23 AUGUST 1963, Page 3

— Portrait of the Week— WITH LEATHERSLADE FARM to be opened

to the public at half a crown a time, and the police appealing for anyone seeing 'large holes being dug in the countryside' to tell them, it seemed possible that the Great Train Robbers might get away. With five people charged, and the small fortune of £1 million recovered, the police could congratulate themselves; but £2} million is still missing, believed stolen. Another police worry was the task of unravelling totally contradictory statements by Dr. Ward's so-called friends in and out of court to weed out the perjurers. Meanwhile Miss Keeler notched up yet another libel writ by deciding to sue the Daily Telegraph. More legal tangles to come in the A6 murder case, when Peter Alphon took out a writ against Fenner Brockway, M P.

WEST GERMANY became the sixty-third country to sign the test-ban treaty, thoUgh Cuba and several minor African Stajes continued to fence-sit. China was in no two minds, on this anyway, and publicly denounced Russia for refusing to give her nuclear weapons four years ago. On another military front, the Dutch Defence Ministry vetoed a plan to reconstruct the battle of Waterloo on its 150th anniversary as 'the French would be offended by a reminder of their defeat: Otherwise a disturbed week abroad: martial law was declared in Turkey, and President Youlou toppled from power in the former French Congo. Two more anti-de Gaulle plots were discovered in France, one plot against King Hassan uncovered in Morocco, and ex-President Jimenez was forcibly returned to Venezuela. More suspect was the rumoured forcible return from Bechuanaland of political refugees from South Africa. The UN announced that it had debts of £36 million for the Congo operatibn, but to her credit Britain was one of the twenty-nine fully paid-up members. Lord Home is going to the UN General Assembly, and the first halfway-house ,meeting between Britain and the Six will begin at the Western European Union in late October.

*

A WEEK that revealed the oddly contrasting faces of the TUC. First a report on a planned economy with more sound sense than any collection of Treasury platitudes, followed by an inability to prevent the selected-site building strike that marked the first formal clash between NIC and sensible economic planning. The TUC was further in the news when asked to renounce its link with the Daily Herald. whose owners decided it was all change for King's cross. In transport, a week of petty squabbling : on the railways, Dr. Beeching and Lord Stonham publicly spluttered oaths at each other over the proposed surgery; on the ground, Donald Campbell continued his public quarrel with a major sponsor; and in the air the chairmen of BOAC and BEA, speaking with one mind for a change, attacked the Minister of Aviation's proposed merger of the companies. Meanwhile the new prestige plane, the BAC One- Eleven, made her maiden flight. The trade gap widened, beer production fell, but Scotch whisky sales rose. In opposition to the `Marples Must Go' campaign a Gallup poll in, the Daily Telegraph found that one in two thought, he was doing a grand job, which hardly convinces motorists of opinion polls' reliability.

*

SCREAMING LORD SOWN lost his deposit at Strat- ford, but the National Fellowship candidate, Mr. Martell, saved his at Bristol South East, where Mr. Wedgwood Benn waltzed home in the cam- paign that never was. Football returned, and Noel Cantwell, of Manchester United, was sent off and booked in two charity games before the season began. At Bath the British chess championships proceeded with slightly less acrimony: