adoption. A Victorian diarist whose political views would be anathema. to Wilkinson, has observed that "impertinent curiosity is the link between a roomful of society females and a cage of monkeys". The British Labour Party may or may not [have delegated Miss Wilkinson to spy out the land where extreme radicalism has been so distressing a failure. It is certain that, on her ast record, Miss Wilkinson would be quite capable of proceeding on her "mission" without any more formal sanction than that of her own restless inquisitiveness. A few months back it was reported that she had originally intended to accompany to Shanghai that amusing coterie which under Lord Mariey's elegant leadership sought to discuss the horrors of war in terms of a general onslaught on
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.