I N the election of Professor Theodor Heuss as first President of the West German Republic the Bundestag and the representatives of the Lander, on whom the responsibility was...

It is in some sense a victory of realism over idealism that the first meeting, on Saturday, of the Defence Council created by the Atlantic Treaty should have to be rated as...

It is such a remarkable feat for any French Government to remain in office for a whole year, that to ask for evidence of its accomplish- ments, other than that of survival, is...

Another question designed to cause the United Nations Assembly anxious moments is, once more, Palestine, and that on two grounds. The conference which has so long been sitting...

The word "disgusted " seems to be very fashionable among members of the National Union of Railwaymen. It appears in a fair number of the resolutions from district meetings which...

Considerable weight must attach to the evidence given before the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment at the end of last week; consisting as it did of testimony by the Chief...

The attention of the world may before - long be called forcibly to the smallest of the Balkan States, and in some ways the worst conducted, Albania. Her behaviour in the matter...

T HE words success and failure were always a little too crude to be applied to the results, prospective or actual, of the Washington talks on the dollar problem. It was never in...

Paul's last Sunday was a matter of more than ordinary interest, and it is providential that representatives of the Evening Standard and the Daily Telegraph were included in the...

Cultural Organisation) is wanting to increase its expenditure by a million dollars in the coming year is likely to meet with a chilly reception in this country—which would have...

that Ashridge- meaning by that not the institution's formal existence, but all that Ashridge has succeeded in being in the last three orfour years— is finished, but it looks...

Manning was once a clerk in the Colonial Office. It was immediately after he came down from Balliol—in December, 1830—and he held the appointment for only two years. The present...

operation) that at a certain London establishment you can have your hair cut by a man who once cut the hair of a man who fought at Trafalgar. Not

success of the air show which ended at Farnborough on Sunday. It came just when British prestige needed a little tonic, and the tonic and its effects were unmistakable. The...

accept no responsilaility for any apparent irreverence in it. That lies with whatever authorities chose to name one girls' school The College of Our Lady and another the College...

By GEORGE PENDLE I IS Majesty's Minister (Commercial) at Washington reported a few days ago: " The United States can produce enough in four hours' work to pay for everything...

By GILBERT MURRAY, O.M. The Fourth Assembly of the United Nations opens next Tuesday. T HE United Nations has on the whole ibad press ; or at least a much worse press than it...

By DOROTHY CRISP W I IEN the " bandits " at present infesting Malaya are written up in a couple of lines in a history text-book, two great and unrecorded movements now...

By 0. F. KNUDSEN B OUT fifty years ago most of the citizens of Oslo were in raptures about a fountain which the up-and-coming Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland was to erect...

By FRANK SYKES I N the report of the last oil-seeds mission to West Africa there was a strong recommendation that superphosphate in pellet form should be distributed to African...

with their children, went on Thursday to Braemar, to witness a fate given by the Braemar Highland Society; at which there was a gathering of Highlanders in national costume, and...

PRINCETON. REUNION By DAVID SYMON (Magdalen College, Oxford) T HE summer term was ending when we arrived at Princeton University. Haggard examinees were looking at the results...

By HAROLD NICOLSON / N common with all those who believe that education, if it is to remain liberal, must be untainted by any social ideologies or party affiliations, I have...

"The Hasty Heart." (Warner.)- 4, Dear Mr. Prohack." (New Gallery and Tivoli.)—" You Can't Sleep Here." (Odeon.)— " Le Secret de Mayerling." (Polytechnic.) THE talking film, we...

THE THEATRE. " Midsummer Day's Dream." By J. B. Priestley. (St. Martin's.) WHAT can best be described as a sturdy defeatism permeates Mr. Priestley's vision of England in...

IT has been a week of anniversary celebrations. The tercentenary of John Blow's birth was fittingly commemorated by the London Opera Club at Hampton Court with a performance of...

THE five programmes with which the B.B.C. is telling the story of the war seem to me to have been excellently designed ; and—to judge from the first two—are being carried out...

War, as the inaugural pro- gramme of the series ; and here was a harder job. War is a com- paratively simple matter ; diplomacy is tortuous—a matter of shades, doubts,...

village, I took a local enter- tainment in Hoppers' Holiday, where Londoners piped up briskly to the microphone from the hop-fields. This was in Hallo Children I which continues...

series on the Third Programme, if perhaps for the wrong reasons. It was agreeable, I mean, to be reminded by Mr. Stephen Potter's The D. H. Lawrence Myths of all that hubbub and...

revised version of Mr. Chester Wilmot's Battle for Britain, first heard in 1947, but now freshened and made more exact by more recently published documents. The facts of the...

Ste,—In his article on social service costs Sir Ronald Davison discusses a suggestion that a charge should be made for " hotel expenses" to reduce the cost of providing hospital...

