The three main strands in the complicated subject of West Euro- pean defence are at last beginning to run together. First, the dis- cussions between American, British and French...

But the demolition of this list of expedients is not quite the same thing as the demolition of hope for the future of coal production, for the simple reason that the. Minister's...

Marshall Aid has taken its place in the roll of means whereby the people of the United States have generously aided the people of Britain in a period of many trials. The roll...

The status of Jerusalem is back on the agenda of the U.N. General Assembly. Just a year ago, in a moment of enthusiasm, the Assembly passed a resolution approving an...

in the United Nations' forces ability to "maintain themselves in Korea" is symptomatic of a return to realism. Like similar statements made a few days ago by General MacArthur,...

A large oriental city, such as Singapore, which contains a popu- lation of mixed and often antagonistic races, is always liable to explode in rioting on an apparently trivial...

Everybody knows that the rise in the cost of living is a real hardship, but it is taking a long time for discussion of the subject to reach the point at which real remedies can...

There are a number of other morals, apart from the moral of crime and punishment, attached to the announcement by the Comp- troller and Auditor-General that in the last...

Friday.

Some months ago it was confirmed that the Albert Hall was in dire need of repair. Since then the Council of the Royal Albert Hall Corporation has been seeking the means with...

I T has been interesting to watch the quiet play of Mr. Attlee'f; personality in these days of crisis—his equable personality whic is plainly nourished by secret reserves of...

T HERE is some relaxation of the tension over Korea. That, and no more than that, can bp said at this moment. Mr. Attlee's statement to the House of Commons on Tuesday added...

of the Liberals to rush down a steep place into the sea. Here, for example, is that hard-headed financier, Sir Andrew McFadyean, suggesting, apparently in all seriousness, that...

Boswell Journal (reviewed in the Spectator last week) The exciting thing about it, of course, is its discovery a hundred and seventy years after it was written, at Fettercairn...

hear of his death without very real grief. Few men in public life can have made fewer enemies—if indeed, he had a single enemy in the world. The wittiest speaker, without...

Ministers by the industrious Mr. Nigel Birch : A film called "How to Make-a Telephone Call" was made by the Central Office of Information, at a cost of £6,000 "to impress on...

last work, so it is said, that he prepared for print comes all too appositely for use as an ideal substitute for a Christmas card. I say all too appositely, because, having...

WEST "SOLIDLY SPLIT" ON THE FAR EAST Manchester Guardian, Dec. 11th. "The Western Powers are maintaining a reasonable attitude, and are not revealing any rift among...

Stokes, the Minister for Works, affirmed that " all authorities who have written, even at this early stage, about the last war say that without doubt the idiotic declaration...

By THE ASTRONOMER ROYAL (Sir Harold Spencer Jones, F.R.S.) F ROM about midsummer 1947 and throughout the past three years there have been numerous reports of mysterious...

By B. H. GARNONS WILLIAMS (Headmaster of Plymouth College) T HE Burnham Committee has reported. The National Union of Teachers has accepted the award ; the Incorporated...

By ENOCH POWELL, M.P. T O the question, "Can we build 300,000 houses a year ? " the answer is, " Yes, of course ; and if we wanted to build 600,000 a year, we could do that,...

By E. M. FRIEDWALD Sunday, December 101h, was the fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the Nobel Institute. This year's Nobel prizes for science were on that day presented...

When Chamberlain his pleas on Hitler pressed By flying East, it was our peace went West, Whose circumvolent perils being increased, Attlee flies West to snatch it from the...

THE impending fate of the great English Universities illustrates the tendencies of this country towards a new system of govern- ment. Those ancient institutions are in a great...

By L. S. B. LEAKEY* I N a windswept ploughed field at Abinger Common, Surrey, tarpaulins have been temporarily erected over an irregular pit about fourteen feet long and ten...

A Basque Village By ANSON GILBERT (Wadham College, Oxford) T HE pine forest, through which we had been walking, cleared, and far below me, almost at the foot of the valley,...

by unds,rgraduates from any university or university college in Britain, should be as nearly as possible 1,400 words in length. There are no restrictions as to subject-matter,...

By HAROLD NICOLSON D URING the Battle of Britain my railway station at home was obliterated by an aeroplane falling in flames upon the roof. It had been an agreeable little...

BALLET Demonstrated Lecture on Spanish Dancing. (Covent Garden.) Is is naturally impossible . to get more than a brief idea of the outline of the history and technical...

"Highly Dangerous." (Leicester Square.)—" Plus de Vacances pour k Ron Dieu." (New Gallery.)--" I Shall Return." (Odeon, Marble Arch.) Highly Dangerous is a - comedy thriller...

As is now generally known, the exhibition at Burlington House was conceived in the shadow of failure to achieve that showing of German art which was originally intended, and has...

DIE London Contemporary Music Centre struggles bravely on against heavy financial odds and their more demoralising cause, a general lack of interest. Plans have already been...

