HONOUR AND ARMS

THE granting of honourable rewards for virtuous living has always been one of the most delicate problems in human affairs. There are extreme pessimists who hold that it is a question which can never be settled satisfactorily until the Day of Judgment. But others, more optimistic in their temperament (or, perhaps, merely more impatient), insist that the matter must be dealt with, however inadequately, at some earlier date. There are so many people conscious of their own, and even of their neighbours', virtues that an Honours List is almost a necessity in this imperfect world. We must face the fact, as we face the other troublesome results of primitive apple-eating. We can only endeavour to provide that if we must grant Honours, then they shall be given to those who deserve them.

Everyone agrees that we have got into serious trouble in this matter of the Honours List. Having once broken through that most admirable rule of the copybooks- Virtue is its own reward '—we have gone henceforth from bad to worse. It has, indeed, at last come to such a pass that those who hunt after Honours realise that a still more ancient rule of life must be often disregarded if they wish to succeed in their ambition. 'Honesty is the best policy' may be useful to those who sell vegetables or eggs. For those who desire titles it is far better to be rich and to place their money at the disposal of the men who control the avenues to patronage. In other than political circles that is a proceeding which would bear an ugly name.

There are several ways in which this matter can be considered. Some critics have been a little unfair to recent Governments on this point. When we come to look at it closely, we recognise that these politicians, whom some people hastily accuse of creating a public scandal, have really been solving the Honours problem all the time-by a process of solvitur ambulando, as it were. They have created so many titles, and given them to so many entirely insignificant persons, that we are rapidly approaching the moment when there will be, automatically, a very real (and a very small) Honours List-made up of those few people left without peerages, or baronetcies, or knighthoods, or O.B.E.'s.

That was one way of getting round the difficulty. It only failed because the nation had not the patience to allow the process to be carried to its logical conclusion. Solvitur ambulando might so easily have become solvitur risu; and the problem of Honours would have dissolved in a shriek of laughter that would have left the whole world shaking.

And the Government also lost its nerve. It weakly began to admit that its method was a scandal, whereas it was clearly (as we have seen) a subtle method of reform. The Cabinet was now in a dilemma. It had at least two possible courses. It might, first, have really reformed the matter, properly and frankly. Or, secondly, it had the usual alternative of appointing a Royal Commission of inquiry. It is one of the commonplaces of history that when a political party has its back to the wall, with no possible defence, then a Royal Commission is often the only chance of escape.

In this case, as the danger seemed exceptionally imminent, a special precaution was taken. It was laid down in the terms of reference that the Commissioners should not investigate the past history of the matter. They were therefore in the embarrassing position of a doctor who was called in but not allowed to ask his patient to describe his symptoms. It was indeed a case of diagnosis under difficulties. It is scarcely surprising that the consultation has entirely failed to find a cure for a disease which could not be examined.

However, before considering the Report of the Commissioners, the ground must be cleared of unfair critics and unreasonable criticism. Let it be frankly admitted that the judging of Honours is a superhuman task. No one can blame the frail men who sit at Cabinet Councils if they fail to discover the best and wisest of men to place on the nation's roll of merit. That is a task which must be decided by the judgment of centuries. It is, in the long run, the tradition of the ages that marks the heroes of mankind. It has never yet been successfully done by the transitory gentlemen who sit for a brief space in the seat of the Patronage Secretary or the keeper of the party funds.

So, in fairness to those who are accused of bad judgments, let the issue not be placed on too high a level. It is not demanded that the Honours List shall contain all the best men of their year. But it is urgently necessary that it shall not contain a mass of nonentities, and even some whose measure of their right to appear there is only the length of the figures on their cheques. The real criticism against the Honours List is not that it has failed to discover the best, but rather that it has too often discovered persons who do not matter at all-and even some of the worst.

Of course no system of selection can be perfect-there will

always be mistakes which human judges will continue to make and which human juries will always forgive. After all, the lists must vary in perfection from year to year. When inferior men are in power and in control of the national rewards, then the selection of favoured ones will be a poor selection. The peerage -like wine-will always be classed by its year of vintage. Nobody expects that every year's crop of Honours will be of the finest bottling. We only ask that it may be wine of sorts-not a substitute bearing a false trade-label. It must be an Honour and not a sale.

After all, the Honours can only represent the opinion of the moment, the judgment of contemporaries. To-morrow the current may flow another way; a popular newspaper may have changed its proprietor or its leader-writer may have died. There is the gravest difficulty in finding men so full of sound judgment that they can administer the laws. And the administering of the law is a game for children compared with the distribution of national Honours. The law is, on the whole, a fairly fixed quantity, while the national honour is, alas! a more uncertain question.

The recent distribution of war decorations was a final proof of the impossibility of ever reaching abstract justice in the matter of rewards. Every man had stories of bravery unrecognised. There were tales of ribbons unjustly earned by favouritism, or by crafty wirepulling. But not many of these critics were in the least resentful. It was generously realised that the problem, except in its cruder forms, is well-nigh insoluble.

