There is, of course, one essential condition for the effectiveness of the Atlantic Pact. That is that every State concerned is prepared to make an adequate contribution to the...

T HE Atlantic Pact has been agreed on in every detail, and in the absence of some completely unexpected development will be published in a matter of hours. Till the actual text...

With the fall of Mandalay and Maymyo, leaving its authority barely recognised outside Rangoon, it might be supposed that the days of the Burmese Government were numbered. But...

For some years the Americans have grown uneasily resigned to their country's switch from being an exporter to an importer of oil. If it had been true, as some agency reports...

There was one weakness in Mr. Strachey's contention, in the House of Commons debate on groundnuts on Monday, that if the scheme was likely to cost twice as much as originally...

The world is so reluctant to face the prospect of a new flare-up in Palestine that the Israeli Foreign Minister has an eager audience for the soft words which he has been...

A Minister who has to announce the end of .a rationing scheme can hardly go wrong. the public's sense of relief is likely to blanket any mistakes. That is just- as well, for Mr....

bill of fare whit h even the most sluggish political, stomach finds it hard to swallow without some slight disturbance, and there have been several lively scenes in the Commons...

The tactics with which a handful of Communists set out to capture the key positions in the trade unions are becoming fairly widely known. The tactics required to get them out of...

T HERE can be no doubt whitever that the Economic Survey for 1949 is an impressive document, likely to inspire its readers with a sense of achievement in 1948 and with hope of...

Commons on Tuesday was due to the Minister of Health and no one else. For reasons quite inexplicable Mr. Bevan chose to give the House a display of his least engaging...

fortnight ago had, together with comments elsewhere, something to do with the decision of the University Grants Committee not only to agree to the increase of the salaries of...

Clement Danes was to be regarded as the official church of the Royal Air Force should be carried further. I should have been sur- prised if the report had been true, for it...

reading to the Simplified Spelling Bill. It would have shown greater wisdom if it had refused it by a larger majority. The supporters of the Bill showed no realisation of the...

private businesses if they were run as some Government depart- ments are. For example, someone I know (I know him all too well) early in 1946 took a small house which had just...

There were reasons for the error, but no matter. Let me offer now: GLENVIL HALL ATTACKS DALTON WHISPER TALES

By TANYA MATTHEWS* I N the small hall of the Tenth Correctional Court in Paris—high windows, four dusty chandeliers and a bust of the French Republic—whose walls are more...

By EDWARD HODGKIN O N April 7th more than 300 candidates will offer themselves before the people of London for election to 129 seats on the London County Council. The men and...

By D. R. GILLIE Paris T O the question, " Where is France's frontier ? " M. Ramadier, Minister of National Defence, gave the answer in the course of a debate on military...

By SIR JOCELYN LUCAS, M.P. B ADGERS were among the animals the hunting of which was to be prohibited under the recent Blood Sports Bill to which the House of Commons declined...

DOMINION OF ZAMBEZIA ? By R. W. STEEL S O familiar are we with conferences that break up after weeks in discord or after months with no visible results that a meeting...

INSIDE CANNON STREET By SHALOM NEWMAN (London School of Economics) B RITISH railway stations are monuments to Ugliness. An omnipotent deity has supervised every detail....

By HAROLD NICOLSON I N a Sunday newspaper last week I was quoted as saying that only one man in a thousand was really a bore and that he was interesting as being one man in a...

THE THEATRE Caligula. By Albert Camus. (Embassy.) IN Paris after the Liberation the Caligula of Camus was a sadistic young philosopher who gave the remarkable actor Gerard...

"Queen of Spades." (Warner.)--" A Yankee in King Arthur's Court." (Carlton.)—" Floodtide." (New Gallery and Tivoli.) MR. ANATOLE DE GRUNWALD has taken Pushkin's story The Queen...

THE Brahms Requiem, a plotless French ballet to the music of the Tristan Prelude and Liebestod, Gigli in the Albert Hall and two chamber-music concerts—the week has not lacked...

SUBSCRIPTION RATES Ordinary edition to any address in the World. 52 weeks £1 103. Od. 26 weeks 15s. Od. Air Mail to any Country in Europe. 52 weeks £2 7s. 6d. 26 weeks £1 3s....

THE most wholly successful records are those of Mozart's D major violin concerto played by Heifetz and conducted by Beecham (H.M.V.). The Concertgebouw Orchestra under van...

RICHARD EURIC.H, in his new exhibition at the Redfern Gallery, seems a little ill at ease. Having forged a technique of skilful and delicate assurance, he appears not altogether...

SIR,—It is, of course, not in dispute that the Masai had, as Mr. R. S. Ryder observes, been weakened by pestilence and famine " just before we appeared on the Kenya scene." But...

