T HE Soviet Union's reply to the Allied Note on Berlin follows the expected lines, which means that it is completely unsatis- factory. The whole sustained argument is a web of...

important as British coal-minini gives, through the National Coal Board, an account of the most important year in its history, then the full significance of the story told will...

Ostensibly the crisis which is at present working up in France is due to a dispute over the re-grading of civil servants and the distribution of 30 milliard francs of additional...

There is probably no Asiatic nation for whom, as individuals, the British have a more genuine liking than the Burmese, and the pro- gressive decline in their fortunes since they...

Important as it is to form some accurate assessment of the conse- quences of Yugoslavia's defiance of the Cominform, almost all the reliable information on that country's...

With General Eisenhower adamant against accepting nomination, the Democrats have been meeting at Philadelphia with no better prospect before them than minimising defeat....

Food has been a matter of Governmental control for nearly ten years now, and it is time that Parliament learned to turn the periodic debates on the subject into something more...

The longer the controversy over steel goes on the ITIOIC irrational it gets. Each new achievement by the industry under private owner- ship serves only to increase the...

W ITH debates on Food and Housing the Commons have this week been very close to the simple things which loom larger in the life of the people than emotional rhetoric on the pros...

A NY truce in Palestine is better than a continuation of the war ; better for the people of Palestine, for the Middle East as a whole, and better for the United Nations. It is...

the Univer- sity Colleges to be raised to University status—which means that it will have the right to confer its own degrees, like Oxford and Cambridge and London and the rest,...

Jamaica, Minister of Communications in the Jamaica Government, Mayor of Kingston, and supreme (though not quite perhaps, because of the rivalry of his cousin Mr. Manley) Labour...

of a conscientious objector, as such, before the Court of Criminal Appeal, for however misguided such a man may seem, or actually be, there is manifestly nothing in the remotest...

T HE Peckham Health Centre had the time of its life on Monday when Queen Mary, the Prime Minister, various other Ministers, greater and less, and the Oni of Ife went first to...

Mr. Malcolm MacDonald, son of the worst traitor in the history of the British Labour movement."—The Daily Worker. The Daily Worker, like Skegness, is so bracing. That is why I...

a few special and inconsiderable exceptions) from Great Britain marks the end of a chapter. Both captors and captives no doubt look back on it with mixed feelings. It has been a...

By SIR RICHARD WINSTEDT TN spite of a military offensive by Gurkhas and the accurate bomb- ing of jungle camps whose nefarious inmates were elsewhere, a wave of terrorism still...

By ELIZABETH WISKEMANN W HEN Ciano's diaries were published one was constantly exasperated by finding that the most interesting political talks were minuted "elsewhere." A new...

By C. M. WOODHOUSE T HIS is not a new prospect for Greece. It is an old, almost forgotten, prospect on which a new light has been unexpectedly turned by the Cominform, using...

By STRIX Co UR aim," said Sir Malcolm Trustram Eve, broadcasting with benevolence and clarity on behalf of the Central Land Board, "is to simplify your task as much as...

By H. D. WALSTON T HE Royal is undoubtedly a great spectacle, and, what is more, is magnificently stage-managed. It is a prodigious effort to lay out a showground covering a...

By HUGH EWER* I HAD not been to Bisley camp for twelve years. My previous visits were an annual series during which, as an officer of the 0.T.C., I used to travel up from the...

By HAROLD NICOLSON W E used, when we were young, to be told a cautionary tale, designed to warn us against the effects of pessimism upon human judgement. It was the story of a...

"Forever Amber." (Tivoli.)--" The Naked City." (Gaumont and Marble Arch Pavilion.)—" The Iron Curtain. (Plaza.) I HAVE long considered the most impressive stage direction in...

DURING the last week two distinguished singers have given theit services in concerts organised by the United Jewish Relief Appeal. Kirsten Flagstad's song-recital at the Central...

THE THEATRE People Like Us. By Frank Vosper. (Wyndham's ) BASED on the Thompson-Bywaters murder case, this play takes us back to the suburbia of 1922 and the triangle of...

HERE, With my cat beside me, purring On the table, by the book of books, I fade from scholarship, deferring Thought, as a bird above a brook's Burble of song, will forget his...

Anglian house at the edge of a country town to find my hosts busy with preparations for taking a swarm of bees suspended from the branch of an apple tree. The swarm was very...

The saving or addition of a species of bird to the British list is alwayi welcome, and it is my expectation that the great extension of sanctuarid, especially in Norfolk, will...

attracted exception91 crowds, but the shows have this advantage over the cricket that numbers of foreigners, most of them buyers, have been attracted. Even Russians, the...

THOSE who make holiday on the shores of East Anglia ought to follow their visit with a journey to the extreme south-east. They may be depressed by the evidence of erosion from,...

fact that the florists are achieving some of their best results in the production of earlier chrysanthemums (as seen at a recent show of the R.H.S.). It is, of course, agreeable...

AIR EDITION Here this morning—in North America this afternoon. BY AIR: 52 weeks $14.00-43 10s. Od. 26 weeks 117.00—£1 15s. Od. Subscriptions for U.S.A. and Canada may be sent...

feeling —among the emotions—a strong desire to help. I would like to assure those of your readers who have hitherto had no communication with the Russian zone of Germany that...