Let not the party managers, therefore, be unduly alarmed. The public will not be unreasonable or carping in its criticism. It is not for one moment expected that mere politicians (who are very busy men and somewhat mundane in their thoughts) will ever discover the really great men for a place on their Honours List. We know that, in the main, it will be the everyday men who will be made knights, and baronets, and peers-often good men of their class, but only rarely supermen. This is all that can be expected of the worldly wisdom of political circles.

All we can hope is that the party managers devise a system which will make it morally certain that titles shall not be bought by wealthy men on the same principles-or lack of them—as they buy their estates and motor cars. And, still more imperatively, it must be made certain that the purchase-money, if any, shall not go into the private war chests by which the sellers finance their political adventures. However, we cannot expect to be very quick in getting this reform; for we live in a commercial age, when the respectability of the cash payment—even for Honours -is engrained in the mind of the common man. It is interesting

to note that The Times Literary Supplement has just frankly declared that it is less shocked by James I. who sold baronetcies for cash than by Charles II. who gave away peerages to his children for love.

No system on earth can make the national Honours List a perfect document, or anything like it. For one thing, the great men need no official titles. Would Shakespeare have created a greater Hamlet if Cecil had made him a knight? Would Chaucer have made better verse had he been an earl? Could Meredith have built more perfect prose if Lord Salisbury had made him a duke? Or, again, was it likely that Lord Palmerston would have had the wit to see that Darwin should have been made a peer when he published The Origin of Species ?

We have now, of course, got to the days when the Honours List recognises artistic and scientific merit. But, unfortunately, we have also reached the time when merit hesitates to recognise the Honours List. Men now refuse titles as well as ask for them. Within the last few years a novelist and dramatist of distinction awoke one New Year's morn to find himself by mistake a knight. He regarded it in a different light from the one in which it was offered and hastened to wipe the stain from his honourable

name.

It has lately been recognised that there are other men of these scrupulous feelings-men who are too delicate in mind to stand a long time en queue (with their entrance money in hand) before the box-offices for the national lists, where one may well happen to rub shoulders with (the gods know what) outcasts of humanity. Therefore, such a decoration as the Order of Merit has been devised. So far one can still be seen there without the danger of lifted eyebrows. And the V.C. is also still safe. But their day may come. The O.M. is not yet sought by plutocratic gentlemen, because it is not yet likely to cause a favourable sensation in the City, or to impress the hall porters of those big hotels where such gentlemen stay. And in the case of the V.C., even a Patronage Secretary must have a plausible excuse-and so far it has been found difficult to tempt financiers sufficiently near the firing line.

It may be suggested that we can solve the whole problem by doing without an Honours List. But there is an important excuse, even an imperative reason, for this institution. It is not merely for the reward of great men that they should be recognised. The nation owes it to its own reputation that it should take an official part in the recognition. It is for the honour of the State that it should show its power of appreciation. The reputation of the people will be at stake in the books of history, where it will be said that a nation was great because it knew greatness when it saw it. For otherwise it might be said that a race was little

because it failed to see. So an Honours List is the measure of the State as much as of its great men and women.

Such is the problem of the granting of Honours. It is now time to consider the manner in which it has been dealt with by the Royal Commission. Its Report, covering scarcely twelve pages, will rank as a political and historical document of the first importance. It will not owe this position to its merits. Rarely, if ever, has a Royal Commission presented such a worthless document. It has only one virtue-it is short; and, as it tells us in a prefatory note, the whole Commission (including printing) has cost merely 31l. 10s. It is scarcely worth so much. It may be a testimony of much-needed economy-it is scarcely convincing proof of extensive research. The nation would willingly have paid a few pence more to print the evidence, which, it appears, we are not to have the privilege of seeing.

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The Commissioners were certainly hampered by the terms of their reference; they were only asked to advise as to the future. But they were specially given' full power to call before you such persons as you shall judge likely to afford you any information.' They are quite candid as to their scrupulous economy in using this power. They announce that (with the important exceptions of the Duke of Northumberland and Lord Selborne) they only called before them men who have been Prime Ministers, their Patronage Secretaries, and those responsible for the party organisations'; and they also considered memoranda drawn up by those Departments of State charged with the duty of supplying lists.'

In other words, with the two exceptions, they only called the accused parties. It is much as if a judge went no further than to ask the prisoners if they could suggest any reasons why they should be found guilty. Strange to relate, they could think of With unanimous voice, the accused persons in this case found themselves 'Not guilty.' The Commissioners announce this fact with a solemnity which reminds one of some of the most powerful passages in Alice in Wonderland.

none.

We put the question to each Prime Minister in turn, whether he had ever been cognisant of any bargain or promise to the effect that an honour would be contingent on a contribution to party funds. We received the answer that we expected, they had not. Answers to the same effect were given by the Patronage Secretaries and party managers.

The charge was that 'touts' went about offering to get peerages and other Honours in return for contributions to the party funds. Mr. Arthur Henderson, in his 'Note of Dissent ' from his colleagues' Report, writes:

I am of opinion that the Commission might with advantage have made a much more searching inquiry than they have done. I regret that, though