WHAT WALES WANTS Sm,—Professor Gruffydd's reasoning in his article on What Wales Wants is not very impressive ; he says that Welsh demands are not primarily political, and then...

11th, lists the wrongs suffered by one little country, Wales. I, Sir, beg leave to list some of the wrongs of another little country, England. The Professor considers it a...

StR,—The practice in certain hospitals of forbidding parents to see children at all while they are patients seems to me to raise a grave issue of parental rights. I took the...

siR,—Is it not astounding to find in the Spectator a sweeping statement like that made by your correspondent Miss Elinor Moore; " I have it on good authority that every Jew is...

in a house rather than a home. Presumably he would not mind being expelled from that house, and being told to go and live in, say, Australia, where there is plenty of room. In...

SIR,—The experience of A. A. Mowat with the muddy young man in his first-class compartment was an unhappy one. I was disappointed to learn that British Railways could be coldly...

SIR,—I should like to express my appreciation for the great service you have rendered the students of the University of Redlands by publishing Mr. Peter Wilde's article An...

A RECENT reference to weather prophecies and their fallibility has brought me various tags from several countries, including Spain, Germany and Austria, the home of the Three...

may well rejoice, in contrast with the rest of the world, in the leonine or wintry entrance of March: it has arrested a too early spring ; and it has not been quite severe...

It would be perhaps equally true to say that the Lakes were rich or deficient in bird life. At a rather elevated point above the grimmest of the lakes I saw few birds other than...

Sts,—Mr. Reynolds, in his article The Frescanti in the Spectator of March 4th, remarks that "Dryasdust in the person of Sir Harris Nicholas [sid" implied that such an event as...

rabbits, which have been restoring their numbers in some districts, are disappearing in others: Round one country house, for example, in North Devon, you could count them by the...

Sus,—In A Spectator's Notebook of March 4th I read: —Daily Mail : "Mr. Attlee intends to lead the election battle and then retire from active politics." Janus: " I do not...

spent their days in saving the nests of terns and waders from marauders or careless crowds. One of these, Mr. Gaze, who showed me some of the nesting treasures, used spare...

The first Spring Book Supplement of THE SPECTATOR to be published since 1939 will appear in next week's issue, 25th March. Readers requiring copies of this issue, should place...

Tolstoy Leo Tolstoy. By Ernest J. Simmons. (John Lehmann. 25s.) Tolstoy as I Knew Him. By Tatyana A. Kuzminskaya. Introduction by Ernest J. Simmons. (Macmillan. 25s.) Essays...

Sixteen Self Sketches. By Bernard Shaw. (Constable. 7s. 6d.) MIL SHAW was a late starter as a public figure, but he is such a strong finisher that he seems always to have been...

IT was Jan Swammerdam (1637-1680), the Dutchman, who, in 1669, offered the first logical account of the transformations of insects and other animals. In his General Natural...

A Lecture on Nicholas Hilliard. By John Pope-Hennessy. (Home and Van Thal. 10s. 6d.) WE have emerged from the Age of Transition in which we floundered unhappily for so long,...

The Struggle Behind the Iron Curtain. By Ferenc Nagy. Trans- lated by Stephen K. Swift. (Macmillan, 30s.) Oh, My Country. By Josef Josten. (Latimer House. 12s. 6d.) THE first of...

Sixteen Symphonies. By Bernard Shore. (Longmans. 17s. 6c1 . ..) , A Dictionary of Musical Themes.. -By Harold Barlow and Sam Morgenstern. (Williams and Norgate. 30s.) Music...

The English Interior, 1500-1900. By Ralph Dutton. (Batsford. 21s.) Ma. DurroN holds the laudable view that the greater the dangers that encompass our architectural monuments...

for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution of this week's crossword to be opened after noon on Tuesday week, March 29th. Envelopes must be...

A EMy aft 1 dit:LJi- 1 4:1 1 00E 'unit h E s t IAA AZ) e P T W141,0 0 OS!T 5 *li DI E 7 A 1 e Id 1 5 11€ L lioig;AIL i. % u I m Y j/ Is DER cioRTI z MIMI NniiiMMnIMW MMMM Y K...

8s. 6d.) Selected Stories. By Malachi Whitaker. (Cape. 9s. 6d.) Booics like Miss Betty Smith's Tomorrow Will be Better shquld prove a useful corrective to those in England who...

Constance Louisa Maynard. By C. B. Firth. (Allen and Unwin. 18s.) MISS MAYNARD, one of Miss Beale's staff at Cheltenham, one of the founders of St. Leonard's School, St....

By CUSTOS ANY lingering hopes there may have been that the Government's Economic Survey for 1949 might alleviate the gloom in Throgmorton Street have been completely falsified...