19 SEPTEMBER 1947

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FORCED PLANNING

The Spectator

T HE sense of relief felt by industry at the announcement of an export plan by the President of the Board of Trade is perfectly genuine. After many months of half-threats,...

Recovery in Paris

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The shock administered to the Paris conference on economic co-operation by Mr. Will Clayton's sharp criticism of its report has not proved fatal. So closely is political...

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West Indian Federation

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Although the British West Indies Conference has recommended the establishment of a Committee to discuss terms of federation between the participating units, the determined...

Back to the Pits

The Spectator

The Grimethorpe miners having gone back to work on the 21-ft. stint, which is all that is possible in the present deranged state of the mine, the fact-finding committee is now...

Treaties and Trieste

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Progress with treaties with Italy and Germany's eastern European satellites, since the original clash at the first meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers in London two...

Organising the Civil Service

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The deliberations of the Select Committee on Estimates concern- ing the work of the 224 people who are charged with the review and improvement of the organisation and methods of...

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CAN UN . 0

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SURVIVE? FF ORMALLY, the Second Assembly of the United Nations is in session in New York State, meeting to deal with an agenda of over sixty items. Actually what is in question...

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The evidence given by the Institute of Journalists before the

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Royal Commission on the Press seems very sensible. The Institute agreed, of course, that in recent years there had been a growth of what is described as "monopolistic control "...

A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK

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F OR Western Europe, someone who speaks with authority said privately this week, the alternatives are the Marshall Plan and Communism. That may very well be true. If the...

* * * * A pallant, it seems, is not

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precisely what I thought it — a kind of a lane or street. It was first represented to me as a thoroughfare in Chichester. I am now told (and I hereby express thanks for the...

Students of the Champion County v. Rest of England match

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this week should not be completely hypnotised by Compton's 246 and Edrich's 180. The first five Middlesex wickets fell thus: c. Evans ; c. Evans ; st. Evans ; st. Evans ; st....

A rather elderly professor was chairman of a certain faculty

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at a certain university. The reorganisation of the faculty after the war was being discussed. The chairman was conservative, not to say reactionary, in his views,' and aimed...

The discussion as to who got what out of the

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Edge Hill by-election continues. The Labour Party has little to say, being well content to have held the seat and so preserved its unbroken by-election record ; the coming poll...

Rumours of Ministerial changes are inevitable at such a stage

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in any Government's career as this, and it is in fact probable enough that Mr. Attlee will have some to make before the House re- assembles. One indeed is certain. It is known...

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MOSCOW ON PARIS

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By G. B. THOMAS S O far as Moscow is concerned the Paris Conference on the Marshall programme has been moving steadily towards what lzvestia calls a "sad ending." Ever since M....

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SHANNON AIRPORT

The Spectator

By KATE O'BRIEN There was an old man we knew who used to stir our imaginations by telling us that the farm which he owned when he was a young man in Canada was now the central...

AUSTRIA RE-VISITED

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By KENNETH LINDSAY, M.P. A YEAR ago in these columns I asked a number of questions about the future prospects of Austria, and more particularly about the possibilities of...

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STATE-AIDED STUDENTS

The Spectator

By MARJORIE McINTOSH T HE Ministry of Labour statement of last May announcing the dates for closing the Further Education and Training Scheme brought tb light a gap in the...

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ISLANDS OF DELIGHT

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By BARBARA McKECHNIE T HE bus for the aircraft called for us at 6 a.m. and we bumped along the shores of Tromso-Sund to Skattora flying-boat base. It was a perfect morning ;...

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MEMORY OF ARNHEM

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AND whilst we slogged the split road, dusty and pale Along the deserted hamlets and sleepy buttercup fields I discovered my heart had travelled away for a while To the blue...

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MARGINAL COMMENT

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By HAROLD NICOLSON I KNOW of few pleasures in life more satisfying than that of visiting places which one has read abcz_it in books. Whether it be Syracuse or Philadelphia,...

