12 AUGUST 1960, Page 3

— Portrait of the Week— THE SECURITY coutactt, warned by Mr.

Hammars- kiold that it faced 'peace or war' in the Congo, called on Belgium to withdraw her troops from Katanga, and Belgium, in a sulk, mumbled some- thing about not wanting to play in the NATO backyard any more. Mr. Tshombe, Prime Minister of Katanga, said in a lordly way that he'd let in the United Nations troops on a lot of rather Prickly conditions. Mr. Lumumba, Prime Minister of the Central Government, shook his fist at the United Nations and expelled the Belgian Ambas- sador. All of which made it seem rather tame that Nyasaland was fairly pleased with its new con- stitution, and .prepared to welcome home the national heroes listed in the Malawi News as 'the great Kamuzu, the indomitable Orton Chirwa, the Uncompromising Chiume and the fearless Aleke Banda.'

IN THE CAPITAL OF LAOS, a captain nobody had heard of seized power on behalf of a movement the aims of which nobody understood. In a special message to Congress, President Eisen- hower said that Communist policy had recently grown in truculence and military menace, but that the United States was still the strongest military power in the world. Mr. Khrush- chev's answer to Mr. Macmillan's request for enlightenment about his present policy and pur- Pose congratulated his correspondent on his states- manship and rebuked him for being a dishonest tool of the Americans. In the course of the same letter Mr. Khrushchev threatened yet again, and almost as if he meant it, to sign a peace treaty with East Germany. The Soviet Government published its 4,000-word indictment of the American U2 pilot, Francis Powers, and in a memorandum to the Organisation of American States the United States Government accused Cuba of economic aggression, military interference with neighbour- ing countries, disregard of human rights and in- creasing international tension by its subservience to Chinese and Soviet Communism.

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MR. NI ACMILLAN went to Bonn to talk to Dr. Adenauer about European trade and to be talked to about European political federation. Mr. Mor- gan Phillips published a pamphlet on Labour in the Sixties, intended as a programme on which the Party could unite and perhaps even win an elec- tion. Just to make this all the more difficult, there were strikes of porters at Manchester airport and of ETU members at Coventry, and threats of another seamen's strike and of a nation-wide unofficial power strike. But the danger of a strike of professional footballers was averted at a con- ference of the Footb4,11 Association, the Football League, the Professional Footballers' Association and the Ministry of Labour's conciliation officer, and there will be football matches for porters, seamen and electricians to go to while they are on strike. British coal miners were awarded another Ss. a week, and opera-singers in Australia were granted the right to a basic wage. A fifteen-year- Old girl swani the twenty-four-mile length of Loch Lomond, accompanied by a guitarist in a boat, and singing all the way. Prince Philip was made a bard at the Royal National Eisteddfod of Wales at Cardiff and didn't sing a note.

RE WAS SHOOTING AND FISHING : grousfshoot- 'ig began today, end British trawling in what Iceland regards as her own private waters was resumed after three months' voluntary abstention by British trawler owners. The Royal Navy will not be, able to protect British fishermen from Icelandic maritime might with anything so large as a battleship: our last ship of the sort, Van- guard, the biggest warship ever built in Britain, was towed to the knacker's yard after running aground in Portsmouth Harbour and never having fired a shot in anger.