12 SEPTEMBER 1957

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HARMONY HALL

The Spectator

I T is tempting to speculate what might have happened last week at Blackpool had the political and industrial corre- spondents in the press not exulted so gaily in advance about...

SPECTATOR

The Spectator

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BLACK DAY AT LITTLE ROCK

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By RICHARD H. ROVERE New York The Mayor of Little Rock, Woodrow Mann, said he had never heard of such nonsense.' 'A disgraceful political hoax,' he called it. The Mayor commands...

INCREASE IN SUBSCRIPTION RATES WHEN postage rates were increased in

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1956 no corresponding increase was made to the annual subscription rate to the Spectator. Due to further increases announced by the Postmaster-General, to take effect from...

Kirsten Flagstad Intelligence

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THERE IS, Of course, now more strain. Observer, September 8. AND SHE showed no strain. The Times, September 9.

- Day of Armsgiving

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I T will not be possible for some time to find what the Americans have been up to in their despatch of aircraft and anti-tank guns to Jordan; but whatever their game is, it is a...

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A TUNE PLAYED PIANISSIMO

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By A CORRESPONDENT L ITLE Greek children enjoy pulling out the chewing gum which American sailors give them to the point where it snaps. Mr. Karamanlis's Government is indulging...

ADENAUER'S EVENING PRAYER

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By U. W. KITZINGER C AMPAIGN styles differ here greatly from region to region. Bavaria, Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein—each of them is largely a farming state. In Bavaria the...

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TUC Commentary-2

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Onward to Brighton Well, no, not exactly. As a matter of fact they sang Auld Lang Sync. Does it mean, then, that the General Council's relentless steam-roller was standing by...

Portrait of the Week

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THIS week's flurry of sinister activity in the Levant has proved again, if anyone re- mained unconvinced, that peace in the Middle East is likely to remain a mirage for some...

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THE REPORT, incidentally, was published at 2.30 on the afternoon

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of Wednesday, September 4. In theory, you could not have had access to a copy before that time even if you were an MP or an Archbishop—let alone an editor. Most documents of a...

'THE POLICE WISH IO interview Mr. X,'who they think may

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be able to help their inquiries.' The communiqué has appeared depressingly often in the past few weeks : and I am beginning to won- der whether it does not tend to defeat its...

IN HIS LETTER to the editor this week, the editor

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of the Daily Express refers to 'our good relations with the Security authorities.' The reason, I sus- pect, why Fleet Street so rarely attacks the whole ridiculous Security...

A Spectator's Notebook

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OF THE discussions on the Wolfen- den Report in the press and on the air, that put out by Granada the day after the Report appeared was much the sanest—in spite of the...

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Anything Wrong with Priestley?

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By EVELYN WAUGH TN the New Statesman of August 31 Mr. J. B. Priestley published an article entitled What was wrong with Pinfold?' 'Pinfold,' I should explain, is the name I gave...

Cavalier Tunes (No. 4)

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Mr. Geoffrey Bing's first task, on his appoint- ment as Attorney-General of Ghana, was to charge a London journalist with contempt of court. Our correspondent R. B. Browning...

PROFESSOR ISTVAN BIBO, who formerly served in the League of

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Nations Secretariat and in a Nazi prison, is one of the most striking leaders thrown up by the Hungarian Revolution last October (when, rightly or wrongly, he did much to...

FOR ALL THE SPEECHES they make to warn us about

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the need to prepare for the European Common Market, are the authorities trying hard enough to put British exports in a position to meet the challenge? A few months ago the...

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The Oozing Mire of Lies

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UUTTH the flight of Professor Alfred Kanto- V V rowicz, one of Communist East Germany's leading intellectual figures, another page in the bitter record of disillusionment has...

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Herbert Samuel

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By CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS M R. BOWLE, let us face it, has had to do a good deal of padding to fill out this book.* A large number of pages are devoted to general history of the...

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The House That Jack Built

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By ACKROYD AINSWORTH T wo miles away from Singapore harbour, I away from the squalor of the packed streets where some 800,000 Chinese and a smaller num- ber of Indians and...

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Slim Volume

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By STRIX S EWELS are almost always disappointing. .1.3When 1 compare 640989 with 526239, or Indeed with any of the intervening editions of this indispensable publication, I am...

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Consuming Interest

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You Have Been Motivated . . ADRIAN By LESLIE B b EHIND the announcement the other day that a ranch of the American Institute of Motiva- tional Research, Inc., is to be opened...

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Letters to the Editor

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Nadonalism in Russia Czeslaw Jesman, J. E. M. Arden Sweeping the Streets John Jenkins, .Rev. Nicolas Stacey Malayan Independence Prince Chula of Thailand, W. G. Scott The...

