T HE new meeting of the four Foreign Ministers at Paris cannot but be critical. If substantial agreement is not reached this time, the alternative is agreement, disguised or...

The contest between King Umberto and the Italian Government as to when (rather than whether) the King shall leave the country may have ended by the time these lines appear. The...

The " hitch" that has arisen in the negotiations in India is one more of a series of incidents which over years have almost justified belief in the insolubility of the communal...

The fact that last week's inauguration of General Peron as Presi- dent of the Argentine Republic for the next six years was followed within two days by an announcement of the...

Mr. Truman is devoting what ingenuity he can command to get- ting himself out of the awkward situation in which his recent actions on labour legislation landed him, while at the...

The decision of the Imperial Press Conference to set on record its views on the freedom of the Press is welcome, though any resolu- tions adopted on that subject will merely...

Much of the evidence that has been produced by Mihailovitch in his defence does nct reflect to the credit of this country. It is not, for example, pleasant to read of British...

With the reassembly of Parliament attempts will no doubt be renewed to fathom the reason for Mr. Shinwell's sustained obstinacy in the matter of an increased petrol ration, or...

A MONG the issues discussed at the Labour Party Conference at Bournemouth, foreign policy and the nationalisation of in- dustry are well clear of the ruck of resolutions on the...

man should, in view of the grain-shortage, drink synthetic beer. Actually he has drunk quite a lot of it already—when he was in uniform in North Africa. There were no hops...

of representing the co-operative movement—sounds heroic, for every- thing connected with national daily papers today is on such a scale that the initial expense of floating a...

T HE arrival of Mr. Mackenzie King in Canada at the end of this week will be made historic by the fact that before he left this country he had completed a longer term of office...

Parliamentary adjournment and the Whitsun holiday, attracted less attention than might have been expected. The question to the Home Secretary was obviously arranged, as such...

[icy own views more than once. But it is possible to be pernickety in such matters. The Daily Herald on Tuesday put over a report of Mr. Herbert Morrison's speech at the Labour...

at Cambridge by the Bishop of Liverpool: " In the thirteenth century there were about 57,000 clergy in this country ministering to a population of 3,000,000 people. Every...

By L. D. GAMMANS, M.P. T HE situation in Malaya is grave beyond words. It is nothing less than a great upsurge of Malay nationalistic feeling determined to resist the...

By BRIG. STEPHEN H. LONGRIGG T HE world is widely interested in the disposal of Libya—that is. of the two separate territories of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, which the...

By ANTHONY NUTTING, M.P. T HE palace of Schonbrunn shining in the sun ; over it a Union Jack with , "the Austrian flag beneath, dipped as if in submissive salutation of its...

By WILSON HARRIS W HEN, sometime during the 1906 Parliament, a sharp con- troversy on procedure arose an enterprising Lobby Corre- spondent (himself subsequently a Member of...

affairs and in particular what Britain thinks about them. If you feel THE SPECTATOR correctly interprets the British view, why not take out a subscription for any of your...

By JOHN WILTON T HAT a mere beetle should be taken into custody by the police, and thereafter conveyed many miles under escort to a place of interrogation, seems. an idea too...

By HAROLD NICOLSON I HAVE often asked myself why the British public, who during the war showed themselves impervious to every form of pro- paganda, should between 1919 and 1938...

" Bedelia." At the Plaza.—" New York's Night Club Boom " (•‘ March of Time "). General Release. WHEN we first meet Bedelia she is in a jeweller's shop in Monte Carlo. She...

THE Queen of Westminster declared, Declared, and drove him forth : " The kingdom of old Tartary Lies somewhere to the north." The merchant men they scolded him— He, trapped...

"The Brothers Karamazov." Adapted by Alec Guinness from the novel by Dostoevsky. At the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith. THE hardest task in this adaptation for the stage of...

" PALESTINE PERIL " Sui,—As the letters from Professor Norman Bentwich and Mr. 0. K. Kitowsky raise anew the ancient controversy concerning the McMahon Correspondence, I feel...

SIR, —I hope we shall now hear again of the proposal to abolish the School Certificate only in the sense of abolishing the award of a pass-or-fail verdict on the whole...

SIR, —My chief objection to Mr. Winterton's article was the key sentence: " War will become possible only if we allow Russia to grow stronger. By physical and moral firmness,...

mind, the most fundamental question about the future of the Liberal Party. The contribution of English political parties to democratic govern- ment has been of the first...

