T HERE is no satisfaction for anyone—except perhaps for Government supporters who desired to dissociate themselves from the Government and had not an opportunity of speaking— in...

At the moment of going to press no reliable news had come through as to the military position north of Namsos in the direction of the long mountainous route that leads to...

Holland is taking no chances, and after the stern measures she has already adopted to deal with enemies within, has now for the fourth time since the outbreak of war cancelled...

Italy's attitude has not materially changed in the past week, and her intentions remain a matter of speculation. Her newspapers and some of her politicians continue to bandy...

A section of the Swedish Press has endeavoured to take an objective view of the British withdrawal from central Norway, but few of the newspapers have drawn the most obvious...

Lord Halifax received M. Maisky, the Soviet Ambassador, on Wednesday. The negotiations with Russia in regard to a trade agreement seem to have been held up since the last reply...

In the recent operations in and off Norway there is one achievement at least which affords ground for nothing but satis- faction—the successful evacuation and transportation of...

The Labour Party has issued a spirited declaration on home policy, for submission to the Party Conference in Bournemouth next week. It reasserts its belief in the creation by...

If there is any country in the world today which enjoys the advantages of being ruled by a philosopher-king it is s - crely Portugal, where for twelve years Dr. Antonio de Oli...

Our Parliamentary Correspondent writes : Wednesday was indeed a memorable day. It began quietly with a somewhat discursive speech by Mr. Herbert Morrison, who, nevertheless,...

the situation is held by the Labour leaders. They cannot form a Government by them- selves. The question is whether they will join with anyone else. It certainly seemed from Mr....

depend on a bodyguard of faithful supporters who will accept anything from the hands of Mr. Chamberlain. But there is scarcely a single one of these who carries the slightest...

This country will not have reached its maximum war effort until all employable men and women have been absorbed into war work of some kind, either in the fighting Services or in...

The raising of £140,000,000 in 23 weeks by savings certifi- cates and defence bonds is undoubtedly a remarkable achieve- ment, forming a substantial contribution towards the...

an adequately stamped envelope is vaclosed. Readers are reminded of the necessity of ordering ' The Spectator" regularly, since newsagents can no )nger be supplied on...

THE debate in the House of Commons on Tuesday and Wednesday was an inquest in two fields. Its imme- diate occasion was what has been called, with undesirable exaggeration, the...

A LETTER published in Tuesday's Daily Telegraph touches the fringe, or rather more than the fringe, of a subject of capital importance to which public attention is all too...

being carried rather unnecessarily far. There are, of course, a number of administrative positions which it is important to see filled by the best men, but the matter of...

T HE return of Sir Stafford Cripps to this country after a world-tour in which he has visited among other countries, Russia, China, India, Japan and the United States, is an...

penance, a Latin quotation appeared in this column last week in a flagrantly incorrect form. It should have read C/arum et venerabile nomen Gentibus, et multum nostrae quod...

that throws an interesting sidelight on the speed of modern communications. At 5.30 p.m. one afternoon a Norwegian saw a submarine steaming up the coast. He ski-ed to the...

to 7 - ; e Times) the publication by his paper of a statement that Capta,n Peter Fleming had been killed in Notway, writes: "The definite statement that Captain Fleming had been...

set does produce, the explanation that in reality the situation is much better than appeors, because the figures include a number of people who have only been out of a job for a...

libels on Sir Walter Citrine and other Labour leaders, Mr. Justice Stable explained on Monday that he took that course because he did not want the damages to have the effect of...

By STRATEGICUS T HE public post-mortem upon the evacuation of the Allied troops from southern Norway, inevitable and necessary as it was, tends to add widespread loss of morale...

By OTTO STRASSER [Herr Otto Strasser joined the National Socialist Party in 1925 and left it in 1930, because he became convinced that Hitler in reality cared much less about a...

By JOHN PERRY WOOD [The following article, headed "Is lustice 'None of Our Business ' ?" appeared in a recent issue of the "Los Angeles Times," and is an instructive indication...

