The impatience which what must be termed the dithering of the Foreign Ministers' deputies at Paris inevitably arouses is not to be laid at the door of the Soviet delegate alone....

HE first condition for an international meeting of Ministers, such as that which has taken place in London this week between the Italian Prime Minister, Signor De Gasped, his...

All the lessons of the Gambia poultry scheme are elementary lessons. It is elementary economics that there are no automatic benefits and plenty of obvious dangers in large-scale...

As the United Nations' advance towards the 38th Parallel continues against light and ineffective opposition, it becomes increasingly clear that General Ridgway's appointment to...

Mr. Menzies' decision to ask the Governor-General for a dissolution of both Houses of the Australian Parliament is obviously right. The Senate's refusal to pass the dis- puted...

Parliament is an august body, but it can sometimes be unduly touchy. The wrangle on a question of privilege in the House of Commons on Tuesday did no one any credit. Since the...

There has never been in this country much disposition to take seriously the demand of Persian nationalists that their oil industry should be nationalised. The Persian...

is doing a good piece of work. It seems to be less generally realised that it could do its work much better if it could be reasonably certain of adequate finance. During the...

T HE strain, on one side of the House, of striving to kill the Government and, on the other, of fighting to keep it alive is producing a morbid condition. Suppressed fever grips...

The sense of proportion and reality in naval matters, which seemed in some danger of being lost in the uproar over the appointment of an American admiral as Supreme Allied Com-...

I T was clearly right that Mr. Bevin should resign. To say that does not, of course, imply the least disparagement of the high qualities he exhibited in the post of Foreign...

should withdraw from Hong Kong and bring to an end its parti- cipation in the Korean war. So, at least, I learn from the Daily Worker which alone (so far as I have noticed) saw...

World Peace has been formed, with one name in the list of its backers which I hold in great respect. There may be something it can do, but if a multiplicity of societies could...

sible for them to give more than the briefest reference, if any reference at all, to proceedings in Parliament on a Wednesday, readers of this column have had to wait till now...

by a reindeer -lunch. I can but express satisfaction that the Reindeer Council of Great Britain has secured the permission of the Secretary of State for Scotland (subject to...

G ENERAL EISENHOWER'S statement about the possible use of the atomic bomb in the event of a war with RusSia or any other aggressor is bound to raise considerable controversy....

same day. Here, again, the facts were not disputed. The Yorkshire Electricity Board is establishing its regional offices in a country house near Leeds. Extensive alterations...

By MARK ARNOLD-MRS - WI Bonn, Berlin and Leipzig. March I F the Occupying Powers really want to reunite this country, they will have to do it soon—for the links which bind the...

By Wing-Commander P. B. LUCAS, D.S.O., M.P. 0 NE crisp and sunny morning in the early spring of 1942 a German fighter-pilot baled out over Malta. His name was Kurt Lauinger....

By M. PHILIPS PRICE, M.P. T HE assassination of the Persian Prime Minister has brought into relief the unstable nature of one of the important key positions on the edge of the...

By D. W. BROGAN S IXTY-ODD years ago a zealous Y.M.C.A. instructor in Springfield, Mass., was perplexed by the problem of what to get his lads to do in the long New England...

By TREVOR PHILPOTT LO CALLY they are known as the Saints. But until you have looked down the row of open-mouthed, mud-spattered faces, until you have seen the gigantic,...

AGAINST the white of the snow, three nuns, mourning for the lost spring, go about collecting widow's mites, rich men's gains, with hands softly folded against the cold. One,...

The Road to Fleet Street AD it not been for the illness which obliged me to post- pone my final examinations last summer. I might never have appreciated the pitfalls of modern...

THE ARCH FIEND WHAT to do with the Marble Arch ? was the great question of 1850 ; and genius, roaming through the Woods and Forests, hit upon the expedient of sending it to...

By HAROLD NICOLSON I DO not think that I could really like a person who was contemptuous about fairs. Such heaviness of spirit implies a mind as impervious as synthetic rubber,...

THEATRE "count Your Blessings." By Ronald Jeans. (Wyndham's.) MR. AND MRS. BUrrERWORTH. have two interrelated projects for keeping the wolf from the door of their rather large...

" The Browning Version." (Odeon.)--“ Les Casse-Pieds." (Cameo - Polytechnic.) MR. TERENCE RatrmAN's portrait of a schoolmaster who has failed both in his private and In his...

elapse since seeing this show before beginning to write my notice, and now to my embarrassment 1 find it is a real effort to remember more than a few scrappy things about it. No...

Alms, (temporarily known as Macadam) revisits.a Scottish seaside town in pursuit of a young woman named Evelyn: she and her 1 )k)-friend, a medical student, are staying at a...

To perform a whole act of the Ring is probably the only satis- factory way of transferring Wagner to the concert-hall. No act lends itself so well to this translation as the...

QurrE the most impressive and exciting event of recent weeks has been the re-opening of seventeen more galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where it is now possible to...

