Portrait of the Week— PRESIDENT EISENHOWER flew to Bonn, where
he again heard German gunfire—a twenty-one-gun salute from the new German Army's new field artillery—and from Bonn to London. Before leaving Washington he said that he would suggest to the responsible officials he would meet that we together re-state our readiness to negotiate realis- tically with the Soviets on any reasonably and mutually enforceable plan for general or special disarmament,' while his predecessor sourly ob- served that the 'power and leadership of the presidency should not be dissipated in ceremonial
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MR. NEHRU told the Indian Parliament that India would defend Bhutan and Sikkim against any infringement of their sovereignty. The Indian- Chinese border was reported to be virtually sealed, and a Chinese Note warned India that because the Chinese People's Liberation Army was preparing,a punitive expedition against rebel minorities, it could not guarantee the safety of Indian pilgrims to Tibet. Laos asked the'United States for money, but not for troops, in its struggle with rebellion. Indonesia devalued its high-denomination notes and froze big savings accounts, to wipe out black- market fortunes. In South Africa, African women went on stoning the police, and the police went on clobbering the women. Durban City Council took out a £31 million insurance policy against riot damage.
SIGITI LNG SHOTS were fired in the phoney war that precedes the election campaign. The Labour Party published a new policy statement on the National Health Service, promising a better service for more public money, and the Conservative Party Published The Challenge of Leisure, in which it discus.ied how to keep young people out of 'dubious haunts.' The Conservatives also pub- lished a magazine entirely in strip cartoons, called Form, calling on all football-pool fillers-up to find the (political) winners. The TUC published an account of its strained relations with the Com- munist-run ETU. The National Union of General and Municipal Workers obediently changed its mind on unilateral renunciation of nuclear weapons, and about-faced to support Mr. Gaitskell and official party policy.
GREAT HEAT. all over Britain. was mitigated by thunderstorms and heavy rain, which flooded London's tubes and the Mersey Tunnel, after which it became very hot again. Mr. Hugh Fraser finally heat Debenhams in the struggle to buy Harrods. The new Bishop of Southwark cancelled the licence of a priest he described as a 'diligent visitor and a loving pastor' for disregarding the Book of Common Prayer, and using a form of the Roman Catholic mass.
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A NEW FUEL CELL which produces its own electric- ity was demonstrated by its inventor, Mr. Francis Bacon, at Cambridge. Development so far has been helped by the National Research Develop- ment Corporation, but it looks as though it sill he American industry from now on. Two new small cars were announced by the British Motor Corporation to compete with the European miniatures, and television sets, too, were slimmed down, and can now .be hung on the wall. A Victor four-engined jet bomber disappeared on a routine test flight.
SIR JACOB EPSTEIN DIED. at seventy-eight, and Sir Thomas Beecham married, for the third time, at eighty. A young., and very rich, Mr. Rockefeller married a young. and quite poor. Norwegian girl who was once a servant in, his family.
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