Page 12

THE CINEMA

The Spectator

"The October Man " and Antarctic Whalehunt." (Odeon, Leicester Square.)--" Captain Boycott." (Gaumont, Haymarket, and Marble Arch Pavilion.)—The New London Film Society...

MUSIC

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THE Three Choirs Festival is, I suppose, the nearest approach we have in England to Bayreuth. It is the object of a musical pilgrimage to many people and the atmosphere is one...

THE production of this play, last seen at Stratford in

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i9oo, falls between two stools. With the first act gone altogether, and with lavish cuts elsewhere, it denies opportunity to judge the merit of the play as a whole or to guess...

CONTEMPORARY ARTS

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THE THEATRE "One, Two, Three ! " (Duke of York's.) THE Nurse Cavell statue is within a stone's throw of the Duke of York's Theatre, and it is a pity that the management did...

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ON THE AIR

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A SURREY correspondent invites me to lift up my voice in criticism of the announcers, "most of whom," she says, with a fine com- prehensiveness, "are awful." It pains me to...

ART

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THE Lefevre Gallery is filled with a - collection of printed silk squares designed by some of the finest French and English talent available; the London Gallery contains the...

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SIR,—The gambling issue as it affects and is affected by

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the present economic crisis is rightly underlined by your correspondent, Mr. Magnus Wechsler. In stating his own personal reaction to the problem he writes as a gambler and...

FOOTBALL POOL PROBLEMS

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Snt,—Owing to an accident I have been unable before now to correct some of the many errors in Mr. Robert Barclay's defence of mass football pool betting. May I, Sir, as the...

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

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A.B.C. OF THE CRISIS SIR,—Your readers will not, I am sure, be misled by Mr. Einzig's allega- tion that I have overlooked certain facts, since he does not substantiate it by...

Page 15

SIR,—In your issue of September 5th you published an article

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on internees who were members of organisations declared illegal at Nurem- berg. My comrades and I agree entirely with the conclusions of your correspondent, but we are bound to...

Sta,—Mr. Hughes is to be thanked for his article, The

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German Trials. Every word of it would be confirmed by the two Members of Parliament who visited Neuengamme and Recklinghausen with me last month. These camps are excellently...

THE GERMAN TRIALS Sts.,—While fully appreciating the human sentiments which

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moved the author of The German Trials in your issue of September 5th to appeal for sympathy with the S.S. internees, I ask leave to record my opinion that the facts point to a...

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SHELLEY'S 'MOURNERS

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Sia,—It was not under the Pyramid of Cahn Cestius that Mr. Nicolson's ancestor, Sir George Cockburn, saw Shelley's ashes interred, for it was not until two months later that...

CHURCH AND CHAPEL SIR, —The article by the Master of the

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Temple which appeared in a recent issue of The Spectator, in which he described the plight of the village church and made such a noble plea on its behalf, particularly...

Sta,—By ironic coincidence, several letters on Liberalism appeared in your

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issue of September 12th, the very day when the result of the Edge Hill by-election was published in the daily newspapers. The Liberal poll of less than 5 per cent, of the votes...

THE CONTROL OF LAUNDRIES

The Spectator

SIR, —If the Secretary of the Institution of British Laundries, Ltd., really thinks that I wrote to The Spectator without even taking the trouble to make full enquiries he will...

WHAT EDGE HILL . MEANS

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SIR.—In their chagrin at failing to win Edge Hill, Conservatives are finding not a crumb, but a whole loaf, of comfort in the poor Liberal poll. In this Conservatives are...

LESSONS OF GRIMETHORPE

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Sta,—I fed bound to express my regret at the one-sided summary of the Grimethorpe strike in your last issue. If your readers have ever worked hours on end, bending or kneeling...

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TOO MANY FEWS "

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Snt,—The reply of your reviewer to my letter calls for the courtesy of an answer. I must confess that I am not entirely convinced. "A few" surely means "a small number," and...

