ESTABLISHED 1828 No. 6 6 6 0 FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1956 PRICE 7d.

B RITISH Middle Eastern policy is a failure. That is the lesson of the Washington talks. Out of all the discussions between President Eisenhower and Sir Anthony Eden has come...

TN February last year, seventeen months after the Royal 'Commission on Capital Punishment had submitted its report, the Home Secretary said that the Government had provisionally...

T HE results of the Maltese referendum have naturally been claimed as a victory both by the supporters and the oppon- ents of integration. Mr. Mintoff, indeed, only polled 45...

RITAIN'S overseas trade fared badly in January. The D import bill was the highest on record for any month, with the exception of March last year. Exports still showed little...

T HE cold has been international this week. There have been disastrous avalanches in Yugoslavia, the Spanish orange crop has been ruined, and US transport aircraft have been...

By RICHARD H. ROVERE G ENERAL of the Army Douglas MacArthur has for many years been addicted to the conspiracy theory of history. MacArthur is a True Believer—not a rank-...

of the Spectator arrive late. We regret any short- comings in this issue and also any inconvenience that may be caused by circumstances beyond our control.

BY HENRY FAIRLIE T the moment of writing the debate on capital punish- ment has not been held, but whatever the result of the free vote, it seems clear that much will depend on...

BY CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS Go, for they call you, Sparrow, from the Hall. Go, Sparrow, and collect your promised votes. The traffic makes life hideous in the High, And all the...

LOVERS OF CIVIL LIBERTIES will, no doubt, be suitably pained to learn that Donald Maclean should have been followed by plain-clothes policemen wherever he went before his flight...

military leaders , gain and keep their reputations: Haig's, for example—'Wherever he was, nameless waves of some sort rippled out through an uncharted ether, convexing some...

Regius Pro- fessor of Modern History at Cambridge writes about him on another page. Sir Winston Churchill. Sir George Clark, Professor Butterfield among others intend to...

days ago he tried to prove, in a letter to The Times, that commercial tele- vision is doing as much for the serious viewer as the BBC. His thesis was turned upside down, shaken,...

the last place 1 should have expected Burgess and Maclean to choose for their reappearance. — Daily Telegraph. February 13, p. 6. THE Room in which we met was heavy with...

Mrs. Kirk last week. Searching for a topic to chill the hearts of viewers as morbidly as the BBC's Quatermass serial, Associated Rediffusion have lighted upon the Law. Last...

BY CHARLES CURRAN I N a previous article I attempted to outline the New Estate of the realm that has been created by the great resettlement of wealth and population in Great...

is a penalty. . . Telegraph, February 11. PHAROS

E XACTLY one hundred years ago, at the :end of . January, 1856, Macaulay went down from the .Albany to Kensington to view Holly Lodge, which he proposed to buy; with him went...

By OXONIAN IF EW recent events in Oxford—not excluding even the' great road question—have made more of a splash in the outside world than the closely contested election on...

By D. W. BROGAN ARYLAND, my Maryland,' has lost its most famous M son and the chief city of the Free State its most devoted citizen. For above all else, Henry Louis Mencken was...

By JOHN BETJEMAN T he recent keen frosty air has made me acutely aware of London's skyline. Things stand out sharply and I wonder whether we arc right, even in the acute housing...

Gordon Society, but is the Society in danger of encouraging the very evil that it hopes to defeat? Sometimes an attack on an undesirable book serves as an advertisement. I know...

The New Estate Charles Curran Burke or Gallup ? William Gregory The John Gordon Society Christine Thomson, A. Livesey, Peter Wildeblood, Helen Montgomery War Correspondents '...

been received for membership of the John Gordon Society. Individual replies will be sent as promptly as possible, with an invitation to attend the first General Meeting of the...

week of his intention to form a John Gordon Society, must have been surprised to find himself being reviled in the Sunday Express by the very object of his admiration. A...

Euston 3221

Sir,—In discussing the general principle in- volved—that politicians should act on their own judgement and not 'abdicate their responsibilities' to public opinion polls—it is,...

a distinguished journalist who, when he laid down his pen for a while, soldiered with distinction. So there is double weight behind his attack on war correspondents (in review-...

and make formal application for membership? In appreciation of the wholesome work undertaken, I should like to present a portrait of Mr. Gordon to be hung in the Society's...

Mr. Wilson, 'or indeed of anything else simply because the Russians or the Americans have launched a bigger one, is to do it for the wrong reason.' Why? What about competitive...

Harold Danby's letter in your issue of February 10 is 'yes'. An altar is a place of sacrifice. At the Reformation the sacrifice of the Mass was rejected by the Church of...

SIR,—Some of your readers may have been interested in the remarks of Mr: George Goyder in the discussion, 'Root of All Evil,' which was broadcast on the Home Service on December...

is no altar in the Church of England. While the Prayer Book always refers to the Holy Table, and employs no other term, the Coronation Rites which arc formularies of the Church...

27, 1955, from the wife of Archdeacon Donnithorne. This lady has been able, through money specially given for the purpose in response to my urgent appeals, to help some of the...

SIR,—One sentence in Roger Falk's very in- teresting 'African Journey' may perhaps cause misunderstanding. He mentions the possibility of 'the coming end of Nigerian unity.' Let...

The revival of La Traviata at Sadler's Wells is as thoroughly satisfying a 'presentation of this opera as any London has seen lately. It holds a nice balance between the...