SIR,—In his review of Alexander Dallin's German Rule in Russia,

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1941-1945, Mr. Geoffrey Barraclough answers people who think Ukrainian national feeling may be a force potentially disruptive of the USSR not by evidence or argument but by the...

SIR,—I regret to note that Mr. Edinger is as slipshod

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and inaccurate in writing of Malaya as he was in writing of Hong Kong. One gets the impression that the article in the Spectator of August 30 was wcitten in Singapore and that...

SWEEPING THE STREETS

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SIR,—In an otherwise enlightened comment on the Wolfenden Report you go on to say that there is nothing hypocritical about wanting to clear prostitu- tion out of sight. Here, I...

S1R,—In his article 'Malayan Independence' published in your issue of

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August 30, George Edinger wrote of 'British correspondents whose qualification appears to be an ignorance of any of the local Asian lan- guages. .. .' May I wholeheartedly...

SIR,—Isn't it time the John Gordon Society had another meeting?

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May I suggest that Mr. Gordon himself be invited to talk on 'Ethics in Journalism'? Such a talk would be interesting, in view of his article on what he describes as 'The...

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IDENTIFYING THE PRISONER

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SIR,--Identification parades are not sanctioned or even contemplated by the law and are the outcome of a private police practice. In any event an identi- fication parade is...

THE LIBERAL CREED SIR, — Christopher Hollis's advice to Liberals is dis-

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appointingly unhelpful. His attempted analogy with the early Fabian position surely fails. Their support of the Labour movement (at a time when it was new and malleable)...

RONALD KNOX

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SIR, — As an example of Ronald Knox's ready wit, to which you referred a fortnight ago, may I recall the following? A friend was staying at Mells some years ago when the...

REPONSE DE CFtEVECCEUR Su,—To read Mr. Ray's very Gallic outburst

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one might presume that to plead guilty of attempted poisoning would be the least I could or should do . . . what utter lack of British sang-froid! If asking readers of the...

TV APPLE CART SIR,-My attention has been drawn to a

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letter in your issue of September 6 purporting to be from me, and referring to a Mr. Findlater and a Mr. Hawkins. I shall be grateful if you will allow me to state that I am not...

SEA POWER SIR, — At first sight there might appear to be

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no very close connection between the White Paper on Defence and the recent Russian statement on guided missiles. Yet the very fact that there is so apparently little connection...

THE 'DAILY EXPRESS' AND SECURITY

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Sia,—I read in 'A Spectator's Notebook' this week : The other day the Daily Express published an unauthorised picture of the first of the series of British H-bomb tests. Was...

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Amateurs Anonymous

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THE work of the child, painting without the restraint of adult con- ventions, and the pictures of other unsophisticated, untrained people have, I need hardly say, been among the...

Contemporary Arts

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The Oldest Festival WHILE the festivals of Aldeburgh, Cheltenham and Edinburgh are congratulating themselves on being with us still after a mere dozen or so years of existence,...

Elje pertator

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SEPTEMBER 15, 1832 THE King of Holland is preparing to raise a new loan of 44,000,000 florins. A good swinging national debt has been found, in the case of England, so admirable...

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Farewell to Edinburgh

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Visas to the Lyceum and sundrY cinemas in the final week of the Edinburgh Festival yielded an odd crop of Italian films, designated all 'Italian Film Festival' in its own right,...

Old-Fashioned

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OF the four bad films chance has thrown up this week (it threw three good ones last week), only one is any sort of a success, because only one knows it's bad, admits it's bad,...

The Relapse

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THE Theatre Workshop production of Macbeth (Theatre Royal, Stratford, E) is an acute case of recidivism and ought to be seen by a great many people on the Chinese principle by...

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Corsica

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A landscape which breaks the heart And a child in a world of g hosts Tryin g to g rasp with a wrinkled hand A wistful star in the pale blue sky Scented shrubs, trees strai g ht...

BOOKS

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Art or Philately? B Y JOHN BERGER fl ow, if at all, has photo g raphy influenced paintin g ? The q uestion is usually considered in terms of the two activities rivallin g one...

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Prodigies and Others

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Surgeon's Journey. By J. Johnston Abraham. (Heinemann, 25s.) EVERY second autobiography is written by a prodigy—someone, insatiably pleased with him- self, who thinks it would...

Putting Back the Clock

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Atlantis and the Giants. By Denis Saurat. (Faber, 12s. 6d.) THIS is a depressing and disturbing book, not just because of what it says, but because of who says it. It is the...

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Travelling Light

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Dragon Wang's River. By Sigurd Eliassen. (Methuen, 21s.) A Traveller in Rome. By H. V. Morton. (Methuen, 25s.) HERE we have four very different personalities Writing books of...

How Mad Was Nero?

