SPECTATOR ESTABLISHED 1828 - NUMBER 6733 - FRIDAY, JULY 12, 1957 - PRICE NINEPENCE

T HE ratification by the French National Assembly of the Common Market and EURATOM treaties has gone through with hardly a murmur. The maintenance of the present French...

By J. E. M. ARDEN ---,..., AFTER Pharos's remarks last week on Soviet experts, it is in ' I undertake to write about the .. ) a mood of self-criticism that .4) recent upheaval...

W HENEVER Sir John Harding returns to London for discussions with the Colonial Secretary, hopes are aroused that his appearance may be a prelude to his resignation; and this...

AN UNFAMILIAR iNsEcr which fell at the feet of a Shoreditch Borough Council painter today was later identified as a locust. . . . It was nine inches long. Evening Standard,...

By VICTOR ANANT rl RACKS in Asia's second largest political monolith, the Indian National Congress which claims a primary membership of 8 ,000,000, have begun to appear at the...

IT is almost axiomatic that on those occasions when the House of Commons would tell you, if you asked it, that it was at its best, it is in fact at its worst. The case of the...

THE Iron Curtain appears to have been rung back on another Grand Guignol tab- leau and the audience is still ium has been followed by the news of their dismissal from...

By RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL T is not often in history that the leader of a I small country can play a political part which affects the destiny of the entire world. One would have...

few days ago a boy of fifteen was convicted at the Old Bailey of murder and was sentenced to be 'detained during Her Majesty's pleasure.' The judge at the trial asked the news-...

the treatment of psychopaths. Dr. Bennett admitted that it may be impossible to define a psychopath; but he felt—and I agree— that the Royal Commission was unwise to suggest...

THE DEBATE in the Commons on mental health did not carry things much further, except in revealing a remarkable degree of unanimity in the House on the Royal Commis- sion's...

its readers with one gem of English poetry per week printed in magnificent italic on its centre page. Last Sunday's pabulum was 'The Gyres,' by W. B. Yeats, but acquaintance...

pelled to take firm action against a quasi- military force in Ireland. He put down the Irish Republican Army and the Blueshirts in this way in the Thirties; and he may well be...

Criminal Appeal under the Homicide Act, one (R. v. Dunbar), allowing the appeal, established that for the new defence of diminished responsibility to succeed, it need not be...

By CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS T CANNOT lay claim to any sort of intimacy with LArthur Deakin. As a general rule, no one in the world is less interesting than an `interesting'...

JULY 14, 1832 Hav000 SuirrEEs.—Some time ago, an order was issued in India against the celebration of Suttees. The Hindoos—at least a few of the more zealous than charitable...

By DWIGHT MACDONALD N 1951 the American city of North Plainfield, INJ, had a population of 12,800 and a police force of fifteen, or one cop to every 853 citizens; near-by...

By RORY McEWEN Since many large books have been written defining folk song in its various forms, it . is obviously unwise to attempt to sum up every aspect of the thing in a...

By SIR STEPHEN KING-HALL rrHAT the world of the theatre should be one in I which there is a considerable element of mystery seems to me to be natural and desirable. But I do not...

By HENRY KERBY, MP al IR ARTHUR MORSE'S British Travel and Holi- days Association spends £500,000 a year on advertising 'Come to Britain' in America. Ameri- cans react...

By LESLIE ADRIAN M Y recent reference to the new lightweight suits made from synthetic fabrics has pro- duced requests for further information about the multitude of these new...

By JOHN BETJEMAN HE Nash Terraces in Regent's Park will I probably be destroyed in 1960 unless a use can be found for them. As usual it is a local paper, the Murylebone...

SIR,—I am very glad that Taper, whose political commentary is much admired here, was able to derive such benefit from his six months' course at Pitman's College. He must...

in last week's Spectator that 'the seal of the confessional is inviolable and absolute'? Writing as one without authority, I am under the impression that a priest can, in...

languages are much more ap- preciated than any others because of their objective and balanced information and comment and their strict avoidance of propaganda'—the Belgian...

Spectator, concerning the discovery of the bodies of Beryl and Geraldine Evans : 'If Miss Jesse will consult a pathologist not employed by the Home Office she will find that I...

SIR, —Mr. P. J. D. Wiles and Professor H. Seton- Watson have introduced a number of interesting points concerning the BBC broadcasts to Russia, but they call for a quantity of...

Yves Klein's exhibition enabled the Spectator to fill so much of its space this week, and provided your correspondent with a profitable article. Mr. Levin's method is to...

