—Portrait of the Week— THE COMMUNISTS closed the Brandenburg Gate
and barricaded with tanks and troops the other usual routes between the two halves of Berlin after the flood of refugees from East to West had risen to a record height. This did not pre- vent refugees from continuing to slip through by less orthodox channels. The East German Gov- ernment also threatened to interrupt Western communications with Berlin; this was in answer to a report that the West German Government was thinking of cancelling the inter-German trade agreement. Mr. Khrushchev again mixed warnings of war with assurances that, the leaders of the West being 'sensible men,' reason would prevail. Everyone continued to hope vaguely that it would, and that a peaceful settlement could be negotiated in the gap between the West German elections in September and the Moscow party conference in October. Electioneering smirched the image of West German unity over Berlin when the Chancellor, Dr. Adenauer, called his rival, Herr Brandt, a bastard, in the strictly legal sense, which Herr Brandt had never made any secret of being. At the salve time a seven months' gaol sentence for insulting behaviour was passed on a West German citizen who had writ- ten to Dr. Adenauer suggesting that he should join the Foreign Legion and 'giving him other advice.'
IN ISRAEL the trial of Ado11 Eichmann came to an end after four months, but judgment was not expected to be given until November. In India Master Tara Singh, the Sikh leader, began a 'fast unto death' because Mr. Nehru's government still refused to create a Punjabi-speaking State. Rela- tions between the United States and Cuba im- proved slightly: agreement was reported on measures to stop piracy; Cuba arranged to return the hijacked Electra airliner and the US arranged to return a Cuban, patrol boat—although this was described by b.'1,State Department official as 'definitely not a swap '
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THERE WAS MORE SABOTAGE in Northern Rhodesia against the new constitution. Mr. Kenneth Kaunda, still advocating non-violence and resist- ing pressure from extremists both inside and out- side the United National Independence Party, came to London foi a last appeal—'not to the government' (in which he said he no longer had confidence) but to the British public. In Kenya lomo Kenyatta was released after over eight Years' detention. This was more to the liking of the Kikuyu than of the League of Empire Loyalists who left a polythene bag containing the entrails of a goat on the doorstep of Mr. Macleod's Chelsea flat as a 'silent demonstration.'
U WAS A BAD WEEK for air travel. Thirty-four schoolboys and two masters from a Croydon secondary school were killed when a Cunard Eagle Airways Viking crashed into a Norwegian hillside. There was confusion at Gatwick Airport last weekend after lack of fuel had grounded the aircraft of Overseas Aviation Limited, a firm which could not pay its debts and subsequently talked about voluntary liquidation. More than a thousand travellers were stranded abroad and had to make alternative arrangements, to the benefit of some of the other solvent airlines. Other travel- lers were delayed in leaVing this country, among them Mr. Gaitskell and -his family, nine hours late on a' flight to Yugoslavia. Mr. Macmillan left for Yorkshire to shoot grouse—forty on the first day, according to the Daily Sketch, which alone seemed to have discovered the secret of his bag. Canon Collins laid himself open to outlawry tinder a statute of the lourteenth century by vot- ing against the election of Dr. Stopford to the bishopric of London in protest against the prin- elPle of Crown nomination and personally against a man who believed that nuclear war was prefer- able to Communist domination of Britain.
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