You, who have a small share of me, Are a part of my life And apart from my life. You, who are seldom aware of me Except as a friend, Accept as a friend My trial and...

Set by Daniel Farson A prize of £5, which may be divided, is offered for the concluding paragraph of a famous novel, assuming that the hero or heroine has married the...

4 2 Report by Richard Usborne The manufacturers of Christmas crackers get hold of some hauntingly undistinguished epigrams for their enrolled mottoes- e.g., 'Your mind is like...

Sia,—Robert H. Corrick reminds me of a German acquaintance of mine who, after a few years of Hitlerism, accepted as logical those things he formally condemned as being satanic....

endorse par- ticularly his last words, "It is a pity." Two years ago I attended the first assembly of the World Council of Churches, held in Amsterdam, as an alternate delegate...

was brought up as an Anglo-Catholic, and I value sincerely all for which that party stands except its official attitude towards the reunion of Christendom. I find myself...

Church Unity Sig,—Does Mr. Christie's article on Church Unity—" divisions not only calamitous but even absurd "—really reptesent the view of the "ordinary layman " ? On the...

SIR,—In judging the sonnets in Competition No. 41, Mr. Guy Kendall writes: "The Meredithian •16-line sonnet did not appear." What is the Meredithian sonnet ? Meredith wrote...

to suggest that now is the time to appoint a committee of laymen to consider Church Unity from the layman's point of view, with, say, four theologians to advise where necessary....

SIR,—May I 131 allowed to correct a misprint which appeared in my letter under the above heading? I did not write of teachers' claims to large salaries, but to larger ones. The...

to say that I have made a strong case for the theory that St. John's Gospel was based, not on " Q " material, but on another lost gospel. This may have been suggested, but not...

SIR,—The passage from Professor Barbara Wootton's book, quoted by Mr. Vane in your last issue, recalls an 'about as sensible observatiiin reported to have been made once by...

shows a misconception of the powers of an agricultural marketing board in its suggestion that a board might put the prices up. Under the Amending Act of 1949 a board cannot fix...

SIR,—Lest any reader, not quite so familiar with the minutiae of nine- teenth century publishing as Mr. Michael Sadleir, should be misled by his review of my Queens of the...

written by Strix in your paper dated September 22nd, 1950. The note, which concerns alleged cruelty- to crocodiles, is apparently derived from a letter written by someone else...

of "getting on very free and easy terms with the planets." Int freedom and ease he applies to his own figures so carelessly as to oialce:his article a monument of the slipshod....

A CORRESPONDENT has referred to the passage in The Natural History of Se! borne (what a secret of pure, distilled English-ness that dry title covers) in which Gilbert White...

afternoon in the Pinenun, which is run by Kew Gardens in Bedgebury Park, near Goudhurst, the forrher seat of the Hope-Beresfords. It is a handsome piece of country. A series of...

Canada (Canadian Magazine Post) Id.

abroad, and last week I recorded my observation of what appeared to be an absurd state of affairs within a hundred yards of my home. Since then I have seen a letter in the Press...

has kept us off the flower - beds, for fear of puddling the soil. But the wet lias given an opportunity for spreading a little lime before the second turning of the top-soil,...

W HAT was it that distinguished George Orwell from other English writers of his generation ? More than all else, perhaps, it is sophistication of mind that stamps the literature...

The Silent Traveller in New York. By Chiang Yee. (Methuen. 21s.) HAVING read this delightful book and aemired its equally delightful pictures, I find Myself thinking how...

The Age of Elizabeth The England of Elizabeth. By A. L. Rowse. (Macmillan. 2 ss.) THE writing of history is always a source of trouble to the historian, for, as a rule, he is...

CENTENARIES may sometimes be a bore, but they certainly serve one useful function: they provide an occasion for the preparation of historical works just at the time when a...

IN this book the publishers have gathered together various pro- nouncementS, great and small, made by one whom they truly describe as "one of the world's great thinkers,"...

W. Ganz. (Quality Press.ifs.) - THE author Of this book was the grandson of Adolphe Ganz. conductor of the Mainz Opera, who in 1848 came to England with the Writer's father...

A Year of Grace. Passages chosen and arranged to express a mood about God and man. By Victor Gollancz. (Gollancz. los. 6d.1 FEW care to pick and choose for themselves in this...

The Incredible De Foe. By William Freeman. (Herber, Jenkins. us.) FOR once this sort of faney title is justified. When we add up all Defoe's activities, it is very difficult to...

A YOUNG man called Lewis returns from a perilous expedition, and is treated as a hero by the Press and the public, much to his embarrassment. He is a serving soldier, and had...

IA Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct fclution of this week's crossword to be opened after noon on Tuesday week, December 26th....

The winner of Crossword No. 603 is MISS MARGOT WHITE, 2 Kemnay Place, Arbroath Road, Dundee, Scotland.

By CUSTOS brrominoNAL politics on the one hand and inflation on the other are now tugging violently at security prices. At the moment infla- tion is exerting the stronger...