CANADA: New Viceroy; General Election

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Jack Buchan, in his romantic novels like The Path of the King, successfully flatters his middle-class public and also their beloved sovereign with such turns as: "We may all of us have King's blood in our veins. The Dago who blacked my boots in Vancouver may be descended in some roundabout way from Julius Caesar. . . . And we fools rub our eyes and wonder when we see genius come out of the gutter! It did not begin there . . . Shakespeare . . . Napoleon . . . who knows what kings and prophets they had in their ancestry?"

People who cite insomnia as their reason for reading John Buchan's romances and detective stories are flattered and disarmed by Lord Tweedsmuir's story that he also devotes his serious working hours to historical biographies, business trading and politics. Troubled with insomnia himself, he scribbles his novels in the wee hours to put himself to sleep. His reason for entering politics is that after the War he felt that every able man should put his best abilities at the disposal of King & Country for Reconstruction. Said he in 1920: "It looks as if some kind of politics was going to be my duty." Lady Tweedsmuir, a moneyed kinswoman of the richest Duke (Westminster), burrows tirelessly in libraries, relieving her husband of much work, ever since he has been too busy himself to dig up details for his historical biographies and romances.

In his Silver Jubilee book on the Empire & King, Mr. Buchan achieved his final masterpiece of subtle flattery. When Canadian Premier Richard Bedford Bennett then advised Buckingham Palace that "Mr." Buchan would make a fine Governor-General (part of Canada's reason being that, after 14 peers, the Dominion wanted a commoner), His Majesty proved so oversold on the nomination that he not only made Commoner Buchan his Governor-General but enthusiastically dubbed him Knight Grand Cross of the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael & St. George, then capped this knighthood and vexed many Canadians by raising him to the peerage as Baron Tweedsmuir (TIME, Aug. 19).

Idealist of War. On the afternoon of his appointment as Governor-General, plain John Buchan M. P. was having tea in the House of Commons when the division bell rang and a waiter warned him that he should go in and vote. For the merest instant a flicker of pride played on His Excellency's bloodless lips. "I ceased to be a member of this House," he told the waiter, "at 3 o'clock this afternoon."

Resumed at once was the impenetrable mask of words behind which John Buchan lives. Tendered a congratulatory dinner in London by 600 Canadians and the Dominion High Commissioner, he flattered them directly for half an hour, then provoked them to pleased mirth by this witty hyperbole: "In one sense Canada is Britain's senior. Constitutionally, all the 'autonomous units' of the Empire are to-day equal sovereign States under one king. They are 'Dominions' and of these Dominions, Canada is the oldest and Britain the youngest."