11 JANUARY 1957

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THE

The Spectator

SPECTATOR ESTABLISHED 1828 - NUMBER 6707 . FRIDAY, JANUARY 11, 1957 • PRICE NINEPENCE

SIR ANTHONY'S RESIGNATION

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THAT Sir Anthony Eden might have to resign for reasons of health has for long been known. But once the final decision was made the secret was well kept; so well indeed that his...

NASSER'S BLACKMAIL

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THE Eisenhower doctrine has now been officially promul- gated, and Mr. Dulles has been locked in a grapple with the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in the course of which he...

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Petrol Muddle

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IF Mr. Harold Watkinson, Minister of Transport, could find nothing more helpful to say, on his abrupt return from Switzerland last week, than that there was `no mess' over...

Court Intelligence

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DR..JOHN BODKIN ADAMS, wearing a sprig of sham- rock in the buttonhole of his dark blue suit, again appeared before Eastbourne magistrates today for less than one minute. . . ....

Bark and Bite

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ONE thing has already emerged from the warm- ing-up in preparation for the industrial struggle in 1957: that the trade unions are not in as militant a frame of mind as they were...

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And Still Algeria . • • FRANCE faces 1957 with

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the feeling of having made an immense effort in 1956 and of having got nowhere-,--200,000 reservists called up and still a dragging war in Algeria. An operation against Egypt...

Vocational Intelligence

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A TWENTY-YEAR-OLD painter was accused . . . Evening Standard, January 7 (p. 1, col. 6, first paragraph). Tub accused man, an unemployed tiler . . . Evening Standard. January 7...

A 'Grass Roots' Leader

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By Our Canadian Correspondent Ottawa THE Conservative Party of Canada has travelled a rough road since the enforcement of military conscription by the Borden Ministry in 1917...

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The New Intellectual

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By JOHN BEAVAN KINGSLEY AMIS, who says he is not a politician though he likes to read, argue and sometimes think about politics, has tried to explain to the Fabians why so many...

Stanley Matthews Intelligence

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STANLEY MATTHEWS, Who has played 51 times for England. . . .—Daily Express, January 1. STANLEY MATTHEWS—the man who has played for England 77 times. . . . —Daily Mirror, January...

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More Test Match Intelligence

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As CERTAINLY as the Johannesburg Test was Bailey's so was this one Wardle's. He took 12 wickets for 84. Observer, January 6. WARDLE, with a match record of 12 wickets for 89...

Portrait of the Week

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Tim Eisenhower doctrine which should have spread its healing wings over the week's news does not appear to have had quite the desired effect, perhaps because some people have...

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BROWSING AROUND a railway station bookstall last week, a friend

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of mine noticed among the remaindered volumes an 'Anglo-American Dic- tionary.' Attached to it was a notice: In spite of its title this is a very good English dictionary....

A FRIEND just back from Eastern Europe tells me—a curious

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sidelight on recent events behind the Iron Curtain—that feeling is very bitter, par- ticularly in Poland and Hungary, about the Czechs. Czechoslovakia has played a conspicu-...

A Spectator's Notebook

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'Two LONG, lean Celtic faces loomed across the court. The first belonged to the accused, lonely and aloof in the dock; the second to the Attorney- General. . . .' The quotation...

SOMETHING WHICH The Times did publish this week was a

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letter from Mr. Louw, the South African Minister of External Affairs. And very revealing it was. Mr. Louw complained that Mr. Gerald Gardiner had been sent as an observer to the...

A CORRESPONDENT, agreeing with me that apposite-quotation collecting has become

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a con- temporary pastime, offers the following from Karl Marx (I like to think of it turning up on one of those 'A Saying a Day' calendars, if they have such things, in Russia):...

IT IS A RELIEF to turn from Mr. Louw's lengthy

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and inaccurate protest to Four Words on South Africa, by Messrs. Huddleston, Collins, Raynes and Scott, and published by Christian Action at ls. Here is one extract from this...

ON A SECOND CHARGE, that the article 'was likely to

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be prejudicial to the maintenance of public order,' Mr. Foley was found guilty and sentenced to a fine of £50. The judge's argument here seems to me to be less happy—that the...

MANY PEOPLE THINK that since the last execution in this

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country (August, 1955) there has been a considerable increase in the number of murders committed. This erroneous belief is largely due, I think, to the way in which murders have...

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The Supreme Deterrent

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By ANGUS MAUDE, MP THE annual arguments about defence policy have started early this year. Although the Govern- ment's White Paper setting forth the assumptions and policy on...

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Television Jingles

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By ROBERT HANCOCK IF, like me, you are one of the 2,500,000 people whose sets can get the commercial TV pro- grammes, I am preaching to the converted. You will know all about...

Jan Masaryk

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By LORD ATTLEE ALL those who were friends of Jan Masaryk, and they were many, will be grateful to Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart for this intimate and affectionate memoir of a man of...

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A Half Stand

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By CHARLES F. F. FLEET TUE Committee, whose quaint terms of reference embrace repairs to church clocks and donkey coats, gully pump attendants for the use of, con- cerned...

