Portrait of the Week
India has also been having her troubles with the UN, being astonished to find that the Security Council was consistent enough when debating Kashmir to reaffirm the need for a plebiscite there and to deny that the present Assembly is the right body to decide to whom the country should finally belong. The Prime Minister of Pakistan has been taking the opportunity provided by Mr. Nehru's unusual display of bad temper over this result to gain golden opinions by offering to receive a UN force on the Kashmir border. His countrymen were rather less mild, observing Independence Day as a day of mourning. Pictures of Marshal Zhukov, who is on a visit to India, talking to Mr. Nehru or riding an elephant have not calmed their feelings.
Other top-ranking travellers have included King Saud of Arabia, who has set foot in a rather unappreciative New York on his state visit to America, and Mr. Duncan Sandys, who is in Washington to discuss defence problems. Cuts in defence expenditure have been approached by the new Government with an almost missionary fervour and Mr. Sandys set off on his voyage armed to the teeth with powers conferred on him by Mr. Macmillan to put the programme into effect. These amounted to a carte blanche over all matters concerned with defence and the armed forces. As far as the results of the Washing- ton talks go we have had to make do with a few fleeting smiles on Mr. Sandys's face as he hurries to and fro round the Pentagon and the State Department, but there is a general hope that he will have succeeded in easing some of our burdens and pooling some of our technical resources.
Other less amicable doings have been afoot in Washington. Somewhere in the middle of the maelstrom is Mr. Dulles, around whose unfortu- nate head the windsr'show no sign of dropping.
At home, Parliament's new groove is getting run in by discussion of the Government's Homi- cide Bill. The needle has jumped a little once or twice, however : first over a privilege matter; and again when it was suggested that Dr. Edith Summerskill ought not to be a member at all now that her alleged discoveries of British perfidy and brutality in Port Said have made her `ashamed to be British.' Another interesting feature has been the reply of the Treasury to questions about Civil Service security precautions. It appears that in future they are to extend to persons about whose reliability there is `reason- able doubt' and those 'susceptible to Communist?' pressure.' British nationality has not proved alto- gether helpful to four Oxford undergraduates who are gaoled and shortly to be tried in Buda- r pest on a trumped-up charge of spying on behalf of the British Intelligence Service. There has been trouble in the motor industry with a big strike at Fords and a small one at BMC- both over 'union' matters.
Lord Attlee has returned from Canada well pleased with the Canadians to whom he has been lecturing but not with his agent, who cancelled his last lecture because of lack of interest, or the compositor who caused this catastrophe by print- ing the attendance figures as 4 instead of 400. The Duke of Cornwall has started to go to school, if one can believe what one reads in the papers, and it has been discovered that his headmaster 'is just like Daddy' (at present in Gambia, if one can believe what one reads in the papers). The fashion season has begun. We can find no idea uniting the great houses, but hear that Rome favours the 'pregnant line,' Paris the short skirt and London the `S-bend.'
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