NEAR AND DEAR?

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Snt,—A Spanish proverb is a very pungent variation of Mr. Harold Nicolson's quotation ; it is "God gives us our friends, but the devil gives us our relations." Perhaps this...

CONSCRIPTS IN GERMANY

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Sut,—Many will share Dr. Bardsley's anxiety about conscripts in Germany, but they will surely also recognise the basic fact that, if we are to maintain our garrisons abroad, we...

Mystery of Migration Doubtless most of the public comment on

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butterflies has had to do with the wholly unexplained mystery of migration, which, in regard to insects as opposed to birds, seems to be nature's method of destruction rather...

Queen Factories Discoverers of wasps' nests very late in the

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year are wont. to think it hardly worth while to destroy the brood ; but now is the time when the work is most effective. Just before the end the wasps—and they are peculiar in...

In My Garden •

The Spectator

One of the loveliest of all garden flowers is the Himalayan poppy that is called Meconopsis Bailii ; and there are favoured spots of dappled shade, especially, I think, in...

The Spectator

COUNTRY LIFE

The Spectator

WHATEVER deficiencies may be alleged against this summer's grain harvest, now virtually completed, it has been the quickest and, I may say, one of the most amusing on record....

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BOOKS OF THE DAY

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Minister for Propaganda THIS book consists of extracts from the diary of a young German who worked as a Press Officer for the Minister of Propaganda from the end of 1940 until...

A Lady of Wales

The Spectator

Dame Margaret. By Viscount Gwynedd. (Allen and Unwin. 12s. 6d.) This is a curiously attractive book—curiously, because as a book it is open to all sorts of criticism. Lord...

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The Reporter at Home

The Spectator

WE learn from a recent number of The New Yorker that Mr. John Gunther has got tired of being asked when he will do Inside Gunther. We have reason to be glad that he has not...

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A Poet's Variety

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Collected Poems. By Siegfried Sassoon. I Faber and Faber. 10s. 6d.) ONE day, if the course of human interests takes no violent turn, the poetical works of Siegfried Sassoon will...

A Conservative Creed

The Spectator

Freedom and Order : Selected Speeches, 1939-1946. By the Rt. Hon. Anthony Eden, M.P. (Faber and Faber. 15s.) THE publication of a volume of speeches is a rarer event than it...

Page 24

The Piano Develops

The Spectator

History of the Piano. By Ernest Closson. (Paul Elek. .12s. 6d.) " Avec un phlegme anglais se traine le piano " — so apparently sang the French vaudevillist in 1771. We do not...

The Conquest of Pain

The Spectator

A Victory Over Pain. By Victor Robinson, M.D. (Sigma Books. 16s.) ANAESTHESIA, as we know it, is only just a hundred years old, and, when the gocd old days are discussed, their...

Page 26

Fiction

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IT could be demonstrated, I think, that the presence in a novel in however embryonic a form of what we may call a philosophy of life has an important influence upon the...

Agricultural Ulster

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Rural Life in Northern Ireland. By John M. Mogey. (Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press. 15s.) THE increased production of home-grown food, we are again told, is an...

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Rorter Notices

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IT is a moot point whether Mr. Evans is a public benefactor or not. If fact is inherently and intrinsically better than fiction then no doubt he is ; for his 260 pages are...

FINANCE AND INVESTMENT

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By CUSTOS EVEN after the Cripps speech there are many uncertainties which obscure the investment horizon. The new export targets, for example, look like guarantees of a high...

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SOLUTION TO CROSSWORD No. 441 SOLUTION ON OCTOBER 3rd The

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winner of Crossword No. 441 is EDWARD WORMELL, Esq., 23, Knowsley Road, Southport.

"THE SPECTATOR" CROSSWORD No. 443 IA Book Token for one

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guinea will be awarded to the sender of Ahe first correct solution of this week's crossword to be opened after non z on Tuesday week September 30th. Envelopes must be received...