Evans and Christie Peter Baker, St. John Ervine. Miss F. Tennyson Jesse Pitman's College M. V. Crehan The Kleins of D'Arblay Street Victor Musgrave The BBC's Russian Service...

Euston 3221

SIR,—I have seen the reference to our Council in the paragraph in your issue of July 5 concerning the new organisation 'Justice.' From what I have read of the purpose of this...

I make a few comments? The decline you note in the programme I can date quite easily, though from memory. It was in the early part of 1953. Before, there were critical talks on...

are, Mr. Deyermond's quick hand deceives only one eye: his own. He claims that in each of ten by-elections held during a period carefully chosen by himself 'the percentage of...

SIR,—I do not wish to join in the discussion on the catering arrangements at Glyndebourne; but, having recently made my first visit of the season, I feel bound to protest...

SIR,—In his review (June 28) of The Trouble-Makers, by Mr. A. J. P. Taylor, whom he somewhat con- descendingly describes as 'the well-known television star,' Lord Attlee makes...

SIR,—The petty, personal attack upon the General Director of the Liberal Party in your `Westminster Commentary' (July 5) is the more deplorable because the writer refuses to...

SIR,—I was unaware of John Berger's review of my biography of John Singer Sargent until it was brought to my attention by an irate friend in England. When a copy was sent me in...

Fall of Paris, who sent a correspondent to write a series of 'inside' articles on conditions in Russia even though the man could go no farther than Warsaw, by the article on...

Edinger's account of his visit to Hong Kong. My qualifications for doing so are based on thirty- one years' service in the colony as an educationist, which service ended in...

they do not all stock a certain brand of tonic water and—allegedly—'national' beers. If this really were the case, why should so many 'free' houses have gone under in recent...

SIR,—Two words in a quotation from Caitlin Thomas's Leftover Life to Kill were left out of my review of the book on June 7, and I should be grate- ful if you would allow me to...

discusses the present state of ballet and more particularly of the Royal Ballet, he refers to 'the obliteration of the second company based on Sadler's Wells Theatre' and its...

As the cheerful 'strains of 'Busy Doing Nothing' faded away on Sud- ri day night, I put aside my memories V of Sabbatical television—thoughts that lie too deep for tears—and...

Anti-Art THE monochrome propositions of Yves Klein (Gallery One, D'Arblay Street) have already been the sub- ject of an article in this journal; if these rectangles (with...

As a curtain-raiser to Ariadne auf Naxos Mozart's comic trifle Der Schauspieldirektoi serves well and gives the audience an enjoyable extra half-hour of GlyndebOurnery. The best...

Around the World in 80 Days. (Astoria). WHEN I call a film So-and-so's film I always mean by So-and-so, the director;_ but with Around the World in 80 Days it would be affec-...

SINCE there has been little new to speak of in London this week (I have been unable to pene- trate to Stratford) the time seems ripe for a silly season, selection for desultory...

'My Admirable Margaret' BY PETER QUENNELL Doswell's London Journal, when it first p appeared in the dignified Yale Edition some six and a half years ago, enjoyed a resounding...

By DONAT O'DONNELL HE enemy,* one immediately asks, of what? I Mr. Wagner's whole book constitutes both an answer and a justification of the subtitle he has chosen. In...

THE Brownings have long been buried under their legend. Even in their lifetime it billowed about them like an outsize cloak, puzzling a few and irritating a few others. To the...

Reminiscences of Sir Walter Scott's Residence in Italy, 1832. By Sir William Gell. Edited with Notes by James C. Corson. (Nelson, 10s. 6d.) SIR William Gell, the topographical...

Children of the Sun. By Morris West. (Heine- mann,16s.) WHEN, by means of a radio talk, the Abbe Pierre at last succeeded in getting his appeal for the homeless across to the...

Rock of Exile. By D. M. Booy. (Dent, 25s.) White Cliffs to Coral Reef. By William Howell. (Odhams, 16s.) NOT many could envisage a stay of over a year on. Tristan da Cunha...

The Transformations of Man. By Lewis Mum- ford. (Allen and Unwin, 15s.) THoucti based upon archaeology and history, this is essentially a book about the future; two-thirds of...

English first novel of mystery and suspense, outstandingly good for 0 background of racing-cars, drivers, mechanics and brittle breed of blondes known, it seems, as pit-popsies....

10s. 6d.) Paris underworld at some un- specified time in past when couple could have blow-out on twenty francs. Episode saga of couple of sewer-rat waifs who cadge and cringe,...

