The section of the communiqué which deals with Rhodesia deserves to be read with some attention. It is, in all major clauses, a tactical victory for Mr Wilson. This is clear...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY By ALAN WATKINS I T is not altogether surprising that the last re- shuffle received less attention than it deserved. The changes were announced...

Boys and girls come out to play. Fair enough; but who shall say In this age of wheel and whirl Which is boy and which is girl? Woman, in her hours of ease Still respondent...

AMERICA AT MIDTERM-1 From DAVID WATT WASHINGTON E XPERIENCED politicians usually admit that a situation is crucial only when they are con- fident that they have it sewn up....

AMERICA AT MIDTERM - 2 By KEITH KYLE The notion of minorities earning complete acceptance by exemplary civic virtue, the en- forcement of total silence about racial character-...

MIDDLE EAST By D. C. WATT T HE ethics of the international arms trade are always rather peculiar. But the recent splurge of British arms sales in the states around the Persian...

September 15, 1866 The week has been very damp and depress- ing. . . . The only variations in the weather of importance have been for the last three weeks that sometimes it has...

rr HE week has seen some curious expressions I of the democratic process. In South Vietnam the elections seem to have produced various losers but it's hard to name a winner. The...

THE MIDDLE CLASSES By ANGUS MAUDE, MP I BOLD every man,' said Francis Bacon, 'a debtor to his profession, from the which as men do of course seek to receive countenance and...

THE PRESS By DONALD McLACHLAN As I read Hugh Cudlipp laying into Harold Wilson week after week, demanding tough- ness and obstinacy about the incomes policy, insisting that we...

each week, you may like to know that a comprehensive index to it is published twice a year. The index costs 7s. 6d. each issue, and that for the six months July-December...

CRIME By GILES PLAYFAIR A COUPLE of years ago, I was interviewed in a radio programme on the subject of penal reform. My interrogator happened to be a well- known political...

By TIBOR SZAMUELY T HE best way of finding out how Russians actually live—short of going to live there oneself—is not by examining statistical yearbooks, still less by going on...

TELEVISION By STUART HOOD My' anticipation of the day when I can watch, say, a censure debate was made livelier than ever by the coverage of the Trades Union Congress. Who...

Hit Me Again, You Rotters By JOHN WELLS THERE must, I imagine, be times in the life of every sensitive creative artist when he stares himself blearily in the face in the...

subtly in his article last week was perhaps intended to move the reader to ask why Mr Wilson does not imitate the great statesman and form a coalition government to deal with...

title of Stuart Hood's article is the implication that those who dare to speak out about a public service, i.e. the BBC, are overstepping the mark and forgetting themselves. It...

SIR,—According to official but incomplete figures, German dead in the Second World War were just over ten million, including civilians in air raids, on treks from the east and...

SIR,—I thank Mrs Winifred Ewing for her list of the trades and professions of Scottish National party candidates (Letters, September 9). It reads like T. S. Eliot's 'Triumphal...

than his usual clarity, should have failed to make clear certain points about 1931, since, as he rightly says, the story has often been distorted. It simply is not true that...

R. Freeman, B. L. Alexander, A. J. L. Barnes, Nicholas Davenport, William Empson, Sarah Gainham, Ludovic Kennedy, Mrs Mary Whitehouse, T. A. Sandrock, Norman Sherry, Miss...

Health ploy in thinking that the doctors' pay award has been backdated. It hasn't. Briefly, the award was from April 1, 1966. It was frozen for six months in March, conforming...

of Finnegans Wake' is very interesting, and one day if I am spared I will try to decide what the episode means. Joyce might (just) be saying that the world needed God, but not...

SIR,—I have returned from Singapore to learn of Miss Allen's letter to the SPECTATOR of August 5, 1966. Because of the implications of her letter, I should like to make known...

SJR,—Regarding Leslie Adrian's note about dairies (September 9): Running twelve milk rounds, I find it is a lot of work for a moderate return. Dairies can send bills like any...

