F EW municipal elections can have brought to a focus so many national and even international issues as those which are to take place in France this week-end. Local questions at...

After avoiding their duty to speak on the Palestine question at the United Nations for so long that at one point Sir Zafrullah Khan proposed that, since no one seemed to want to...

Sir Stafford Cripps and Mr. Herbert Morrison have been sparing no pains in the past week to bring home to the British people the hardships which lie ahead. They have had to face...

The statements of the British and American chairmen of the Anglo-American Control Office on irregularities in the collection and distribution of the German harvest have been so...

The third session of any Parliament (out of a potential five) should have a decisive bearing on the future, for already considera- tions affecting the next General Election must...

Mr. Hugh Gaitskell no doubt owes some of the success of his first statements on the coal situation to the fact that he has taken office at the Ministry of Fuel and Power at the...

E YES in this country are turned with anxiety and some concern towards America. So far as Western Europe is concerned, the whole immediate future hangs on the prospects of the...

House of Commons is one of those appointments that will give equal satisfaction on all benches. Mr. Chuter Ede possesses precisely the combination of firmness, reasonableness...

further (metaphorically) into the dental vagaries of the islanders of Lewis. Their historic capacity to dis- pense with a dentist's attention is, I am assured, due to the fact...

S IDNEY WEBB was the severed half of "we "—tragically severed in these last years since 135atrice Webb's death and his own physical affliction. As it happened, I was to have...

Nothing could leave me colder than the letter in The Times asking for " mementoes " of the militant suffrage movement to add to a museum instituted for such purposes. Women have...

every other across purely artificial boundaries, is notoriously hard to foster, and I have watched with admiration the work the Borough Librarian of St. Pancras i doing in the...

Application for information is rarely made here in vain. I asked last week if anyone could do what no one connected with West- minster seems able to do—throw light on the prayer...

way of the Marshall Plan. An American Congressman asked this week in a perfectly friendly way, "You're suffering from a shortage of railway trucks, aren't you ? " "Yes." "Trucks...

By BARBARA CASTLE, M.P. T HE cotton industry is shaking its head doubtfully over the new export target which has been fixed for it ; not so much from the point of view of...

By SHIELA GRANT DUFF Prague T HERE has been a very rapid deterioration in the political situa- tion in Czechoslovakia in recent weeks. One acute and well-informed observer...

By DINGLE FOOT A PARADISE of town planning and social reform. That almost certainly is the average Englishman's idea of Sweden and, so far as it goes; it is reasonably near to...

By T. K. DERRY To watch the swirl of the tides at the Kyle, to hear the strange harmonies of a Gaelic service at the summer sacra- ment, to smell the crofter's peat drying, to...

By PHILIP T. OYLER I MET recently an English farmer who had just spent a short 1 holiday in Switzerland. He travelled by train through France, and remarked to me that we...

By HAROLD NICOLSON I HAVE noticed a curious, and I suppose discreditable, thing about myself. Although I am deeply embarrassed when people lose their tempers with me, and...

LAST Sunday's concerts gave an extraordinarily vivid bird's-eye view of the distance that the art of music has travelled in a single life- time. At Drury Lane there were works...

THE THEATRE "The Man in the Street." By Geoffrey Kerr. (St. James's.) SIR EDWARD HARICALONG is a newspaper proprietor, and the curtain has not been up many jninutes before we...

"Fame is the Spur." (Leicester Square.)—" Bataille du Rail"— " Partie de Campagne." (Academy) ) IT is doubtful whether politics lend themselves with any grace to drama. The...

By what ghost-ridden ways'you come, Red Riding Hood ; how prim and mum Under your sea-silk parasol Bejewelled with quicksilver rain You look for vanished peach and plum. The...

Colquhoun. Colquhoun is now thirty-four, and occupies a rather special position among his contemporaries. Our present pre-eminence in painting in this country arises in part...

the Third Programme last week presented Shakespeare's chronicle plays from Richard II to Richard III in historical sequence on six succes- sive evenings. The intention was, by...

world shortage of food common sense would suggest turning for a period to the inexhaustible food reserves of the high seas to help in the feeding of Germany. There is no world...

SIR, —It is vital at the present time, when future world prosperity is dependent on American political action, that British citizens should under- stand the problem from the...

WHALE-HUNTING FOLLY Sta,—In his article of October 3rd, entitled Whale-hunting Folly, Mr. George Godwin is right to call attention to the whaling situation in the Antarctic,...

