SPECTATOR ESTABLISHED 1828 - NUMBER 6768 - FRIDAY, MARCH 14, 1958 - PRICE NINEPENCE

T HE debates on the Defence Estimates used to fall into a predictable pattern. The Secretary of State for Air would tell of the wonders. to be expected of Hunters, Javelins, and...

By RICHARD H. ROVERE New York WE are having a fine law- yers' wrangle over what is to happen if the President, while living and in office, is temporarily or perma- nently...

T HE Bow Group have produced an excellent short pamphlet on taxation.* It is readable, comprehensive, and closely argued. The authors have wisely assumed that the Government...

By KENNETH ROBINSON, MP T HERE is a touch of irony about the fact that, at a time when our chief preoccupation is the chances of mass-suicide, the law concerning individual...

By HENRY KERBY* IT is a sad truth that millions of young Russians have grown VA/ .1,477////17//01001/// 1 /// / // , up without the means to judge whether their way of life is...

that battle dress, though it has served its pur- pose in time of war, is not enough; it is time the soldier had something more elegant to wear. Mr. Soames thinks that a smart...

his Haldane Memorial Lecture on The Formation of Public Opinion,' particularly about the growing tendency to prevent the newspapers from expressing their opinions not by the old...

the north wind which has been torturing the denizens of the Tottenham Court Road by ab- sorption in the New Yorker's advertisement pages. One of them ran : How to see a...

LOYALTY to his colleagues is one of the Prime Minister's virtues; but it is one he should indulge more mod- erately, or it may end by making him look foolish. When asked in the...

Westminster Commentary next week will be by JO GRIMOND, MP Leader of the Liberal Party

By GEOFFREY BARRACLOUGH N or a Hope in Hell'! Thus the special H-bomb number of Isis a couple of weeks ago. It was only echoing, in effect, Mr. Sandys's admission in 1957 that...

Mr. J. B. Priestley's television play Dooms- day for Dyson, which Granada put on last Monday. Even five years ago it would surely have been rejected out of hand, with its...

abuse of Tories and Roman Catholics, he was pursued by the sentries who were on duty at the time. I am indebted to a correspondent for what he considers the week's most...

implement most of the recommenda- tions of the Royal Commission on Mental Illness. The number of such reports which are shelved is notoriously high; often because their...

MARCH 16, 1833 THE bribed electors of Liverpool and Stafford are threatened with exposure at least : there is good ground to hope that disfranchisement also will follow. . . ....

Dead From the Waist Down DEAR MR. ATKINS, By JOHN BETJEMAN I am glad to have this opportunity, after about forty years of nursing a grievance, to tell the public how deeply I...

By CHARLES LISTER ENJOYED teaching Sudanese boys, and it was with considerable regret that I presented my letter of resignation after having served only eight Months of my...

By STRIX r iri" EN'SING-TON (ken-sing-tim). Subdivision (est. 1_1 pop. 1,700) of town of BERLIN.' Read on, and you will learn that this particular Berlin is in Connecticut, and...

By COLIN MASON THE notion of the dissolution of the Sadler's Wells Opera Company is so fantastic that it is impossible to take it in or believe in it. This is no doubt why...

Fifteen-Second Plays By JOHN BRAINE The Bell, as any member of my age-group will know, was once Ireland's answer to Horizon. Rather fewer Dubliners would know of its existence...

Method Schools WARDLE By IRVING He sits down modestly and touches his splayed fingers together. He looks rather like a television newscaster. 'Oh what a mane and peasant slave...

Cardboard Pastoral By ISABEL QUIGLY The Seventh Seal. (Academy.) 'COLD, spacious, severe, pale, and remote . . . a vision of huge clear spaces hanging above the Atlantic in the...

The Tenth Chance. By Stuart Holroyd. (Royal Court.)—School. (Princes.) `Ituriatsri."Get out of this theatre.' We'll stamp you out, you wait.' A row like this is just what I've...

