THE ART OF QUOTATION

Evening Star, Issue 23681, 14 September 1940, Page 4

THE ART OF QUOTATION

The art of quotation, once diligently practised in the House of Commons, is now in disuse ( but not yet lost. During the critical debates before Mr Churchill succeeded Mr Chamberlain, Sir Archibald Sinclair protested against the complacency of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, then Sir John Simon: “In a speech in London the other day the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that in the course of this debate Parliament would be satisfied, and that when the whole situation was laid before an impartial public its judgment would be that the action decided on was wisely taken on the best advice. It reminded me irresistibly of Macaulay’s essay on Lord Mahon’s ‘ History of the War of the Spanish Succession.’ He referred to Lord Galway as; “ An experienced veteran, a man who was in war what Moliere’s doctors were in medicine, who thought it much more honourable to fail according to rule than to succeed by innovation. This great commander conducted the campaign of 1707 in the most scientific manner. On the plain of Almanza he encountered the army of the Bourbons. He drew up his troops according to the methods prescribed by the best writers, and in a few hours lost 18,000 men, 120 standards, all his baggage, and all his artillery.” I dare say that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with his well-known gift of persuasive advocacy, will ho able to make us think that at every step everything was done according to the very best advice, that every move was inspired by the purest spirit of wisdom. Sir A. Wilson rose to answer Sir Archibald Sinclair, and he thrust forward Burke against -Macaulay: The Leader of the Liberal Opposition made great play with a quotation from Macaulay, who is not perhaps the most reliable of historians. May I answer him, therefore, from Burke, who said: “ It is not to be imagined how much of service is lost from spirits full of activity and full of energy who are pressing, who are rushing forward with great and capital objects when you oblige them to he continually looking back. Whilst they are defending one service they defraud you of a hundred. Applaud us when we run, console us when we fall, cheer us when we recover, but let us pass on—for God’s sake let us pass on,” Debates precisely like this took place after the Low Countries had been invaded and the battle of Watcheren had ended in disaster just before Waterloo, during the Crimean War, and during the South African War, and the quotation that I have submitted to the House is what Mr Asquith, when Prime Minister. quoted in a debate on a very similar subject during the conduct of the war in Mesopotamia.