Siu,—In view of the discussion which I have aroused, both in your columns and elsewhere, will you allow me to clarify my attitude towards classical education? I regard a...

SIR, —Save Europe Now is opening its third winter campaign for the relief of Europe. The needs are greater than ever ; millions in Europe will be worse fed this winter even,than...

really relevant to take them up on what they say, I would nevertheless recall that, contrary to ignoring the value of studying a foreign language, I started with that as the...

thundered forth. Perhaps nevertheless the coup de grace may be administered by lesser artillery. A university appointments board was recently approached by a famous oil company...

current issue seem to have made one important omission. The New Testament is written in Greek, and this fact alone is a conclusive argument for giving to as many as possible the...

Sta,—Far be it from me to deny Mr. Crossman's sincerity when he reflects on the spiritual qualifications of non-episcopal ministers. But is this the faith of the Church of...

reason, that a knowledge of Latin and Greek helps us to express our meaning clearly, and to undeAtand what we hear or read ; it helps us to share the same grooves of thought...

Sta,—I would not presume for a moment to ask leave to discuss any opinion which one of your reviewers might pass upon a book of mine. But questions of fact are in a different...

Snt,—Your devastating review of Sir Oswald Mosley's The Alternative filled me with joy. But why should Mosley Publications be allowed to obtain paper to publish such stuff at a...

The garden is full of strangely untimely flowers. I have a Viburnum (Tinus) and a Senna in full flower side by side, and apples are blossom- ing here and there in a good many...

Sut,—A considerable number of people with small incomes were induced, in 1937, to join the Voluntary Pensions Scheme and have paid Is. 3d. per week ever since. Under the new...

tried to make some sort of a census of the little webs that netted the mist. They numbered quite thirty to the square yard on a bit of lawn, and were hardly less numerous on the...

write a memoir of T. R. Glover, and I shall be most grateful to any of his friends and acquaintances who can loan me letters or furnish me with reminiscences.—Yours faithfully,...

ignorance and neglect by bee-keepers ; and it seems that the losses this season in the South- West have been unusually great. Now there was a time (as a Devonshire rector...

Oust autumn is well sprinkled with little summers—the Indian summer, followed by St. Luke's and St. Martin's—and the last, beginning on Armistice Day, is especially impressed on...

a pink flower, especially the hydrangea, often becomes blue, or vice versa, I am informed that the causes were reviewed in the R.H.S. lournal ten years ago. The learned author...

"Old Fitz The Life of Edward FitzGerald. By Alfred McKinley Terhune. (Oxford University Press. 21s.) IT is to be wondered what FitzGerald would have thought of the slightly...

(The fourth of M. Henri Martineau's surveys of new French books.) THERE is Still considerable interest in memoirs written at all epochs of our history or literature—particularly...

The Intelligent Man's Guide to the Post-War World. By G. D. H. Cole. (Gollancz. 21s.) MR. G. D. H. COLE is unquestionably the leading writer of nutshell non-fiction in...

The Building of Bath. By Bryan Little. (Collins. 15s.) IT is possible to misunderstand the architecture of Bath equally by overvaluing it and undervaluing it. The overvaluers...

THE Commission is not the British Royal Commission but an un- official American Commission, representative and influential, presided over by Dr. Robert M. Hutchins, Chancellor...

To the general English reader Arkansas is the outlandish name for an outlandish State of the American Union. The name itself is a stumbling-block for the uninitiated, since it...

It might Happen Again. By Admiral of the Fleet Lord Chatfield. (Heinemann. 18s.) In the struggle to save the Navy from drastic reduction during the 'twenties and then to...

Artists on Art. Edited by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves. (Kegan Paul. 2Is.) ONE need not, as someone said, be a hen to judge an omelette. Among painters it is in fact often...

Growing Pains. By Emily Carr. (Oxford University Press. 21s.) EMILY CARR had the experience of many original artists—misunder- standing, neglect, shocked criticism—so that for...

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By CUSTOS IT is a forceful reminder of the recent change in Stock Exchange sentiment that prices are now vulnerable to even moderately bad news. Nobody could argue that there...

to place a firm order with their newsagent or to take out a subscription Newsagents cannot afford to take the risk of carging stock, as unsold copies are non-return- able....

BROWNING — even in no particular order, with a few of the poems preceded by rather gossipy notes and the rest bare—astonishes again in the ninety pages allotted to him not only...