Ice 'Cream' By LESLIE ADRIAN N Panorama the other night they had an ice- cream tasting session. A housewife, a school- boy, a gourmet, and Richard Dimbleby tasted three types...

Romantic Landscapes OF all the varieties of free abstract art so much a la mode the one which seems to suit English painters the best derives from some measure of visual...

reader of women's magazines, I should like to reply to Lois Mitchison's question as to where their appeal lies. I am sure it is because all women worthy of the name are...

SIR,—It is perhaps scarcely worth while to refute Miss Mitchison's very bold assertion that 'almost all women,' i.e., almost half the human race, enjoy that peculiar form of...

Mental Health Dr. Donald Mel. Johnson. MP Tarry or Burn Sir Stephen King-Hall, Edward Bond `Pop' Fiction Rose Macaulay, J. W. Drawbell, The Hon. Mrs. Esson-Scott Tenants and...

letter regarding Woman's Own is that the Colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady are sisters under the skin. 'Are social and educational differences Jess important for women than for...

SIR,—I am much obliged to you for your reference under Tarry or Burn (March 7) to what you call the 'King-Hall line,' but still more grateful that the Spectator alone amongst...

it faces the problem of what happens after the banning of these weapons. The nuclear bomb is the ultitrwte weapon. This means that if an aggressor attacks the possessor of...

The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines pagan as 'heathen; unenlightened person'; heathen as `neither Christian, Jewish nor Mohamedan' and 'un- enlightened person.' Is Mr. Raven...

SIR,—As an old French subscriber of the Spectator (more than fifteen years) I wish to express my pro- found indignation at the title of the unsigned leading article in your...

the Catholic Church as the normal stock in trade' of the Spectator. I have been a regular reader of the Spectator• for some years and cannot recollect any occasion when you have...

a vigorous business. I think it gives a wrong impression due to a mistranslation. When I was in Moscow for the Youth Festival last summer I took the chance of going to a tourist...

public schools whatever, as a result of the 'nature of adolescent boys, . . . are nine-tenths of the day filthy.' Perhaps the clue to this judgment is found in his confession...

in free-enterprise economy. It Is open to doubt, though, whether Mr. Day's straining of advertising raison d'etre to justify operations of the present detergent and soap powders...

Sta,—As Mr. John Irwin sticks to his statements, the only possible conclusion seems to be that the author of The Third Eye removed his beard on the day of his visit,...

drawn in your editorial on the Rent Act last week. As you imply, a desired effect of the Act is the creation of a free market in houses and flats to let, but the lack of a pool...

Snt,—The one overwhelming reason why so many people cannot bring themselves to vote Conservative is contained in the following extract from Hansard: 'Taking the internal...

fectly loyal Pagan,' but writes with a rather juvenile and cocksure knowingness which is far from attrac- tive in itself, and which most decent pagans of my acquaintance would...

John Ruskin, Mr. Peter Quennell quotes a description of seagulls in Venice quartering the canal (obviously looking for floating garbage). and 'flapping their wings slowly like...

The End of War ? B 5 D. W. BROGAN W HEN in Washington, 1 dine or lunch fairly often (as a guest) in the Army and Navy Club and, while waiting for my host, I have again and...

in the Trianon grounds in 1901 has now acquired a fair literature. A further shot—interesting but unlikely to win over the sceptics—at explaining the mystery in psychical terms...

Victory at Sea, 1939-1945. By Lieutenant-Corn- mander P. K. Kemp. (Muller, 30s.) 'hilts btiok.covers in one volume the whole story of the war at sea during the Second World War....

The Story of Jazz. By Marshall W. Stearns. (Sidgwick and Jackson, 30s.) YET another Jazz book : and yet another g uided tour, one foreSees, among the African origins, the Blues...

(Edith Cavell. By A. A. Hoehling. (Cassell, 15s.) MR. HOEHLING'S prologue promises new light on a fading legend. 'There was never a hint, even by the Kaiser's prosecutors, that...

At Home: Memoirs. By William Plomer. (Jona- than Cape, 16s.) WHEN he was in his middle twenties, and the century nudging its thirties, William Plomer left Japan and began the...

