The United States Congress has ended its session and, unless it is specially summoned by the President, it will not meet again until January, 1948. In the intervening five...

A substantial flow of two-way trade between Britain and Russia could have such beneficial effects for both countries and for the world that the breakdown of the recent...

F OR the eleventh time the Soviet Union has exercised the veto in the Security Council and so driven one more nail into the coffin of that body. It was not to be expected that,...

The Dutch Government knew that their action in Java would produce a bad impression. Dr. van Mook, the Lieutenant-Governor- General, has said as much. They nevertheless decided...

It is good that the House of Commons should have spent a day in debating the Colonies, for the contraction of the overseas jurisdiction of the British Parliament serves perhaps...

Most people—especially those on the waiting list for a house— will echo the regret expressed by Mr. George Hicks, speaking in Monday's Housing Debate immediately after Mr. Bevan...

The weary story of the attempts of illegal immigrants to get into Palestine has reached a new depth of frustration and confusion this week. The monotonous diversion of one...

Each year daunting reports appear in the Press about the dis- comforts of holiday travelling, and each year the public is shocked as if it had quite forgotten what happened the...

and anonymous forces who administer to our Parliamentary well-being had installed tubes, with the appearance of hand-rails, on the Back Benches to assist the acoustics. Such...

Although there has been a good deal of publicity for the outbreaks of poliomyelitis (infantile paralysis) which are occurring in widely scattered areas in Britain, the Ministry...

T HE first Labour Government ever to command a clear majority in Parliament is ending the second year of its life in an atmosphere of crisis. It is Britain's crisis. There can...

A FILM STAR'S fan mail (about which I have the second best reason for knowing something) strikes me as a social phenome- non which would give the owlish sleuths of Mass...

nationalised colliery, was ordered by the National Coal Board to complete a certain form (call it XYZ/ tot) in respect of all personnel employed by the colliery. The form, a...

look forward to," said somebody, speaking without much originality of the Royal Wedding. This moved someone else to ask, as a matter of interest, what other things the British...

air in this country is required to fill up a form with a number of personal details including his age ; the information is needed—and pretty desperately needed, I should...

By GUNTHER STEIN New York. O NLY every seventeenth person on earth is an American, and he owns scarcely more than his equal share in the world's land area. Yet he produces...

By JAMES POPE-HENNESSY W AS it the fact that I was visiting Torquay for work and not for pleasure which gave me such a subjective, such a jaundiced, view of this Devonian...

By PROFESSOR A. G. TANSLEY T HE publication of the report of the special committee on Wild Life Conservation in England and Wales (Cmd. 7122), closely following that of the...

By GEOFFREY HOLDSWORTH I AM awakened by the caressing beat of the sea—a sea of the deepest gentian blue, shot with vivid green over the sand patches. There are other sounds—the...

By HAROLD NICOLSON M R. HUGH DALTON is not Minister of Health ; he is Chan- cellor of the Exchequer. Yet by imposing a terrific tax upon the consumption of tobacco he has done...

"Les Disparus de St. Agil." (Studio One.)—" Time Out of Mind." (Odeon, Leicester Square.) IT is hard not to believe that every French film is going to be perfect. This belief...

THE 22nd Haslemere Festival consisted of three concerts in the Haslemere Hall, and to the second of these, on July 23rd, I went. Of the eleven performers, five bore the name of...

THE THEATRE "Peace in Our Time." By Noel Coward. (Lyric Theatre.) WHAT a conundrum Mr. Coward is. His new play at the Lyric Theatre provides his public, but also of course his...

To present both sides of an argument in the form of a trial is usually an effective device on the air, and if the listeners can be left to form their own conclusions so much the...

RETURNING to Bond Street after some weeks in Italy is a rather chastening experience. Inevitably one muses upon the Puritan tradi- tion of the Protestant countries, which, to...

knew General von Falkenhausen at a time when both he and I were working for the Chinese Government in the early days of the Japanese, war against China. I can also testify that...

Sm,—Mr. Harold Nicolson's wilful individualism is a joy to many, but it sometimes leads -him astray. In scourging popular journalism (some of which r'- -- 7ves to be censured)...