SIR,—I wonder if you could spare me a little space in which to answer a few of the points mentioned by Mr. Hector Hughes in the adjournment debate on May 28th, when he raised...

SIR,—My eye was immediately attracted to the opening sentences in your interesting leading article, -" The Future of Cotton," in The Spectator of May 31st. The sentences...

to the announcement that the abolition of the School Certificate Examina- tion was " now a fait accompli." The Ministry's Circular of May 16th (Circular to3) dealt both with the...

Snt,—The reverberations of resurgent Liberalism are reaching some of our Socialist and other friends. G. D. H. Cole, in his pamphlet Labour's Foreign - Policy, even goes out...

StR,—As is probably already known to your readers, the Victoria League— founded in 1901 to promote the closer union of the people of the British Empire—has many...

Sto,—In your stimulating article on peacetime conscription you say: " To keep men already serving still longer with the colours is inde- fensible," and " for university...

Sta,—Permit me to complain of the terms used by "Janus " about the Victory Celebrations, which he denounces as " untimely, inappropriate and little short of indecent." Has "...

SIR, —I am sorry to have given Mr. Brimble the impression in my article on Formation Colleges that I wished to make extravagant claims for Army education. I can assure him...

SIR,—Did your printers begin their Victory Day celebrations prematurely? In " Marginal Comment " (June 7th) we read, " The bag-pipes swirled." Possibly ; but on normal...

SIR,—I regret the mistake in my letter to you about the "J.V.A." The total water available is 2,o0o million cubic metres per annum, which should suffice to protect about...

Sra,—Two points in Canon Clarke's article in The Spectator of June 7th call for comment. Before the first Prayer Book of Edward VI was intro- duced, he says, the congregation...

Rome Under The Terror. By M. de Wyss. (Robert Hale. 15s.) THE curtain has hardly fallen on the most comprehensively destruc- tive period of history, and the drama of it all is...

African Scenario African Portraits. By Stuart Cloete. (Collins 12s. 6d.) THE author of this book describes it as a biography of Paul Kruger, Cecil Rhodes and LoBengula. He...

The Mind and Heart of Love. By M. C. D'Arcy, S.J. (Faber and Faber. 15s.) FATHER D'ARCY had intendx1 to call his new book The Lion and the Unicorn. The frontispiece was to have...

The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci. Edited by A. E. Popham. (Cape. £2 2s.) No one could ask more of war-time, or immediately post-war English book-production than the superb...

General Eisenhower. By Alden Hatch. (Skeffington. 16s.) THERE are usually three stages in the biographical fortunes of any great figure ; from the adulatory we pass by way of...

AN Englishwoman returning from the U.S.A. once commented: " They say things that we should take for granted. If they go to, a rose-show they comment that the roses are...

THESE two volumes are among the latest additions to that tastefully produced series entitled " Britain in Pictures." Each contains eight pictures in colour, many more...

Federal Government. By K. C. Wheare. (Oxford University Press, for the Royal Institute of International Affairs. 15s.) WHETHER decried as an imperfect form of national...

Confusion of Faces. By Erich Meissner. (Faber and Faber. 10s. 6d.) Tins survey of European, and particularly German, trends of thought and politics is hardly a book for a...

HERE are three period novels—Aston Kings (1882 - 1905), Lord Hornblower (1814-15) and Return to Cottington (1736-68). The first is a study of life at the turn of the last...

THIS story of the flight to England in 1940 of King Haakon and the Norwegian Government reads more like a wild and very woolly Western than a serious record of events. It is to...

Accounts have reached me lately of the almost startling success of country-house gardeners who have been persuaded almost of necessity —to put their walls and beds to...

EVEN before the plans are being put into active operation it becomes evident that the urban planners of rural development, so called, will have to acknowledge the country knows...

years. The popula- tion of Hertfordshire, for example, has been falling for at least a century. A village very familiar to me in Huntingdonshire, which is only sixty miles from...

their -plants with their bees, should .all grow Cotoneaster -Horizontalis. My bees, and those of some neighbours, show a marked passion for the floviers, even to the point of...

The question is raised—in a local paper in Wiltshire: Which is the earliest bird to sing? My experience is the lark. To be " Up with lark " is to be up before sunrise. The...

The winner of Crossword No. 377 is Miss MARY CASSELS, 34, Bagdale, Whitby, Yorks.

IA Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the firs: correct solution of this week's crossword to be opened after noon on Tuesday week, June 25th. Envelopes...

IVIAnicErs are still showing their indifference to international politics and reacting mainly to the growing evidences of inflation. On top of the announcement of higher railway...