Stn,—Donald McLachlan's interesting article, 'Men off the Beat' (September 9) may have given your readers a slightly misleading picture of the situation in the Metropolitan...

GIN"o By BRYAN ROBERTSON d E notes which follow don't attempt a efinitive series of explanations, quoting chapter and verse, because the ramifications of kinetic and optical...

BALLET tory, to say the least, plumped out with such little quaintnesses as when the Season Fairies divertissement is encumbered with cohorts of child performers—the ultimate...

What's Up? FrilERE have been more than forty new plays I in London this year: we have seen abortion on the stage, and killer washing-machines, pot- tered up and down inside the...

VENICE FILM FESTIVAL T HE most generous explanation for the pre- vailing lack of distinction in the 1966 Venice Festival is that it hasn't been a very good year for the movies....

M U SIC HERE were three Prom performances under I Sir Malcolm Sargent last week that brought men up from the cells, put them on appeal and pleaded their case persuasively....

By MARTIN SEYMOUR-SMITH Life itself need not do so, of course: it may lead nowhere, and appear disappointing as a result. Such a reader might often kick himself for wanting to...

IT WAS in the great tent at Vereeniging, set up for their use by the victorious Kitchener, that the near-defeated Afrikaner leaders, on May 29, 1902, met to discuss the terms...

he remains the young fiery protestant hero of the first war, its foist poet after Wilfred Owen. If we have grown 41d along with Eliot and stayed youthful with Sassoon, it is not...

He left the circus, settled in Coleraine, Wild, stylish, garrulous, uneducated, And met this lovely Presbyterian Whose face he worshipped, and whose views he hated. She came...

Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psy- chology and Religious Belief. By Ludwig Wittgenstein. Edited by Cyril Barrett. (Blackwell, 12s. 6d.) THIS is not, strictly, a...

The Frontiers of China. By Francis Watson. (Chatto and Windus, 30s.) THE author of this book has provided an ex- cellent comprehensive survey of the problems of China's...

To carry the child into adult life Is good? I say it is not, To carry the child into adult life Is to be handicapped. The child in adult life is defenceless And if he is...

Alley Jaggers. By Paul West. (Hutchinson, 25s.) A Dear Hungarian Friend. By Bernard Glemser. (Macdonald, 25s.) I Can See You But You Can't See Me. By Eugene George. (Hamish...

ECOKOMV 4CE1 - 0 5 N--_ By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT O N the eve of his departure for Montreal j and the IMF annual meeting, Mr Callaghan delivered in Cardiff a rousing speech which...

ACROSS.-t Ballet dancer. 8 Unpackers. 9 Cover. is Eloper. x2 Upraised. 14 Outfitters. 16 Iron. 18 Semi. x9 Stovepipes. 21 Eardrums. 22 Casbah. 25 Asian. z6 New Mexico. 27 Demon-...

ACROSS Charon might get his turn by a fluke! (6) To change course so is enough to make one vexed (3, 5) so. Mum's wise old man gets a good pummelling! (7) It. Prejudiced,...

By JOHN BULL W ALL Street and Throgmorton Street are not the only major trading centres to have had a shake-out this summer. Commodity prices have also been falling. The...

By CUSTOS rTHE market got over its ICI shock more I quickly than most of us expected. By Tues- day the loss had been recovered. This was due partly to better feeling about the...

CONSUMING INTEREST By LESLIE ADRIAN The cases belli of this brief parliamentary exchange of discourtesies was the Food Standards Committee Report on Bread and Flour. Among the...

No. 300 BLACK (8 men) C. MANSFIELD (Problemisr, March 1966) WHITE to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to No. 299 (Marlar): R — Q 5, threat R — K 5. I...

BP8P By STRIX Almost nothing could have been more com- monplace than those two advertisements. Why, then, in Russia did they make so strong an impact, appear so gross an...

Change in South Africa STANLEY UYS One year's subscription to the 'Spectator: f3 I5s. (including postage) in the United Kingdom and Eire. By surface mail to any ether country:...