Last Saturday night I watched in a clear sky the
occultation of Mars by the moon, an occurrence rare enough to be notable. Just before Christmas, 1934, I was fortunate enough to see Venus, almost at its brightest, and Saturn, occulted in succession by the young moon—for the first time for thousands of years. Mars was then low on the horizon : now it, too, has been eclipsed by the world's private planet—surely a good omen in support of Mr. Eden's hopeful speech on Monday ! To be able to observe stars over a wide horizon is one of the joys of life in most Eastern countries, and one denied to city-dwellers. One meets few people nowadays who know the names of the planets and constellations visible on a fine evening, though The Times publishes every month a map of the sky for their guidance. It was different in Arabia, where every cultivator and camel- man knew some of them and the times of their rising. It was such a man who once said to me of a politician who later became notorious : " He thinks he follows a star, but when the sun rises he finds it was a planet " (that is to say, he has lost his direction).
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