By RANJEE G. SHAHANI DEAR GANDHIJI,- Your politics are not only derived from religion, but are, in essence, at one with it. No doubt about this. Religious preoccupations...

By OUR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT ESPITE the enormous advance of mechanisation, both in the preparations for war and the actual waging of it, and also of the advantages conferred by...

the billiard-room in the Officers' Mess, with the billiard table shrouded in white in our midst, while the Major, a Falstaff in all things but courage, lectured us on conditions...

By J. J. MALLON T HE death of George Lansbury brings a lump to the thr , at. He was always a kindly and lovable man. But in his hey-day his partisanship was often extreme. He...

asked to notify THE SPECTATOR office BEFORE MIDDAY on MONDAY OF EACH WEEK. The name, the previous address to which the paper has been sent and receipt reference number should be...

By HAROLD NICOLSON HAVE been reading Mr. Christopher Hollis' anthology I on Neutral War Aims, and have been distressed by the essay contributed by Daniele Vare. Signor Vare is...

Vare's intellec- tual integrity repeating the legend that Italy was badly treated by France and Great Britain (to say nothing of the United States) after the last war. This...

to cast aside our wonted hypocrisy and to surrender the fortresses which guard our communications with our Empire. It is not quite clear whether Gibraltar, Malta, the Suez Canal...

grudgingly, and that in Paris Mr. Lloyd George and Monsieur Clemenceau did not treat their Italian colleagues with the respect due to the representatives of a Great Power and a...

and the Allied and Associated Powers arose, not over something which had been promised to Italy by the Treaty of London, but over areas which, under that Treaty, had been...

rewards and to believe that they were promised vast colonial territories which have since been denied them by France and ourselves. They were not promised colonial territories,...

failed to carry out their promises under the Treaty of London. Yet the United States was never a party to, and indeed highly disapproved of, that Treaty, and in accepting the...

The Royal Academy WHAT one has a right to expect from the Royal Academy a summary, a recapitulation, of the year's art. Such it providtd, more or less, a hundred . years ago....

THE CINEMA " , It's a Date." At the Leicester Square.—“ My Son My Son!" At the Odeon. DEANNA DURBIN remains so much, and indeed so pleasantly, Deanna Durbin that one's first...

considered many types of Federal constitutions, and it is im- possible within the limits of a letter to detail the various alter- natives that might be adopted. It is true,...

[In view of the paper shortage it is essential that letters on these pages should be brief. We are anxious not to reduce the number of letters, but unless they are shorter they...

under the caption of "That Blessed Word," Mr. Brogan poured scorn upon the majority of the " Symposium " upon "Federal Union" which it has been my privilege to edit and upon all...

the dis- cussing of the best books is endlessly fascinating, and add, affords a pleasure only second to the reading of them. That is, of course, provided a kindly tolerance is...

"notoriously differ." But many of your readers must, I fancy, have felt as astonished as I did to read his further statement, for it not even a question ; "who but a boy or...

SIR,—The airy superiority of Mr. Callendar's letter is a little difficult to accept. Happy, indeed, but how precocious, the adolescent of is, who could fully appreciate the...

to be used to replace "Collective Security," to ensure that we shall again weaken ourselves after this war, and thereby make it quite certain that another war will soon take...

SIR,—I was very glad to see in your introductory news comments a reference to Mr. Duff Cooper's St. George's Day speech, deprecating his somewhat extremist and violent remarks...

Sra,—Your contributor, "Janus," in a recent issue of The Spectator, informed your readers that Belgium's defensive pre- parations, according to her Prime Minister, Mr. Pierlot,...

Snt,—I am as glad to retract such injustice as, in my review of The Witch in the Wood, I appear to have done to Miss Rebecca West and other English critics, as I am reassured to...

The Country Wins Three delightfully ingenuous views about country things may be recorded from three very different parts of the island. A land girl of my acquaintance reports...

only just appearing—from the hard winter, are multiplying examples of the comparative immunity of upland as opposed to valley gardens. In one lovely and well-protected valley...