Dies Ire

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Day of wrath, and lightning stroke, Day of which the prophets spoke, Ends our present age in smoke. Trembles all the world in fear, To see her mighty Judge draw near, Our...

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A Prospect of Restrictions

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By J. S. NAPIER THE world of monopolies and restrictive trade practices—unlike the rest of the world—is under- going a period of frantic lull. The Act which occupied so much...

City and Suburban

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By JOHN B ETJEMAN I SUPPOSE one couldn't ask British Railways to do it, it would be too embarrassing for them. But perhaps Mass Observation, if it still exists, or the members...

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The Treasure-Seekers

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By STR 1 X As it sank towards a zarcba of blackthorn hedges the January sun, intruding across Leicestershire like a distant, eccentric, but lovable relative, cast its beams upon...

Fire-Eaters

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Grind the rock to grow the flame, Mill the flame and bake the bread, Ask for bread, it is a stone Light's creatures all arc fed upon. Or rather say that light has bred...

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Consuming Interest . .

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• . . A Dollar for the Bell-hop BY LESLIE ADRIAN THREE middle-aged Americans in grey flannel suits came into the hotel lounge. They ordered drinks, and the bill came to 14s....

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SIR,—'Even in Subtopia there is a tendency for good taste

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to drive out bad' (Strix). I do hope he is right, but could he offer us some more convincing evidence for this encouraging claim than 'concrete gnomes are following the monkey-...

SIR,—Having spent the whole of the Second World War and

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practically all the First in Cairo, I must put in a word for the British soldier, so maligned by Mr. Jesman. My sphere was not Shepheard's Long Bar, nor the Gezira and Maadi...

SIR,—TI was to be expected that Mr. Jdsman's letter would

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provoke a loud if confused response from our so-called patriots—a response which deserves all too well the characteristics of 'irrelevancy, ignorance, rudeness and suggestio...

Letters to the Editor

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The Despised Czeslaw Jesman, Lilian A. Roff, Frederick Murphy, Mary Moorman Taste in Subtopia John Irwin Mr Pilots and Accidents Stanley Mayne Problem People J. F Littler...

99 Gower Street, London, W.C.1

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Euston 3221

AIR PILOTS AND ACCIDENTS SIR.—The article in your issue of

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January 4 by Mr. Oliver Stewart seems to us to beg a considerable number of questions but the Institution welcomes the last paragraph of the article in which it requests...

SIR,—The letters in The Spectator this week under the heading

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'The Despised' are, with one exception, surely horrifying. The question is not whether the Egyptians have 'contributed anything of value to the world,' but whether British...

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SIR,-1 am sorry the writer of a letter of last

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week's Spectator, under 'Crisis in Medicine,' is allowed to shelter under the wide pseudonym of 'M. D.' I am not a nurse, physiotherapist, almoner, psycho- logist, occupational...

Spectator Competition for Schools

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The Spectator offers three prizes of eight guineas each in a competition open to boys and girls at school in the United Kingdom. Entries should be in the form of An original...

THAT POLITICAL STUFF

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SIR,—Perhaps it is due to the fact that your Decem- ber 7 Spectator arrived here on Christmas Eve, but I just cannot let the insults to Mr. Betjeman in that issue's letters page...

THE MONTGOLFIANS

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SIR.—The balloon will certainly go up if your reviewer does not get his colours correct, The LNER brown-red? Never! The LNWR had chocolate- black engines, but, unless I am...

MISER, CATULLE

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. . I polished up those verses so carefullee That now 1 am the ruler of the Queen's navee.' Yours faithfully, TYRRELL BURGESS Savile Club. 69 Brook Street, W1

PROBLEM PEOPLE •

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SIR.—Both Lord Pakenham and Mr. Evan Griffiths have missed the point about our prison population. It does not include large numbers of Irish for racial reasons, but simply...

PELL MELL

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SIR,—It is as helpful for Mr. Austin Duncan-Jones to write that 'Pall Mall' and 'Mall' are pronounced `Pall Mall' and `Mall' as to write to a foreigner that `shall' and 'hall'...

SIR,—Although I have been a Spectator competitor ever since your

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competitions were first started (admittedly spasmodic but on occasions successful), I have never before found it necessary to protest about the judging. Naturally, one always...

THE PARISH COMES ALIVE

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SIR,—Your reviewer of this book states, `The parish is dead,' and says that this is true of many parts of Britain. There are some who will agree and will blame the clergy, or...

CRISIS IN MEDICINE

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Sot,—M. D. raises two interesting points upon which [should like to comment : 1. Speech therapists have always desired co-opera- tion with the doctors, under whom they work,...

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The Prince and I A Thatee-acr ballet by John Cranko,

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with music by Benjamin Britten, scenery by John Piper and costumes by Desmond Hecley, launched English ballet into 1957. Its story is an amal g am of notions from earlier...

Contemporary Arts

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The Prince of the Pagodas—Two Views Britten Can Make It DURING and after the first ni g ht of The Prince of the Pagodas, mutters could be heard from several of those who had...

