— Portrait of the Week— THE AUGUST BANK HOLIDAY came and
went, taking with it at least seventy-one people, despite the new speed limits and repeated warnings to take care on the roads. Just before the holiday Mr. Marples announced that a new road-building pro- gramme was soon to be started. It was hoped that five motorways would be finished, and a sixth started, by the middle of the 1960s, at a cost Which was vaguely believed to be anything over £150 million. It was not clear whether some or all (or none) of the money for this programme would be that which would otherwise have been spent on the Victor bombers. orders for which were cancelled by the Air Ministry—though not on the grounds that the Blue Steel rocket could not be fired from them, that the Skybolt rocket did not exist, and that they were in any cast obsolete and had been for some years.
THE sovier GOVERNMENT rejected the proposal by the United States Government that the United Nations Disarmament Commission be reconvened during August, and proposed instead that disarm- ament should be discussed in a meeting of the General Assembly, attended by all eighty-two Heads of Government, which Mr. Khrushchev no doubt thought a more convenient kind of body, as far as the discussion of international relations were concerned, than the four Heads of Govern- ment who recently met briefly, in Paris. Mean- while, some small-scale SuMmit meetings were going on, President de Gaulle and Dr. Adenauer setting the fashion at Rambouillet, and Dr. Adenauer and Mr. Macmillan proposing to follow it at Bonn. To this meeting, it was announced, Mr. Macmillan would be taking his new Foreign Secretary, the Earl of Home, but not his new Minister for European Affairs, Mr. Edward Heath. Farther East, the Soviet Government granted visas to members of the family of Mr. Powers, to enable them to attend his trial for espionage in Moscow. Farther East still, the Democratic Party won a conclusive victoryj in the South-Korean elections, over the somewhat dis- credited supporters of-Mr. Synghman Rhee, and indeed over everybody else. Elsewhere, Arch- bishop Makarios and Dr. Kutchuk swept their respective parts of the 'board in the Cyprus elec- tions, the situation in the Congo grew continually more confused, and two officials of the United States National Security Agency disappeared.
'ilte International Transport Workers Federation decided that it did not want Mr. Frank Cousins 9n its executive committee, a decision which was ill received by Mr. Cousins. He laid the blame at the door Of the American members, whom he described as opponents, and was very bitter about the use of the block vote, a device with which he appeared to be unfamiliar. Later, there was much dark talk about the State Department's responsi- bility for the affair.
WAYS AND MEANS were discussed of ensuring har- monious constitutional futures for Malta, Nyasa- land and Southern Rhodesia. Dr. Hastings Banda's demands were thought to be extreme where Nyasaland was concerned. Sir Edgar Whitehead's Were considered short-sighted in the case of Southern Rhodesia, and everybody's were/it-Im- mo* agreed to be ridiculous .vis-a-vis Malta.
11IE COOL CATS wrecked the Jazz Festival at Beaulieu in a large way, there was a state of intolerable confusion over the Picasso pictures finally lent by the Soviet Government to the Tate Gallery exhibition, Lancashire beat Yorkshire at cricket off the last ball of the match, and Mr. ir)hu Aspinall's mother-in-law had her nose brAen by a tame gorilla.
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