Archaeology is all, these days, and here is yet another of those deaths at the diggings that are becoming as frequent as were dull thuds in the country-house libraries of the...

As the son of a keen Puritan controversialist, Crashaw knew by heart the tricks and tempers of the religious quarrels of the seventeenth cen- tury in England. At Cambridge he...

The Big Bite. By Charles Williams. (Cassell, 12s. 6d.) One of the toughest and tensest American thrillers since the film of Double Indemnity. Relentless blackmailer matches wits...

Resounding return to form by one of our most ingenious and stylish—but not most consistent—home-grown crime novelists, especially good at middle middle-class, sub-urban,...

What new can be said of the Master himself? His mackintoshed sage goes down to oyster country on Atlantic coast and solves murder mystery by thinking himself back into his own...

10s. 6d.) This, the fiftieth novel about Ludovic Travers, his detective agency, and his chum from the Yard, is reassuringly like the other forty-nine, and concerns itself,...

A Small Part of Time. By Michael Swan. (Cape, 21s.) To criticise criticism is an unrewarding, not to say a redundant, task. The essays in Mr. Swan's A Small Part of Time,...

The transatlantic Trollope of Boston and big business is also the creator of Mr. Moto, the Japanese detective who, between the wars, was as contrived and quaintly cute as a...

violent novel about bewildered lout with a knuckle-duster on the New Zealand dock- sides, who is made to seem pitiably human and alone before he wantonly kills and is killed....

Two birds—history and mystery—with one rather unwieldy stone: Scot- land Yard superintendent, blipped on head, slips into being peeler in 1829, and combines duelling with...

6d.) Miss Gilruth has a pleas- ingly light hand with shop-worn puppets—the bluff country gentleman and his rich and pretty wife who falls for a writin' feller—and with her...

Machiavellism: The Doctrine of Raison d'Etat and its Place in Modern History. By Fried- rich Meinecke. Translated by Douglas Scott. (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 50s.) TEN years...

(Harrap, 15s.) Many cricket writers do not yet seem to have realised that an aggregation of accurate and sensible day-to-day reports will not make a s atisfactory cricket book,...

MR. EVERETT KNIGHT has written a polemical book which has a touch of the true gadfly quality. He writes as a whole-hearted disciple of Sartre, and sees Sartrian existentialism...

IN this readable volume Dr. Vidler collects ten lectures and articles produced during the past ten years. Most of them belong to the last two or three, so that the book as a...

They Hanged My Saintly Billy. By Robert Graves. (Cassell, 21s.) A HUNDRED and one years ago this May, Dr. William Palmer was executed for the murder of John Parsons Cook before...

MESSRS. Gollancz are an enterprising firm, but do they really do their discoveries a good service by saddling them with such a monstrous montage of puffmanship? Their main...

One tries to mind one's own business even although one doesn't have to on a country bus, but the lady who took her seat opposite and placed a cardboard box by her side looked...

'Remember ole Bill that lived near Church 'Ouse? 'im an' Torn Jones went in partnership repo :tin' property. Bill was a brickie an' Tom a carpenter. Tom got on the Council an'...

PHILIP K. CROWE, the author of Diversions of a Diplomat in Ceylon (Macmillan, 30s.), was Until recently United States Ambassador to Cey- lon. Diplomacy may have interested him...

By IAN NIALL A BLACKBIRD'S song takes a lot of beating, and the bird is one that no one would want to he without. There is even something to be said for the spring challenge of...

By PHILIDOR No. 110. P. H. WILLIAMS (Pittsburgh Gazette, 1911) BLACK (4 men) WHITE (10 men) WHITE to play and mate in two moves: solution next week. Solution to last week's...

A prize of six guineas was offered for an extract from Lewis Carroll's posthumous masterpiece, Alice in the House of Commons. IT is not easy to catch that inverted Dodgson...

Hebrides suitable for the time when a guided missile range will be operating on South Uist. Limit: 20 lines. Entries, addressed 'Spectator Competition No. 387,' 99 Gower...

ACROSS 1 Flowers for Homer on occasion? (7) 5 No commission after this, in the outdoor market (4, 3). 9 Plunder and turn to in a mechanical manner (5). 10 Imagine, gratis!...

By CUSTOS IN the excitement this week over the 4 01 new exchange rules for dollar securities no one dared to suggest that the gilt-edged market might be able to lift its...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT SOME extraordinary claims have been made of the importance of the new exchange regulation for- bidding UK residents to buy dollar securities except from...