By Cunwab Makum Soon after attending, as an honorary member, the annual dinner of the Chamberlain Club, the exclusive dining club formed to commemorate the great Imperialist, the Prime Minister had another happy reminder of his famous father. He was visited by an old friend of Joe's, Sir Hesketh Bell, the first Governor of Uganda who now lives in retirement in the south of France.
As a mark of his friendship with Sir Hesketh, Joe Chamberlain, when he died, bequeathed to him his famous eyeglass. The owner of this memento has cherished the memory of the giver and has kept in close touch with the Chamberlain family all through his much-travelled life.
In addition to distinguished service in Africa, Sir Hesketh Bell was some time in India. From Kashmir he The trouble began in 1909 when a barrister named Artemus Jones sued a newspaper for libel because it had used his name for a fictitious character of uncertain morals He was awarded substantial damages and ever since than the choice of names has been a problem and a peril to every author. Whatever he called his villain, even if he followed the example of Bunyan or Sheridan and named characters by their chief attributes,- there was always a danger that he had used the name of some living person unknown to him who was ready to demand damages for gross libel. To insert a clause at the beginning of the book to the effect that all characters were fictitious was no safeguard, Truth Stranger than Fiction brought back a complete Indian house and erected it on the hillside overlooking Cannes. The Villa Kashmir, as it is called, contains many sou-vanirs of the owner's travels, but none is more valued than that celebrated eyeglass, mentary\"Disarmament"
Mark Twain, faced with this dilemma, once spent some time inventing a name that could not possibly be borne by any living person. The result of his cogitation was Mulberry Sellers, but sure enough he received a letter threatening libel action from a man whose name unwittingly he had borrowed.
One form of "disarmament" appears to Be popular among all shades of political opinion in the House of "Commons—the tendency of members to discard military titles. Of present "M.P's, Mr. Eden was one of the first 10 abandon the use of his Army Tank (a captaincy), Mr. Oliver Stanley and Mr. Walter Elliot are two majors who prefer to be "misfers"; another is Mr.' Attlee the Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Wedgwood, who has been busy sending telegrams to Herr Hitler, no longer wishes to be addressed as colonel, and the latest to follow the fashion pinsei of his title of lieutenant-is Mr. Colville, who has divested
colonel.
The difficulty, or rather the impossibility, of an author ever being certain that a character he had created had no namesake in life is indicated a list of some of the queer names to be found in the English Ministry of Labour records. These include such peculiarities as Ephraim Very Ott, Original Bugg, Nimrod Boggs, Morning Dew (not a Red Indian), Adam Smart Officer, Himalaya Mackay and Lily May Dot Johns. In this matter of nomenclature, truth appears to be stranger than fiction. From an author's point of view safety would seem to lie in giving his characters numbers instead of names.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.