F E. MACWILLIAM, who is holding a large exhibition of his recent sculpture at the Hanover Gallery, is a very serious, gifted and imaginative artist whose work has not received...

'Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral.' Famous words, which affect any of us who have read about the Thirties like some- thing dimly remembered from the Berlin of Sally...

ONE of our modern poets, it may be remem- bered, was moved to describe the English Mid- lands as 'sodden and unkind.' This evening, however, ITA shock-troops are due to bring...

PICNIC. ..(Odeon.)—THE Rosa TA1700. (Gaumont.) JOSHUA Lobst4,• who is famed for his stage productions in America, has transferred Daniel Taradash's Picnic, which he directed in...

FEBRUARY 19, 1831 WORKHOUSE MERCIES.—A person nettled Hughes, master of Hackney Workhouse. wa s on Monday charged before the Magistrates of Worship Street with flogging a...

Close Thy Wells BY MICHAEL OAKESHOTT p ROFESSOR BARRACLOUGH is a pugnacious writer. In each of the papers he has gathered together in this book* he enters the ring for another...

PETER THE GREAT. By C. de Grunwald. (Douglas Saunders with MacGibbon and Kee, 21s.) M. DE GRUNWALD is an old hand at the popularisation of Russian history. Rather too old a...

MARIE CORELLI : The Story of a Friendship. By William Stuart Scott. (Hutchinson, 16s.) THE late nineteenth century in England produced a plethora of women writers, good, bad and...

ONE of the Professors of History at Yale University has been so much impressed by the historic importance of the actions of the Chinese Communist Government that he has devoted...

THE RISE AND FALL OF NAZI GERMANY. By T. L. Jarman. (Cresset Press, 25s.) MR. JARMAN has given us a competent history of the Third Reich in The Rise and Fall of Nazi Germany....

ENGLISH THOUGHT, 1860-1900: THE THEOLOGICAL ASPECT. By L. E. Elliott-Binns. (Longmans, 28s.) THE opening chapters of this book are concerned with the impact of natural science,...

SELECTED LETTERS OF HENRY JAMES. Edited and introduced by Leon Edel. (Hart-Davis, 16s,) OUT of James's 7,000 extant letters, a selection of 120 can only in the sketchiest way be...

COAL IS OUR BUSINESS. By Norman Dennis, Fernando Henriques, and Clifford Slaughter. (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 25s.) SoctoLoolcm. studies are not everybody's literary meat, but...

BEGINNERS. PLEASE. (Eyre and Spottiswoode for the Investors' Chronicle, 30s.) • QUESTIONS from keen shareholding readers, and answers from the staff of the investors'...

Tim RESTORATION OF CHAitt.ti§ II, 1658-1660. By Godfrey Davies. (0.U.P.; 55s.) IT, is nearly a hundred years since S. R. Gardiner began to write his History of England from the...

'His early works,' we read in the introduction to Junichiro Tanizaki's novel, Some Prefer Nettles (Seeker and Warburg, 12s. 6c1.), `were written under the influence less of...

Ball, (Heinemann, 18s.) MR. BALL has led a dedicated and interesting life. Joining the Church Army, he testified from Hyde Park to Blackpool and from Waikaremoana to Dartmoor....

We kept an aquarium for a long time and had perch and later goldfish. For a brief period we even had tropical fish. In spite of warnings about temperature changes they did well,...

J. D. Scott and Richard Hughes. (H.M. Stationery Office and Longmans, 37s. 6d.) THIS is a detailed and comprehensive review, in the series The History of the Second World War,...

Old fruit trees are sometimes ringed and sometimes root pruned. In general, to prune cut half the main roots one season and complete the next. Fibrous roots are never touched...

BY IAN NIALL I HAVE just received a reprint copy of The Country Code and, if volumes more could be written to establish common ground between, townsman and countryman, at least...

of a theatre annual his own highly individual impressions of the plays and his own selection of contributions from people Who are supposed to know about one side of the theatre...

Logs of beech wood burn too fast, There's a fire that will not last. Chestnut's only good they say, If for long it's laid away. Poplar makes a bitter smoke, Fills your eyes...

BY PHILIDOR No. 37. K. A. K. LARSEN (1st Prize, `Good Companions' 1920) BLACK (12 men) WHITE (11 men) WarrE to play and mate in two moves. solution next week. Solution to...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT AMERICAN economists are busy debating the question whether there will be a recession in the United States this year. The answer is of vital interest to...

By CUSTOS THE outstanding feature of the stock markets has been the slump in Government credit. This is not the usual way to describe a fall in gilt-edged stocks but it follows...

ACROSS 1 Underground route to the Oval in August perhaps,(4, 4). 5 He was charged not to scorn the sonnet (6). 9 A clean sweep round a northern deity makes for culture (8)....

2 31 The winners of Crossword No, 873 are: Dr. H. S. Gerrard, 30 Oflerto il Road, Hazel Grove, Stockport, and Mrs. A. Robinson , 4 HollysliaW Crescent, Whitkirk, Leeds 15,

A prize of £5 was offered for an alternative version (not a.. parody) of the first two lines of Landor's famous quatrain I strove with none; for none was worth my strife;...

English verse of the following (no line limit, but conciseness will score): Ecce auctor magicus, quo non expertior alter delectare animos lion inum risusque movere. nainque...