JOHN ARLOTT: The Unfriendly Bumper THOMAS HODGKIN: West African Constitutions MICHAEL STEWART, M.P.: Privilege in Education REX WARNER: Who Goes West ?

T is difficult to see from the outside which of the long list of possible subjects the Foreign Ministers of the United States, Britain and France are going to discuss thoroughly...

American aid to the rest of the world is coming to an end two years from now, or possibly even sooner if the House of Representatives gets its way in the argument with the...

No. 6524 FRIDAY, JULY 10, 1953 PRICE 7d.

" It is a minority," said the chairman of the Coal Board when he addressed the annual conference of the National Union of Mineworkers on Wednesday, " which hinders the...

The coalition that has governed Italy for seven years is dead. When its constituent parties failed to secure the necessary majority in the recent elections, it was generally...

If the miners have refrained from pressing their wage claim the workers in another shaky industry have not. The claim for a fifteen per cent. increase submitted on behalf of...

The East German workers have shown that they are not yet pacified. The reports of new clashes and strikes show that they were neither crushed by the Russian tanks on June 17th...

The spectacle of talks going on at Panmunjom while fight- ing continues between the Communist and the United Nations forces has been a depressing enough feature of the Far...

A few months ago, it would have been unthinkable for the Government of France to have offered " the completion of the independence and sovereignty of the Associated States."...

The murder of the seventy-year-old Prince Azzedine, heir- presumptive to the Beylik of Tunisia, has not yet produced a renewal of disturbances. The Prince was friendly to...

T HE slight fever on the Government side which was caused last week by the temporary removal of Sir Winston Churchill from Downing Street to Chartwell seems now to have...

T HERE have been riots in Pilsen and Berlin; Herr Grotewohl has a new policy for Eastern Germany and M. Nagy heads a new government in Hungary. There are rumours (emphatically...

met Tensing in London seems to be a mixture of admiration and solicitude. Everyone is impressed by his simple integrity, and everyone is afraid that it may be tarnished by the...

who knew what he was talking about, that for the Japanese, when they look back on the last war, the fighting in Burma has a certain grim pre-eminence, and that Imphal evokes in...

Nanga Parbat by an Austro- German expedition will be welcome to all mountaineers but to few more, perhaps, than to Herr Heinrich Harrer, who flew last week to Peru with designs...

M R. SCOTT HENDERSON was the chairman of a Royal Commission which a few years ago produced a most interesting and judicious report on cruelty to wild animals. Much of the...

The Oliviers' Pekingese is the latest recruit to the conspiracy of silence embracing practically every dog whose master's house has been visited by a ladder-gang. There were...

" Old man ! old titan sitting at the window, What do you see ? " " I am looking at a world that is breaking apart, And it has no heart." CHARLES SEATON.

By NORMAN COLLINS* A ST week the Government made their long-awaited state- ment on competitive televiiion; and it is fair to say that the statement appears to have pleased no...

By THOMAS HODGKIN W E sat in tiers along the grass banks of a kind of natural theatre in Kumasi, in the mild evening sun, and sang " Lead, Kindly Light." It was Independ- ence...

By RICHARD CHANCELLOR I T is a measure of our ignorance of the fundamentals of Russian behaviour that long after both Lenin and Stalin have been consigned to their red granite...

By MICHAEL STEWART, M.P. Mr. Michael Stewart is Labour Member of Parliament for East Fulham. He has been a schoolmaster and a lecturer for the Workers' Educational Association,...

By WOLF MANKOWITZ F OR a while he just sits there. He is introduced as Randolph Hermp, and you have to watch points in case he turns out to be well known. Hermp sits there with...

Aftermath T HE door was opened by Nicholas. He was six. " I'm looking for Miss Sel f," I said. " Is this No. 63 ? " Oh, I suppose you mean Jackie," replied Nicholas...

ART As Berthe Morisot was to Manet, so it might almost be said, was Mary Cassatt to Degas. But whereas the former mutually affected each other's work, Mary Cassatt's role was a...

King Henry V. By William Shakespeare. (Old Vie.) LAST year the Bristol Old Vic put the old Old Vic to shame when they came up to the Waterloo Road with Denis Carey's bright...

Covent Garden THE old Italian and German " seasons " have been reduced this year to a token. There have been three Italian operas, sung in Italian with some Italian principals,...

Sir Evelyn Howell, who lives in Cambridge, recommends to me the use of black thread to protect peas from jackdaws much in the same way as it is used to keep sparrows away from...

When a fly alighted on the back of my hand I felt the tickling sensation and then its bite which made me strike and kill it at once. It was what I was brought up to know as a...

A few days of heavy, low cloud can make an astonishing difference to a strawberry bed, particularly if the plants are of a leafy variety such as Climax, for without sun the...

Innocents in Paris. (Empire.)—MacDonald of the Canadian Mounties. (Leicester Square Theatre.) Sadk6. (Con- tinentale.) IT is only a couple of months since the first London...