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Verisimilitude

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WHILE others have been sunk in hoggish slumber in their panto- mime seats I have been similarly employed at home. Certain phan- tasms have, however, floated through my...

King Oil

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Giant. (Warner.) IT seems funny, to my simple sense of humour, to make a film three hours and nine- me in a state bordering on exhaustion by the end. It is also, though, one...

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BOOKS

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The Horse's Mouth BY PETER QUENNELL IT was a bold step on the part of the University of Oxford to elect W. H. Auden to the Professor- ship of Poetry; and his election, of...

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The Newest Hero

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THE GINGER MAN. By J. P. Donleavy. (Neville Spearman, 15s.) Tins is our old friend the New Hero—but writ very large, as monstrous as Finn MacCool. Mr. Donleavy's prose, which...

Sociology of Doubts

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ESSAYS IN SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY. Vol. I, On the Diversity of Morals; Vol. II, Reason and Unreason in Society. By Morris Ginsberg. (Heinemann, 25s. and 21s.) THERE....

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Tudor Types

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The Great Tudors reprints nineteen essays from an original total of forty-one published under the same title twenty-one years ago. Those con- tributors still alive were given...

R.A.F.

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How easy it is to take everything for granted. The existence of the great Royal Air Force seems self-evident today, and of course has been copied throughout the world, but Lord...

Et ego in Arcadia . . .

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PORTRAIT OF OXFORD. By A. F. Kersting, with text by Marcus Dick. (Batsford, 30s.) Tuts is a lovely book. No other adjective fits it quite so well, and about the illustration...

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Soldiers All

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CLASH BY NIGHT—A COMMANDO CHRONICLE By THE WORLD AT WAR 193945. By Edgar Holt. (Putnam, 15s.) THE FORTRESS. By Raleigh Trevelyan. (Collins, 12s. 6d.) THE word Commando often...

Attitudes to Africa

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FIVE books, written by a farmer, an anthropolo- gist, a doctor and two novelists offer a selection of African panoramas and a wide diversity of attitudes towards both the land...

Scrambling

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THERE are eighteen peaks standing above 26,000 feet; all arc in the Himalaya or Karakoram. Until 1950 all attempts to scale these giants had failed. Since then no fewer than...

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Different Types

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THE production of an illustrated book of high quality involves more than the craft of the printer. The skill of the typographer has to be harmonised and integrated with that of...

Indian View

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THE Prime Minister of India is one of the most controversial figures of our time. In the Western world, he is frequently criticised in bitter terms by certain sections of...

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Crotchety Essayist

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MR. RAMSAY, Virginia Woolf's portrait of her father in To the Lighthouse, is not a likeable man. He is a domestic tyrant riddled with self-pity and self-dramatisation, the kind...

What the Footman Saw

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A FEW years ago, when in Cannes for the Film Festival, I received an invitation to attend a party, at which film stars, rastas, and even, perhaps, Don Porfirio Rubirosa were to...

'Crost the Bay

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THESE two books are remarkable for that admirable objectivity about the Kuomintang- Communist conflict which one so surprisingly finds among the refugee Chinese scholars in...

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The Savage Man

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CHARLES CHURCHILL was a rare phenomenon—a satirist of large and generous instincts. He directed his rage against hypocrisy, persecution and the snivelling subterfuges of...

New Novels

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DURING 1956 new novels appeared at the rate of at least forty a week. With how many, of these did an ordinary fortnightly reviewer stand any chance of becoming acquainted? What...

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THE COST OF DISINFLATION

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By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT THE professional economists are busy conducting the post-mortem on the body economic of 1956. They are pretty well agreed ' that the unhealthy inflation...

COMPANY NOTES

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By CUSTOS THE recovery in the stock markets slackened on Tuesday—not before it was time. The pace had been too hot to last, especially in oil shares which are still subject to...

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Country Life

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BY IAN NIALL MOST of the burnable wood growing round about was cut down years ago and log-sellers find their supplies at a distance. Quite unaccountably, however, the price of...

Chess

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BY PHILIDOR No. 84 A. ELLERMAN (1st Prize, 'Good Companions,' 1921) BLACK (10 men' WHITE (10 men) wiirre to play and mate in two moves: solution next week. Solution to last...

The Opettator

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JANUARY 14, 1832 O'CoNistal's plan for assembling the Irish representatives—Peers and Commoners—in Dublin, to discuss the Reform Bill, the Poor- laws, and everything else, has...

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SPECTATOR CROSSWORD No. 922

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ACROSS I As the American exhibition skater might roman- tically put it (12). 9 It looks as if 2 doesn't arrive in time-at the House of Commons (9). 10 Byron found it seductive...

The usual prize of six guineas is offered for a

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translation of Ronsard's sonnet, 'Le Juge m'a tromps,' in any English sonnet form : Le Juge m'a tromps; ma Maitresse m'enserre Si fort en sa prison que j'en suis tout transi;...

Excursions in Euphemism

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Readers were invited (a) to invent six pretentious names for jobs demanding little or no skill, or (b) to mask any six unpleasant things with names which should conceal their...