HOW PERSIA LIVES SIR,—The article on How Persia lives by Mrs. Hubback requires amplification if an exact picture is to be drawn. Persia or Iran with an area of 628,000 sq....

SIR,—I am deeply shocked at what I read regarding Ireland and Irish- men in your correspondence column of late. I am, Sir, an Irishman. But even in my native love of altercation...

SIR, —In my opinion it is Sir E. Graham Little who is moved by political prejudice in this matter—prejudice in favour of boarding schools. He does not seem to realise that...

Sta,—In your issue of July 25th your able and usually well informed news commentator omits two important further reasons why the Dutch Government has lost its patience; namely,...

SIR,— As president of the Women's Liberal Federation, I have been asked to point out a grave injustice in the working of the Family Endowment Act. The prime motive for family...

Sta,—From the point of view of the editors of provincial weekly papers, one effect of the added restrictions of newspaper has not received its proper emphasis. Local authorities...

Sm,—I disagree with Mr. Exclby's arguments in his latest letter on school curricula. How are we fairly to decide who are capable of utilising a university education unless all...

SIR, —My attention has been called to a most unhappy breach of grammar and good taste in a recent article of mine, when I wrote so carelessly and colloquially as to use the...

IN none of the obituaries of Lord Lee of Fareham did I see any reference to the "inwardness," so to say, of his gift of Chequers to the reigning Prime Minister. He told me, in...

encomium on Bradford, which is very impressive. But my faith in his accuracy was somewhat discounted when i his first paragraph I found that he stressed Bradford's isolation by...

Sia,—In last week's Spectator there is a review of a new book by E. H. Young—Chatterton Square. I know nothing of this, her latest book, but there must be thousands of your...

been raided by very numerous jays, bred in small woods where also magpies and jackdaws have enormously increased since the country house was abandoned and no keeper left. Lines...

In the week when the schemes for natural preservation in Britain were published, as a sort of postscript to the Governmental schemes for National Parks, there came to me from...

A Weybourne dweller, whose parents "always expected the French to land there because of the deep water right in shore," adds some local doggerel rhymes to the better-known...

Sia,—You say that " the territorial division of India is now settled apart from . . . . minor boundary adjustments in the partitioned Punjab." I fear you are optimistic....

Finnegans Inquest A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake. By Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson. (Faber and Faber. 16s.) IN the language of lexicographers and locksmiths a...

The Watershed. By Arthur Calder-Marshall. (Contact Books. 8s. 6d.) THE author of this book was sent durin g the war to E g ypt by the Ministry of Information to write the script...

THE intelli g ence of Walter Richard Sicken, like his other talents, was lively and deep, as everyone who reads about painting or looks at it knows ; few to e q ual it have been...

The Diary of Henry Hobhouse. Edited by Arthur Aspinall. (Home and van Thal. 10s. 6d.) EVERY literary person is familiar with John Cam Hobhouse, that precise, dependable and...

Nationalism and Internationalism. By Don Luigi Sturzo. (Roy Publishers, New York. 15s.) ALTHOUGH in form one sustained argument, Don Sturzo's latest book is in substance a...

Mainly Middlesex. By T. C. F. Prittie. (Hutchinson. 16s.) History of the Tests. By Sydney Smith. (Harrap. 15s.) THERE are a few books—in the rature of things they cannot often...

THE donnish specialist in literary subjects is a familiar figure—the man who spends his life in minute study of one writer and is bewildered and lost when he is off his single...

Eustace and Hilda. By L. P. Hartley. (Putnam. 10s. 6d.) • WHEN a novelist takes a small group or a pair of characters as subjects for a succession of novels he is admittedly...

A GENEROUS offer of paper by Messrs. Allan Wingate has made pos- sible the publication of a very important survey in pamphlet form of the current book shortage and its causes:...

IA Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution of this week's crossword to he opened after noon on Tuesday week August 12th. Envelopes...

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By CUSTOS ONCE again the Stock Exchange is living up to its old reputation of not doing things by " halves." After groping about for months as the " bulls " and the " bears "...