A careful aesthetic might have made of this A catand shoe-box composition, purred And arched his back and thrilled in empathies. But Smart, ebullient lunatic, would bless The...

THE old rhyme says that a swarm of bees in June is worth a silver spoon. We were blessed with three silver spoons, all from adjoining properties. Had the swarms come in May they...

Anyone who has spent a long hot summer day out of doors without a good supply of drinking water knows the' temptation of the water in the stream or lake. It seems so pure and...

Set by D. R. Peddy A prize of £5 is offered for an extract from a love scene in a play set against the background of one of the following : the United Nations Headquarters, a...

Report by Joyce Johnson Ancient mythology provides an explanation of the origin and nature of the narcissus and sunflower. Readers were asked to invent a legend which explains...

in the Mormon population inhabiting the Great Salt Lake City. Some of the saints are asking for " proofs." Governor Brigham Young addressed the true saints in the tabernacle on...

The Unfriendly Bumper By JOHN ARLOTT D URING the rubber of cricket Test Matches played in Australia in 1924-25, Maurice Tate took thirty-eight wickets, the most ever taken by...

The Way of Michael Scott But,—Mr. Alport is understandably anxious to justify his Govern- ment's imposition of Federation in face of the opposition to it both in Africa and...

Sm,—I would not deny that Sir Eyre Crowe's famous definition of Britain's national interests still has much relevance today. My point was that Britain's national, interests...

SIR,—Mr. Sean O'Faolain's lively article reminds me of an incident which occurred when I was in America recently. I was very taken aback when a young novelist said to me, "...

SIR, —There is no mystery about Picklock Holes. The name was invented by my father, the late R. C. Lehmann, and' his Adventures of Picklock Holes ran serially in Punch and was...

SIR,—I trust that you will allow me to make some corrections in the story you publish in the current issue of the Spectator about the visit of Joseph Neave and my father, John...

SIR,—I venture to point to one modern equestrian statue as being at least of " moderate distinction," though it stands outside London and does not represent a martial figure....

SIR,—This note is inspired by Mr. EThvid Mitchell's letter in the Spectator of June 5th, 1953, commenting on " The Lone Prairee" of Mr. Desmond Henn, but I had previously...

The Art of Churchill . By H. J. FAIRLIE S HORTLY before he was ordered to rest, at a tragically inopportune moment, Sir Winston Churchill sat, head bowed, on the Government...

Westward the Course of Empire. By Bernard De Voto. (Eyre and Spottiswoode. 42s.) THE Welsh are involved in many strange stories. One of the strangest is that of the discovery...

and advertised in the Spectator last week. The price of this book was omitted. The price is 21s.

Cecil Rhodes. By Andre Maurois. (Collins. Brief Lives. 7s. 6d.) M. MAUROIS disarms criticism by his bibliography, a casual selection of six secondary authorities. No one need...

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. By Carson McCullers. (Cresset Press. 15s.) CARSON MCCULLERS'S " poet's eye " has already been remarked upon. It is indeed a fine creative eye,...

The Castles of Great Britain. By Sidney Toy. (Heinemann. 25s.) THERE is ample confirmation lying about this world that the func- tionalist theory of architecture, as propounded...

The English Housewife in the Seventeenth Century. By Christina Hole. (Chatto & Windus. 21s.) NoT everyone has the gift for writing social history, for it requires a patient...

New Poems 1953. A P.E.N. Anthology. Edited by Robert Conquest, Michael Hamburger, Howard Sergeant. Introduction by C. V. Wedgwood. (Michael Joseph. 10s. 6d.) THE year revolves,...

The Singing Reel. By Moray McLaren. (Hollis and Carter. 16s.) MR. MCLAREN is one of those rare, happy people who respond to nostalgia by going home, whatever that may involve....

TATTOOING (advertised as Tat-2-ing by an American "professor" as the practitioners of the craft are now called) has a long and ancient history. It was practised in Egypt in 2000...

IT is surprising, all things considered, how far talent alone will take a novelist and how far short of substantial creation. Life, or real life, or an illusion of reality has...

(Rockliff 50s.) This is a useful book, which records our sculptors from the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries and will astonish most of its readers by the number of its...

By CUSTOS FOR some weeks the meagre flow of Stock market business has reminded me of the anonymous verse on the illness of King Edward VII:— Along the wire th' electric...

The Philosophy of Science. By Stephen Touhnin. (Hutchinson. 8s. 6d.) MR. TOULMIN'S excellent little book comes into the gad-fly category ; that is to say it stings the mind to...

No. 736 is Miss M. B. MORLEY, The Crest, Carleton, Pontefract, Yorks. Solution on July 24th

14 Book Token for bite guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution opened after noon on Tuesday week, July 21st, addressed Crossword, 99 Gower Street....