The Transgressor. By Julian Green. (Heinemann, 15s.) Home From the Hill. By William Humphrey. (Chatto and Windus, 16s.) The Mark of the Warrior. By Paul Scott. (Eyre and...

ONE of my earliest memories is of being con- fronted, in a roomful of unnaturally quiet good children, with what I recognised as the uppers of a boot without a sole; and of the...

private eye , is a Negro, patronised by the self-conscious liberals of Manhattan, kicked around when he reaches the Kentucky, border, and framed for a murder into the bargain.'...

flood and the State police converge on small, corrupt New England gambling town. Quite brilliantly brisk account of how a town can go rotten-and how exciting the cleaning-up.

Peninsula. Edited by Charles Causley. (Mac- donald, 10s. 6d.) THE deaths of poets seldom seem to inspire even good fellow-poets to more than tactful pastiche at best, or...

frivolity in which Chicago's Mr. Crook-John J. Malone, the lawyer who takes his breakfast eggs in gin-and assorted Runyonesque evildoers sort out a slight case of murder and the...

Marion. By John Bingham. (Gollancz, 12s. 6d.)' Sadistic killer of nice young women crosses path of another man's unfaithful wife. London and Sussex setting; matter-of-fact in...

Mr. Crook, a shady lawyer, is just in time with his proof that it was not the young spiv under sentence of death who had done in the old lady : he has to move fast to see that...

cars, gun-play, and canasta on the. Cote d'Azur, background for the better-bred British four-letter men, where a gentleman-rider tangles with a very upper-middle-class renegade....

SUPPOSEDLY a volume of reminiscence, this little book is in fact a series of homilies based on Mr. Harding's experience of various occupations- Occupations which include...

6d.) Preposterous plot about Soviet agents let loose in English seaside town is a disappointment from the talented author of Chairlift, but admirers will salvage some agree-...

A Victorian Eminence: The Life and Works of Henry Thomas Buckle. By Giles St. Aubyn. (Barrie, 25s.) WHO today has read Buckle's History of Civiliza- tion in England? Its...

of magnificent descriptive books, simpli- fied and illustrated accounts of subjects like Medicine, Power and Food, by such well-known authors as Ritchie Calder, Lancelot Hogben...

11 Peseta. 12 Mess-mate. 13 Roll-on. 15 Pinfolds. 18 Pampered. 19 Orford. 21 Cassocks. 23 Cantab. 26 Loire. 27 Atavistic. 28 Adhesive tape. DOWN.-1 Flapper. 2 Years. 3 Not at...

ACROSS 1 Snub for the manicurist about polish? (6) 4 Remove from the board in a drag (8). 9 Twice 28 (6). 10 Maybe he won't be one when he's done some space-travel! (8) 12 Puss...

By PHILIDOR No. 144. 0. STOCCHI (1st Prize, Union of French Problemists Comp., 1955) BLACK 00 men) WHITE (9 men) WHITE to play and mate in two moves: solution next week....

acrostio poem with the initial lights forming the word 'Easter' and the end lights 'Sunday.' Entriei, addressed 'Spectator Competition No. 422,' 99 Gower Street, London, WC],...

The usual prize was offered for either a 'Do It Yourself calypso or a work song for 'Do It Your- self' husbands and wives. If any conclusion is to be drawn from the quantity...

Competitors were invited to submit the ideas of Heaven entertained by any three of the following: charwoman, lawyer; dock labourer, shop steward, burglar, journalist, policeman...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT IN a speech recently—whether post- / prandial or not I cannot remember —the Governor of the Bank kindly informed us that the battle against in- flation...

By CUSTOS THE end of the Stock Exchange account on Tuesday and the worsen- ing 'depression' news from America brought the market recovery to a mere temporary halt. With over...

Tranquillisers KITING in a recent issue of the New York State Journal of Medicine, Dr. J. N. Muller remarked that if present-day estimates are cor- rect, a quarter of a...