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Nero. By Gerard Walter. Translated by Emma Craufurd. (Allen and Unwin, 25s.) WHAT would a psychiatrist make of a man who could commit incest with his mother, then murder her,...

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The Brooding Monastery

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Cassino—Portrait of a Battle. By Fred Maj- dalany. (Longmans, 21s.) THOSE who had fought in Africa found the Italian campaign hard going by contrast. 'The trouble with this...

Fabulous Vanderbilt

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SOME books are made to be read : others to be rummaged through. In most of us the rummaging instinct is keen; and from exploring such books one sometimes derives the same...

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The Ninth Hour. By Ben Benson. (Collins, 10s. 6d.). This

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has to do with an American jail- break, too: a planned breakaway that became an armed siege with hostages. Unusually effec- tive because of the bare-knuckled prose and the...

Emergency Exit. By Harry Carmichael. (Col- lins, 10s. 6d.) A

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well-organised puzzle about whether the pilot who died in a Sussex plane crash had engineered an artistic suicide or boozed himself into his bump. Good character-drawing of...

It's a Crime

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Skin Trap. By William Mole. (Eyre and Spottis- woode, 12s. 6d.) We have had crooks, private detectives and, recently, a policeman who lived in Albany : here, at last, is an...

Miss Fenny. By Charity Blackstock. (Hodder and Stoughton, 12s. 6d.)

The Spectator

If you can believe that any Frenchwoman—even one anglicised by marriage and residence—knows nothing about tripe and anything about sherry, then here is an admirably credible,...

Egghead on Broadway

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TH.E general picture presented to the outsider of theatre criticism on Broadway is somewhat Hogarthian—a few immensely powerful and sinister hatchet-men engaged on the corpse, a...

Constables Don't Count. By Alex Fraser. (Bles, I Is. 6d.)

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Quiet little Home Counties murder mystery, solved by village constable who is, as all too fictionally often, a cut above customary constabulary status and who gets, therefore,...

House of Numbers. By Jack Finney. (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 12s.

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6d.) Detailed, Rififi - like ac- count of how an escape from San Quentin is manipulated, by a substitution : there is a break-in to make possible a break-out. The sentimental...

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Mediwval France in Danger

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Life in Mediseval France. By Joan Evans. (Phaidon Press, 32s. 6d.) '0 HOLY God of Gods in Sion,' a fourteenth- century Englishman wrote, 'what a mighty stream of pleasure made...

New Novels

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Don Camillo and the Devil. By Giovanni Guareschi. (Gollancz, 13s. 6d.) As the presence in England of Africans and West Indians becomes increasingly noticeable, serious articles...

SOME RECOMMENDED PAPER-BACKS

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NOVELS: The Prevalence of Witches, bY Aubrey Menen (Penguin, 2s. 6d.). TRAVEL: The Overloaded Ark, by Gerald Durrell; The Alleys of Marrakesh, by Pete' Mayne (both Penguin, 2s....

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OUR ACHILLES HEEL

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By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT You do not have to be a retired old colonel, or any other sort of \ crabbed, crusted Tory, to have a feeling in your bones that Britain IS going down...

COMPANY NOTES

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By CUSTOS THE continued fall in Wall Street and the dangerous arms-lift in the ' Middle East contrived to put most security prices sharply down, except, curiously enough, the...

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Philidor's chess column will appear as usual next week.

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THE MUSHROOMERS

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'"You be careful 'ow you goes apickin' mush' rooms in among trees an' sich places," 'e tole me. "A lot o' them things is poisonous, you knows," I stir pose 'e meant well, but...

SPECTATOR CROSSWORD No. 957

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ACROSS 1 Suitable sub-title for 'Called Back'? (6) 4 . . . to a general conflagration, maybe (8). 10 He makes his mark well filled out (7). 11 'Round the - bole are in tiny...

BAT BEHAVIOUR

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Although I am not very well up in bats they hav e a fascination for me, particularly when they apP 0 J r to like the space between the house in which I live and the one next to...

Country Life

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By IAN NIALL PERHAPS a person acutely sensitive to pitch and tone might not agree that there is any similarity between the hum of a combine and the sound of a beehive, but for...

DEEP WATER

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Why is it, when it takes no more than six fed of water to cover the average man's head and he ma5' drown in almost a cupful, that the information tha t a particular lake or loch...

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Ends and Means

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On the lines of Hilaire Belloc's Lord Finchley tried to mend the electric light Himself. It struck him dead; And serve him right! It is the business of the wealthy man To give...

Competitors will remember the 'old man of Nantucket Who kept

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all his cash in a bucket:! But his daughter, named Nan,' Ran away with a man 1 And as for the bucket, Nantucket.' The usual prize of six guineas is offered for two original...