Birdsong & Findhorn

Quick to give quip and quiddity is the present Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard, William Henry Grenfell, Baron Desborough of Taplow, famed afterdinner speaker, chairman of the Pilgrim Society of Great Britain. Baron Desborough has other distinctions quite as noteworthy. In his time he has stroked a crew across the English Channel, swum twice across the Niagara River, been champion swordsman of the British Army, Mayor of Maidenhead, chairman of the Fresh Water Fish Committee. But it is as chairman of the Pilgrims that he is now best known to the world. As such he publicly dines some prominent U. S. citizen nearly once a month.* Last week he and the Pilgrims had one of the most notable banquets of their career.

The Pilgrims who trooped into the dining room of the Hotel Victoria found Lord Desborough at the head of the speakers' table surrounded by the greatest diplomatic personages in London. At Yeoman Desborough's right in the seat of honor was Charles Gates Dawes, the newly-arrived U. S. Ambassador. At his left was Foreign Secretary Arthur Henderson. Next to Mr. Dawes was plantagenet-beaked Sir Austen Chamberlain, the outgone Foreign Secretary, and beyond him Sir Austen's good friend, French Ambassador Monsieur de Fleurian. Also at the speakers' table were the Ambassadors of Germany, Japan, Belgium, Brazil, and the Italian Charge d'Affaires, Count Ruggeri.

The dinner was long and formal--too formal for Ambassador Dawes, master of diplomatic informality. Even before dessert was passed, Ambassador Dawes got up from his place and wandered off to talk to old friends at another table.

"General," said a punctilious acquaintance, "come back and sit down. They've just put the Statue of Liberty in front of your place, carved out of solid ice!' "

"That's all right," General Dawes answered. "I'll see the Goddess of Liberty in just a minute, there are a dozen old reparations friends of mine here I want to talk to."

As soon as the King's health had been drunk,/- before which no smoking is ever allowed, he pushed aside the perfectos and lit his famed hubble-bubble, the Dawes underslung pipe.

The Speech. After Lord Desborough's introduction, embroidered with such quips and quiddities as all Yeomen of the guard insist on. Ambassador Dawes stood up, pulled a typed manuscript from his pocket, apologized for reading his speech, but said its importance made reading necessary. The Pilgrims leaned forward on their chairs to catch the sound of his thin, high-pitched staccato voice. The major diplomats at the speakers' table were less excited. Earlier in the day Diplomat Dawes had asked them to read his speech in advance.

Disarmament was the Dawes thesis. He wasted little time in coming to the point. After brief reference to the U. S. naval building program of $1,170,800.000 and mention of the Reparations Commission of 1924, he said:

"My theme is: what method of procedure is best adapted to translate the policy of naval reduction into a fixed agreement between the nations. . . .

Edmund Burke . . . once made a profound remark. . . . 'Politics,' said he, 'ought to be adjusted not to human reasonings but to human nature, of which the reason is but part and by no means the greatest part.'

"International naval reduction is a task the successful accomplishment of which requires co-operative employment of two distinctly unrelated talents--that of naval technical experts and of statesmen."

Ambassador Dawes took up again President Hoover's idea (TIME. May 6) that agreement on naval reduction could only be reached by finding and employing an international Yardstick to measure accurately the power of a navy. In finding this Yardstick, Ambassador Dawes pointed out the different roles to be played by naval experts and statesmen.

"The proper pride of a naval officer's life is his navy. His whole professional career impels him to think of the navy only in terms of victory. He not only instinctively feels, but he is rightly taught the feeling that he must strive not for equal navies, but for a superior navy.

"The naval officer has his duty to perform to his state, and it is primarily to secure it against attack. . . . It is the duty of the statesman to remove from his state danger of attack. Upon the latter primarily lies the duty of peacemaking, and in these negotiations he must hold the initiative. . . .

"It would seem that to adjust to human nature the method of arriving at naval reduction each government might separately obtain from their respective naval experts their definition of a Yardstick, and then the inevitable compromise between these differing definitions . . . should be made by a committee of statesmen of the nations. . . .

