Portrait of the Week
IN the dearth of real news which marks the beginning of the silly season the newspapers have had to do as best they may with the annual vicissitudes of Bank Holiday crowds and the not less perennial excitements of cricket. Into this vacuum the announcement that the USA was contemplating launching satellites into the earth's orbit came as a gift from the gods, and people who had never heard of cosmic rays two weeks ago have been busy informing the British public how lucky they are to have a nice thick outer layer of atmosphere and not to be exposed directly to the more malevolent manifes- tations of outer space. The American satellites are to be launched as a contribution to the International Geophysical Year; they will circle the earth some 200 miles up at a speed of approximately 18,000 m.p.h., and are confidently expected to add considerably to man's knowledge of the universe around him. After this, it came as no surprise to learn that the Soviet Union also had its plans for launching satellites, and M. Khrushchev in the new Geneva manner stated at a cocktail party that Russia would be prepared to co-operate with America in the project 'if it were in the interests of mankind.'
All this put the Bank Holiday into second place in the head- lines, in spite of an unheard-of outburst of good weather over most of Great Britain. Holidaymakers have been doing the usual things : leaving London in cars, crowding the main-line railway stations, making record attendances at various Navy Days, and getting into difficulties in waters known to be danger- ous for bathing. There has been an outbreak of the spirit that makes England what it is at Porthcothan Bay, in Cornwall, and deliberate abstention from duty by special constables at Blackpool. Sports events include the winning of the Goodwood Cup by Double Bore, a British victory in the athletics match with Germany (where Chataway set up a new three-mile world record with a time of 13 minutes 23.2 seconds) and a triumph for the third time in succession in the Tour de France by Louison Bobet. Two separate aviators have crossed the Channel in exact replicas of the plane used by Bldriot fifty years ago, one young lady has swum it and another has failed to, and the British gliding championships have become a monument to cold peace following the amiability displayed by the Soviet air attaches. .
A general relaxation of tension indeed continues. The Russians are reported to have told the governments of Hungary and Rumania that they intend to withdraw troops from those countries following On the carrying-out of the Austrian treaty. The Russian Government has now invited the French Prime Minister and Foreign Minister to Moscow, and Pravda has spoken of 'a fresh breeze' blowing over the world after Geneva. A slightly discordant note. however, was struck by the same paper's belief that Western warmongers were still lying in wait for honest strivers after time and by the reaction of the Bulgarian Government to the Israeli and Western protests fol- lowing the shooting down of an' Air Israel plane by Bulgarian lighter planes. The offer to pay half compensation and the refusal to allow a proper examination of the wreckage by an Israeli commission are in the worst traditions of Iron Curtain !diplomacy. However, it may be that sweetness and light arc taking some time to soak into Sofia.
Communist China, however, is apparently pursuing a policy parallel to that of the Soviet Union. The opening of negotiations on an ambassadorial level between the Chinese and the Americans at Geneva coincided with the announce- ment that the eleven American airmen imprisoned as spies in China were to be released, a concession which has been wel- corned in Washington. Mr. Dulles has said that the American Government 'hopes to arrive by progressive steps' at a situa- tion where the Chinese are prepared to lay aside the use of force, and the Chinese Foreign Minister, Mr. Chou En-lai, has expressed his willingness to enter into negotiations about the `liberation of Formosa' with 'the responsible local authorities.'
Whatever a Far Eastern settlement may do, it is unlikely to bring calm to the affairs of Malaya and Singapore. with which Mr. Lennox-Boyd has been wrestling on his Far Eastern tour. In the elections in the Malayan Confederation the list spon- sored by the United Malays National Organisation. the Malayan Chinese Association and the Malayan Indian Con- gress, has won forty-seven out of the forty-eight seats in the new Assembly. Tengku Abdul Rahman, the leader of this coalition, has stated that his aim is immediate constitutional reform and has also demanded an amnesty for Communist terrorists. Meanwhile, in Singapore a compromise solution has been found by Mr. Lennox-Boyd that is said to satisfy both Mr. Marshall, the Chief Minister, and the Governor, Sir John Black. Other colonial problems still simmer. In Cyprus there have been riots to protest against the new emergency laws. In Morocco the week has seen renewed troubles in Marra- kesh and Moulay Idriss with sixteen dead and many injured. In Algeria twenty-one French soldiers were killed in an ambush, while in Paris Algerian demonstrators ran wild in the 18th arrondissement after an Algerian had been arrested by the police on a charge of theft. Other items of foreign news include the choosing of a site near Karlsruhe for West Ger- many's atomic pile, the devaluation of the Pakistani rupee to parity with the Indian, a Cabinet crisis in Japan, rioting by workmen on strike at St. Nazaire and the coldest winter in living memory in the Argentine. In Washington Mr. Talbott. US Secretary for Air, who was alleged to have used his position to assure contracts for a firm with which he was connected, has resigned. He is reported to have said, 'Now I'm going to make me some dough,' a striking reminder of what transatlantic public men sacrifice by their acceptance of Cabinet office.
This week's home news includes a 5 per cent, rise in the mortgage rate on houses and a rise in the price of coke by 30s. a ton. The NCB has decided that it wants to import foreign labour into the pits, but the Yorkshire miners, strongly sup- ported by the Daily Worker, don't seem any more disposed to agree to this than they were a year or two ago. Miscellaneous items include the donation of £100,000 to Cambridge Univer- sity to found a new observatory. a record flight by a Valiant bomber from London to Bagdad, and the announcement of more and longer TV programmes by the BBC, who have plain- tively revealed that they have actually had to pay some of their staff more money in face of the threat of competition. Whatever are things coming to?
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