3 AUGUST 1962, Page 9

Spectator's Notebook

EVEN the strongest must falter. In Brussels last Friday when the negotiations had ground themselves into gloom, and the room was thick with stale smoke, and papers spilled off the table round the delegates' ankles, Monsieur Couve de Murville rose to his feet. He was to reply to the British paper, which he had been studying. In his chilliest manner he began to demolish it point by point; and very successfully, until someone pulled his sleeve and pointed out that it was an English translation of the Six's draft that he was so ruth- lessly destroying.