SIR,—Lord Kemsley was less than fair to Miss Wiskemann in his letter in the Spectator of September 2nd, where he denied his reported remark to Rosenberg without referring to the...

whole of the Dirksen Minute of August 2nd, 1939 (Dirksen Papers No. 23), to which I referred in my article, is incorrect, or whether any of it holds good ? It would be helpful...

STRASBOURG REFLECTIONS Sta,—Now that the first meeting of the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe is over, it may be worth while to record one or two of the...

SIR,—In her review of John Gunther's Behind the Iron Curtain, Elizabeth Wiskemann is critical of his chapter on Italy, on which country she herself, is an authority, but says of...

SIR, —It would be impossible to reply briefly to all the interesting points raised by Dr. Essex-Cater and Mr. Rigby in the Spectator of August 26th ; but I hope you will allow...

the Editor, published in the Spectator of September 9th, Mr. A. M. Low entirely evaded the point at issue, and not very skilfully. Only his right to use the title of professor...

Sra,—I have before me the plans of a group of 50 boys "graduating" in the class of 1949 of a well-known private (in England, public) school in New England. Qn graduation day the...

that the National Union 4 Students was unaware, beforehand, of the political aspect of certain of tEe demonstrations which took place during the World Festival of Youth and...

mentioned so far in the letters you have had on this matter. I refer to the island of Jersey. When Victoria College was founded in 1865, the statutes provided for two...

is a subject difficult to avoid. One of the stronger political bodies consists largely of small farmers, and I doubt whether any country has a rural civilisation more pleasant...

FOR once in a way the British Association was presided over by a farmer, so to call him ; and no one has a deeper knowledge, at least of the science and theory of farming, than...

apples on the tree—at any rate on one F.11ison's Orange—have been reduced to the state of Chinese lanterns. One of my beehives was attacked by a commando of wasps, but they were...

SIR,—Mr . Calpin's interesting article on the Khama-Williams marriage assumes that the world at large knows what an Afrikaner is. I feel sure I am only one of many who do not....

have less effect than rain ? The strange, unprecedented succession of droughts, or near-droughts, has ruined the potato and carrot harvest, dwarfed the Michaelmas daisies and...

any society in order to extract pleasure and knowledge from the observation of birds ; but the latest report of the excellently organised British Trust for Ornithology (with the...

SUBSCRIPTION RATES. Ordbutry Edition by post to any part of the world. 52 weeks fl 10s. Od. World-wide distribution by Air : " All Up" service to all countries in Europe...

Sts,—Apropos of the comments of " Janus " on the use or misuse of words. The advocates of the theory " any old word in any old sense" will find their views most aptly expressed...

Byron and the Guiccioli HERE is a fascinating book : I use the much abused word deliberately. Byron " fans " will tumble over each other to buy or borrow it ; and the common...

The Claims of the Free Churches. By Henry Townsend, D.D. (Hodder and Stoughton. 15s.) The Claims of the Free Churches. By Henry Townsend, D.D. (Hodder and Stoughton. 15s.) IN...

The Origins of Modern Science, 1300-1600. By H. Butterfield. (Bell. 10s. 6d.) " THE first distemper of learning," said Bacon, " is when men study words and not matter." For...

Craigavon: Ulsterman. By St. John Ervine. (Allen and Unwin. 35s.) MR. ST. JOHN ERVINE has set out to do three things ; has succeeded brilliantly in two of them and failed in...

The Coming of the First World War. By Nicholas Mansergh. (Long- mans, Green. 15s.) PROFESSOR MANSERGH'S book is sub-titled A Study in the European Balance, 1878-1914. According...

Noble Lord: The Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury. By Barbara Black- burn. (Home and Van Thal. 15s.) To do this book full justice the reviewer should not have read the Hammonds'...

John McCormack. By L. A. G. Strong. (Peter Nevill. 15s.) " LEONARD. D'ye know what's wrong with that book ye wrote about me ? " Yes, John.' So do I' His head and shoulder ,...

Castles from the Air. With an Introduction and Notes by W. Douglas Simpson. (Country Life. 30s.) THIS book is both delightful and instructive. Aerial photography is particularly...

Popcorn on the Ginza. An Informal Portrait of Post-War Japan. By Lucy Herndon Crockett. (Gollancz. 15s.) IN Manila about this time four years ago, with all his landing-craft...

The Dark Peninsula. By Ernest Frost. (Lehmann. 9s. 6d.) SOME miscellaneous " don'ts," if I may, for novelists:— Don't be possessed by ideas, even by unspoken ideas. To adapt a...

one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct !Amnon of this week's crossword to be opened alter noon on Tuesday week. September 27th. Envelopes must be referred...

Gardens, Edinburgh, 12. The winner of Crossword No. 545 is: Miss E. C. PATERSON, 42, Murrayfield

By CUSTOS INVESTORS' first reactions to the outcome of the Washington con- ference have been appropriately cautious. No hats have been thrown in the air and, apart from some...

Popular Art in the United States. By Erwin 0. Christensen. (King Penguin Books. 2s. 6d.) MR. CHRISTENSEN briefly discusses the various European origins of American popular art...