Sta,—Mr. G. H. Gretton says that TM let population be checked by the misery of those who raise large families" is a Malthusian precept. He errs. The precept of Malthus and the...

which has reached me that observers wonder at the sight of a cock robin feeding the hen. Among my robin acquaintance was a pair that used to come regularly to a window for food....

Anger against the nightingale in Hertfordshire may be paralleled with an example of animosity against the primrose in Devonshire. An admirer of this sweetest of wild flowers,...

Sia,—I cannot for the life of me see why " Janus " finds the "Skagerrak and Kattegat" advertisement "astonishing." To me it looks much the same as its predecessors in this "Beer...

Holy Images. By Edwyn Bevan. (Allen and Unwin. 7S. 6d.) Now that the Hebraic Christianity of the Puritans, which derived its inspiration almost as much from the Old as from the...

The Wealth of Nations The Conditions of Economic Progress. By Colin Clark. (Mac- millan. 25s.) MR. C.LARR occupies what must surely be a unique position in the apparatus of...

Public School Slang. By Morris Marples. (Constable. los.) ENGLAND, as every good Nazi knows, is a country of savages, and Mr. Marples has done a service to the invader,...

An Eighteenth Century Journal. By John Hampden. (Mac- millan. t6s.) THE appearance of Mr. John Hampden's Eighteenth Century 7ourrial is well designed to kindle expectancy....

The Backward Son. By Stephen Spender. (Hogarth Press. 75. 6d.) Myers. (Heinemann. 8s. 6d.) MR. STEPHEN SPENDER, in his first novel, and Mr. Joyce Cary, in his sixth, offer us...

MUGGEIUDGE has earned his reputation as a critic ; but his latest book, The Thirties, will not enhance it. The history of the last ten years afforded almost boundless...

The Seven Chars of Chelsea. By Celia Fremlin. (Methuen. IT is possible that this book's somewhat catchpenny title, toger with the comic charwoman on its dust wrapper, may cause...

contributions to the voluminous literature on federal union. To those who regard that departure as a practical proposition it will be welcome as a clear and succinct statement...

6d.) Boom written by doctors have had a good run for their money in recent years, and generally they have more than fashion to recom- mend them. Doctors see men and women...

GOT up like a squat and blurbless novel, this is in fact a most interesting and painful biography. There is a complete lack of documentation, but even though some of the...

Goetz. (Peter Davies. 6s.) Who's Who in the Wars is a collection of topical clerihews by Mr. Miller, with illustrations by Mr. Goetz. The illustrations steal the show. The...

IT was recently recorded in our columns that the first question put to a certain candidate for a commission in the Guards was "Do you hunt?" Prizes were accordingly offered for...

of book tokens for £2 2S. and LI Is. are offered for a poem (of not more than 24 lines) commemorating a dashing attack by the Brigade's tanks on a strong point in the Siegfried...

By CUSTOS WE have heard a great deal since the war about closed economic systems and closed financial markets and the opportunities they afford for judicious management. We...

SPILLERS, LIMITED A SATISFACTORY YEAR THE CHAIRMAN'S REPORT THE Right Hon. Sir Malcolm A. Robertson, Chairman of Spillers, Ltd., presiding at the annual general meeting of the...

ENCOURAGING CURRENT BUSINESS THE 39th ordinary general meeting of F. Francis and Sons, Ltd., was held on May 7th at Southern House, Cannon Street, London, E.C. Mr. John Ismay,...

RIO TINTO COMPANY SITUATION IN SPAIN THE sixty-seventh ordinary general meeting of Rio Tinto Co., Ltd., was held on Friday, May 3rd, in London. Sir Francis L. Joseph, K.B.E.,...

CALCUTTA ELECTRIC CORPORATION THE 43rd annual general meeting of the Calcutta Electric Supply Cor- poration, Ltd., was held on May 6th at Victoria House, Bloomsbury Square,...