"These statesmen should further be the ones to draw up for the world the terms of a final agreement upon naval reduction which should be couched in these simple, terms understandable by the ordinary man in the street, which, while the pet aversion of the casuist, are the highest expressions of true statesmanship."

Lossiemouth. A few hours before Ambassador Dawes lectured the Pilgrims. Prime Minister MacDonald rhapsodized to his Scottish neighbors at Lossiemouth:

"I have made it clear both before and during the election that I put relations with the United States in the forefront of our national concerns. As regards them we have not let the grass grow under our feet. General Dawes has been good enough to take a long journey up here to see me and have a talk with me about them. . . . We found each other taking the same view of world peace. The hands we clasped were not cold with official correctness, but warm with friendship inspired by common enthusiasm for service in the cause of international goodwill. . . . Symbolizing the openness of our hearts and our purposes, sunshine poured through the great windows of the room in which we sat. With it came the song of birds and the murmur of the Findhorn. . . .**

"As to the world-wide purpose of what are known as Anglo-American conversations, I hope that neither the large states nor the small ones will have any doubt that they are not exclusive. They are inclusive."

Next Step. The Dawes and MacDonald speeches evoked pages of polite applause from the world press. What the next steps would be remained vague. Ramsay MacDonald flew down from Scotland to London, said "Flying is the only way to travel," but announced no further disarmament plans. His proposed visit to the U. S.-- loudly protested by Tories as undignified toadying to a foreign country-- disappeared for the time being into a mist of postponements and pleasant hypotheses. Hugh Simons Gibson, U. S. Ambassador to Belgium who, at Geneva in May, first told the world about President Hoover's Yardstick (TIME, May 6), headed for London to confer. Waiting for him. Ambassador Dawes, like any tourist, lunched at the Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street, sat in Dr. Johnson's chair, ate two helpings of veal pie, smoked a long churchwarden pipe.

All the talk of naval reduction turned attention to Britain's new First Lord of the Admiralty, Albert Victor Alexander, whose first task may be to scrap some of the proud ships he now commands. Labor Sea Lord Alexander is a former Baptist lay preacher, the son of a railway engineer. Like the admiral in Pinafore, he "polished up the handles so care-ful-lee, that now he is the ruler of the King's navee." Earnest, hard working, his appointment was greeted with disdainful sniffs in Tory circles which consider the post of First Lord of the Admiralty one of the most important in any government. Last week the Baptist Sea Lord studied hard at his new job.

Ship-Beauty. With the air full of birdsong and Findhorn murmurs, tactful Georges Leygues, France's fearsomely mustached Minister of Marine, ex-Prime Minister of France (1921), did his little bit for peace. He could not reduce France's navy, but at least he could make it look peaceable, he could beautify it. So France's new battleships and cruisers are to be decorated with sculpture and figured bas-reliefs. Charged with beautifying the battleships was an elderly sculptor, named Moreau-Vauthier.

The news was welcomed by all but France's artists. Wrote Comoedia:

"Among our sculptors who is the one that best represents today the art of the old Institut, the abominable firehouse art? Assuredly M. Moreau-Vauthier. He has perhaps had his hour. It is past.

"We learn--and this idea would be natural to him--that M. Moreau-Vauthier is disposed to decorate with bulbous figures and cartouches, more or less baroque, guess what: the prows of our cruisers. The interior would be bad enough, but the exterior silhouet!--"

*Since April, the Pilgrims have given banquets for Retiring-Ambassador Alanson Bigelow Houghton, World Court Judge Charles Evans Hughes. Only the decision of venerable Klihu Root not to go to England after all on his return from Geneva (TIME, April 1) prevented their dining him, too.

/- From now on, the King's health will be drunk only in water at the American Embassy in London. Last week, Ambassador Dawes issued an order banning the drinking of alcoholic liquors in the Embassy holding that U. S. territory is U. S. soil.

**Findhorn: Small stream in Elginshire on a bank of which stands Logic House, scene of the statesmen's meeting.