CORRESPONDENTS FROM GERMANY also have received a most pathetic letter from an unknown Getman in the American zone of Germany. It seems that there is only one way in which he...

lop-sided nature of the Government's nationalisation schemes—that their logical develop- ment is, in fact, National Socialism as practised by Hitler. But Dr. Jacks does not go...

to the motives of many of the medical profession who opposed the manner in which the Act was brought into being, and sought solely to protect their patients, and whose...

Forces, and during that time I have come to realise that all is not well, that up to half a million young men are idling away some of the most impressionable months of their...

I cannot pass unchal- lenged Dr. Jacks' Logic of Nationalisation. To state a general rule from two particular examples is not logic. Because Hitler and Stalin nationalised...

STR —In his letter appearing in your issue of July 2nd, criticising a public service for dilatoriness, Mr. F. Ward concludes his remarks with the charge that the banks also are...

SIR, —Your recent article Belgrade and Berlin brings to mind a quotation from Goethe used by Mr. Dimitrov in his concluding speech from the dock at the Reichstag fire trial....

Sta,—In your issue of June 18th it was stated that persons serving prison sentences are paid 6d. per day. This statement was, of course, fantasti- cally incorrect, and was only...

Sitt,—I have only just seen Mr. Shone's letter in your issue of July 2nd. I was wrong. The figure which I quoted as referring to 1927 was actu- ally .an average for the five...

Sm,—In his interesting remarks about Bristol and early Atlantic explora- tion, in last week's Spectator, Mr. Harold Nicolson refers to Henry VII's gift of ten pounds to John...

Sta,—I have no personal reason to complain about your reviewer's . notice of my book, The Concern for Social justice in the Puritan Revolution, but I want to say something on...

Snt,—With the greatest respect to Janus, I hope heed will be paid to the British Medical Association's recommendation to the Home Secretary that the sordid details of suicide be...

Sta,—There must surely be some curious "inside story" about the superabundance of gin now in the windows of wine merchants through- out the kingdom. Owing, we were told, to...

collection of slow posts. I sent a correctly addressed letter to Chelmsford—post-marked here June 30/h.

Sm,—In your issue of July 9th, David Gunston, in his article, Humaner Whaling, states: "Whales are almost unique in the animal kingdom in having no vocal cords, so their...

SIR, —Rawle Knox in The Spectator of July 2nd suggests that Eire could increase her L7+ million worth of dollars per annum by concentrating on certain high-class specialist...

Snt,—I should like to point out that the third annual conference of U.N.E.S.C.O. is to be held in November at Beirut, in the Lebanon, and not at Bristol, as stated by Mr....

Sm,—We would point out, in reference to Janus's observation on the editing of Whos's Who, that the tradition of anonymous editorial direction has been maintained for the past...

LET US POST A COPY OF THE SPECTATOR TO YOUR HOLIDAY ADDRESS. Send instructions with a remittance-7d. for each issue—to THE SALES DEPARTMENT. THE SPECTATOR, 99 Gower Street,...

SIR, —While agreeing heartily with your condemnation of evil speaking in political discussion, I fear you are wrong in supposing that such debate has never in our history been...

Byzantine Mosaic Decoration. Aspects of Monumental Art hi Byzantium. By Otto Demus. (Kegan Paul. £2 2s.) Three Byzantine Saints. By Elizabeth Dawes and Norman H. Baynes. (Basil...

Johnson: A Summing Up Samuel Johnson. By Joseph Wood Krutch. (CasselL 21s.) Mn. Kama-1's book was first published in New York, with well- deserved success, in 1944. Why, it...

Irish Tracts and Sermons. By Jonaligur swift. Edited by Herbert Davis. (Blackwell. 14s.) VOLUME IX of Professor Davis's great edition is as brilliantly edited and as...

Rabelais : His Life. The 'story told by him, selections therefrom here newly translated, and an interpretation of his genius and his religion. By John Cowper Powys. (The Bodley...

Caroline Norton. By Mice Arland. (Constable. 16s.) IT is a pity that this extremely readable biography is so short. The zoo-odd pages are not enough. One wants more—more of Mrs....

HAVING just travelled to the Cape with families and individuals who were intending to settle in South Africa or Southern Rhodesia, and then back, after several months in...

The Battle of the Atlantic, 1939-1943. By Samuel Eliot Morison. (Geoffrey Cumberlege : Oxford University Press. 30s.) Everyman's History of the Sea War. VoL I. By A. C. Hardy....

8s. 6d.) "You have erred perhaps in attempting to put colour and life into each of your statements, instead of confining yourself to the task of placing upon record that severe...

S E C r+ % LaRn I I ERIAAlNA RNF r'iU 6 I s Oman c 7ERIIALL /is, Ai° C E E 11A ffiEVIS 0111A 1111 T1 iT E - 6111 1 o■P E , R H ROUND LE ON Ni MIN u 0 T4.E,R T s 1 111W...

[A Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution of this week's crossword to be opened "after noon on Tuesday week Yuly 27th. Envelopes...

Before the Deluge. BY Mark Aldanov, translated from the Russian by Emily. By James Hartley. (Nicholson & Watson. 8s. 6d.) The Last Enchantments. By Robert Liddell. (Cape. 8s....

By CUSTOS IF technical conditions alone provided a safe guide to the Stock Exchange outlook one could reasonably expect a substantial improve- ment from today's levels in. the...

British Chess. By Kenneth Matthews. (Britain in Pictures. Coffins. 5s.) WHEN the German champion Bogoljubow found himself out of form at the Nottingham Tournament of 1936 he...