Report by Owen Tweedy A prize of £5 was offered for not more than twelve lines of the National Anthem of one of the following States : Erewhon. Ruritania, Lilliput. What are...

Set by Barbara Worsley-Gough A prize of £5, which may be divided, is offered for an excerpt from a speech by Disraeli, while Leader of the Opposition, attacking the project...

SIR,—In his review of Dr. Paul Schmidt's Hitler's Interpreter. Mr. Francis Gower makes no reference to what is surely a most astonishing revelation on page 37. Dr. Schmidt...

SIR.—In a book review in your issue of March 9th Wilson Harris writes: "It is highly doubtful whether there ever was a flight into Egypt ; to accept it means rejecting...

SIR.—I was charmed by Virginia Graham's article. It is so true. Yet it is my good fortune to live among boys of prep. school age who delight in their Shakespeare and read it...

Section 47 S111,—In your issue of March 9th you published a letter from "Consul- tant Physician " in which he stated that he took exception to the provisions contained in...

Sta.—Inasmuch as something very like a Commonwealth of Churches already exists in the World Council of Churches, a body consisting of accredited delegates from most of the...

about the lawns, I have apppre- ciated once more the use of an old dessert-knife, discarded from the kitchen as being too worn. It can be sharpened up as one works with it,...

EiR,—With reference to Mr. Smallwood's query. Langouste is the French popular name for Pa!haunts rulgaris (Fabricius. 1798), the " spiny lubsier " or "sea crayfish," while...

LAST week I overheard a conversation between two farmers in the bar parlour of an ancient hotel in Lewes. The setting was a relic of that Dickens-cum-Washington Irving picture...

Stg,—As a bookseller and a regular reader of A Spectator's Notebook, I protest against the direction in the notes, March 9th, to your readers re Let's Halt Awhile. to obtain...

The road back from Lewes along the mid-Weald to West Kent runs along the top of a ridge which gives some of the finest views in the south of England. It passes through...

S►a,—With reference to the letter from Mr. Sturge of the Friends House appealing for blankets for Berlin which were to be sent to an address in Pimlico. May I point out that...

I T is comforting to suppose that even the most consistently hard- boiled and self-confident critic n4ight find himself shaken by affectionate embarrassment as he began to...

Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy. Selected and Edited by Jana Degras. Volume I. 1917-1924. (Oxford University Press for Royal Institute of International Affairs. 42s.) A YEAR...

Hitler's Last Days ON May 1st, 1945, the news of Hitler's death was broadcast to a doubting world. No proof immediately followed, and speculation throve in its absence. To Mr....

Talcs From Hoffmann. Translated by various hands, edited and with, an introduction by J. M. Cohen. With illustrations by Gavarni, (Bodley Head. i6s.) Mosr of us in England have...

The Riddle of MacArthur. By John Gunther. (Hamish- Hamilton. 12$. 6d.) Mosr Englishmen are unaware that there is any riddle of MacArthur. They know him primarily as...

the Malay Magician. By Richard Vinstedt. (Routledge and Kegan Paul. 143.) who Jive in China for many years (in it, that is, not on it) ;become in some measure Chinese,...

English Inn Signs: A Ikevised and Modern Version of History of Signboards. By Jacob Larwood and John Camden fintien. (Chatto and Windus. 423.) The sub-title of this version of...

Winter in London. By Ivor Brown. (Collins. 125. 6d.) THIS is not just another guide-book to London. Americans have never used their legs to walk, and Londoners seem likely soon...

CANON LLOYD belongs to a very particular generation of railway enthusiasts. He is among those who enjoyed, as young children, the last few years of the independent railway in...

this week turned out to be the worst. So I shall start with the best of some second-raters on the principle that it's more fun to reign in a jolly hell than preen it in a dreary...

fiftieth anniversary of whose death fell on January 27th last. Francis Toye, whose biography of the composer did much to revive and guide enthusiasm for Verdi's music in this...

Bruce. (Pickering & Inglis. t 2s. 6d.) Fun writer, who is head of the Department of Biblical History and Literature in Sheffield University, expresses the hope that his book...

it ubject, apart from fanatical specialists who ight know all there is to know about the ulture of individual groups of plants. And or this reason the general gardener seems...

kite Life of Robert Burns. By Catherine I N his note to this new edition of his m ther's much-discussed work, Mr. John rswell suggests that a second edition Which merely...

the Women's Institutes, with a foreword by the Countess of Albemarle. It is an interesting account, illustrated by numerous photographs, of the many useful activities of this...

By CUSTOS Btiooer shadows across the stock markets are now perceptibly lengthening and there is much less business than a few weeks ago. Gilt-edged prices and the general level...

The winner of Crossword No. 616 Is MRS. BURNEY, 39a St. Giles', Oxford.

(A Book Token for one guinea will be .,warded to the sender of the first correct solution of this week's crossword to be opened after noon on Tuesday week, March 27th. Envelopes...