the broken Chinese armies is gradually being slowed down, partly by resistance from their North Korean allies. Fairly large numbers of prisoners have been taken, but they can be...

The Tibetan delegation which reached Peking about a month ago to discuss the terms of a settlement took with it the minimum of bargaining-power ; and such details of the...

Despite Admiral Sherman's support for the idea of a naval blockade of China, it becomes increasingly difficult to see how the Republican ' Senators can salvage anything from the...

Neither the decision the Secretary for Commonwealth Rela- tions has reached .regarding the domicile of Tshekedi Khama, till lately the Ruling Chief of the Bamangwato tribe in...

that the Italian local government elections, the first batch of which took place in north and central Italy at the week-end, were to be of major national significance must find...

When the National Health Service Bill was being discussed in the House of Commons the section of it which aroused most interest and approval was that providing for the creation...

13,000 lorry drivers in a strike against the decision of the Road Haulage Executive to expand the system of mobile patrols conforms to a pattern which is becoming monotonous....

The fact that the South African Prime Minister and the ex- airman who is so successfully organising opposition to the Prime Minister's apartheid policy bear the same surname...

The function, normally reserved to death, of making all equal in dust and ashes, has lately been usurped in part by the nationalised industries. But there cannot have been many...

T HE House of Commons reassembled on Tuesday after a remarkably quiet recess. A sudden political peace descended with the adjournment at Whitsuntide—which was hardly what was...

The pound today is worth 10s. 2d. as compared with 1939. Some middle-class salaries have risen, some have not. Very many people are living on fixed incomes. How do they manage ?...

m. R. MORRISON had little fresh light to shed on the Persian situation when he spoke in the House of Commons on Tuesday. He repeated the Government's desire to settle the...

I doubt whether 1 per cent. of the readers of this column is familiar with the facts I am privileged to reveal regarding the Principality of Thomond and the Most Honourable...

the calibre of his voice. He conceded that it was the sort of voice that was good for such things as hawking fish and other commodities. Actually it is good for more than that,...

I F the Railway Executive decided to co-opt me into their com- pany, which they show no sign at all of doing, I should submit to them that passenger revenue might be increased...

course, about in the prime of life nowadays. Here is Lord Samuel, born in 1870, being given a dinner this week in belated honour of his eightieth birthday. Here is Mr. Seebohm...

Bellows' French Dictionary possesses two unique features. It prints French-English and English-French not in two separate sections but on the same page, French in the top half...

Washington W HEN I came down to Washington I did not know how to treat the negroes. 1 was self-conscious. Up north there were few blacks. Once as a student I saw a negro dancing...

By EDWARD HODGKIN UST to get things straight. The Festival of Britain is some- thing which happens all over the place, and is responsible for the pageant in your village and...

By C P. FITZGERALD Canberra. T HE British have always prided themselves on enjoying the flexibility of an unwritten constitution, and have shown some pity, not untinged with...

By SOMERVILLE HASTINGS, F.R.C.S., M.P. W HEN Mr. Aneurin Bevan was piloting his new Health Bill-through Parliament he described health centres as the pivot of the whole scheme....

rills is the end of anticipatory fuss: Wheels ripping, churning slush along the lanes ; Smell of wet woollen permeates the bus, Pewter-and-lead-streaked its windows in the...

Grand Festival Concert By COLIN SHAW (St. Peter's Hall, Oxford) T HE hall was long and narrow. There was a peculiar smell about it which no amount of disinfectant, heavy and...

By HAROLD NICOLSON I HAVE been saddened during the last few weeks by the attitude adopted by so many of my compatriots towards the Persians. The Press has, on the whole, been...

"Macbeth." (Cameo-Polytechnic.)—“Laughter in Paradise." (Plan.) MR. ORSON WELLES is the only practising director who obstinately refuses to conform to the commercial pattern...

and sentiment nowise mawkish, the lightfoot evening speeds away and leaves no nastiness behind. This is the gayest, deftest and most polished revue one has seen for a long time....

IN connection with the Sussex Festival Lord Duncannon has adapted Hilaire Belloc's farrago, The Four Men, with music by David Ponsonby, as a drama for presentation at many...

THEATRE / 6 The Love of Four Colonels." By Peter Ustinov. (Wyndham's.) THERE are at least four Mr. Ustinovs, too. The dramatist, the philosopher and the undergraduate all take...

"AFRICA and Oceania have their Old Masters even as Europe has, and it is to honour them, and the peoples among whom they arose, that this exhibition is presented," says Mr....

AT Covent Garden the last two operas of the Ring and Tristan have been added to the Wagner season ; and June brings Meister- 'singer and the much rarer Parsifal, so that the...

The year begins to wear its crown at last. Within a week, under the recent warmth, the whole character of the garden has changed. No reluctance. On the contrary, the eagerness...

WHEN the wind turns out of the north-east, where it has Inca for a month, we might be inhabiting another planet. Everything responds to the-kindness of the air, and I go from...

That storm, during breakfast, cut off our electric supply and washed down the newly-hoed surface of the vegetable garden, offering a minia• lure warning of soil erosion. I...

(THE ROYAL ACADEMY EXHIBITION—Fourth Notice) We have already had occasion to allude to the works of Messrs. Millais and Hunt—works the principle of which it is essential to...

ORCHESTRAL. Decca issues a new Beethoven No. 7 by the Concertgcbouw Orchestra under Kleiber, only spoiled by the Alle- gretto being taken noticeably too fast and the brass being...

I see that market gardeners are to have a produce-show at Olympia on June 27th. I hope it will remind the public that these people con- tribute about £120 million to the wealth...

Report by Janus A prize was offered for a (non-scurrilous) analysis of the mental processes which led Janus, to state mendaciously that Charles Wesley died in 1688. All...

Set by Mervyn Hordcr Half-way through this twentieth century, what with one thing and another, there Is room for reasonable doubt about the appro- priateness of the lion as the...

SIR,—Mr. Michael Gill, the undergraduate of last week, informs your readers that he heard a stage hand in Edinburgh make the following reply when asked what opera was to be...

University Grants Sia,—May I draw the attention of your readers to the proposed civil estimates on education and the deleterious effects arising from the suggested decrease...

Sta,—I have just seen a copy of the Spectator for March 23rd, and was extraordinarily interested to read Mr. Usborne's explanation of why he had chosen the littewith wa s...

SIR,—In sending my subscription for my next twelve months' Spectator. I am moved—at rising 70—to write a first, and doubtless last, note to an Editor to say what a joy it...

SIR,—The note in the Spectator of ,March 16th on the British Council prompts me to support in a humble way your argument as to the great importance of the work being done...

SIR,—MT. Harvey's indignation over Braunton Burrows is admirable, but he produces little evidence to support any claim that it is righteous. He does, however, support Janus's...

Sta,-1 have read the Spectator for fifty years and more and am not constitutionally inclined to criticise it, but in view of the delicacy of the situation in Persia I am a...

SIR,—For many years I have read both the Spectator and Punch, but when your once-great paper presumes to know more about military science and strategy than does General...

Slat—Will you please allow me to make one or two corrections in the seven lines of verse quoted; by Miss Freda Lingstrom in her review of my Background to Sweden in the...

intelligent Solomon Islanders, I read to them the ninth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John. As I read it they suddenly, simultaneously, burst into laughter. And indeed...

SIR,—II is an interesting commentary on our bureaucratic times that, while -a man has been fined in Scotland for failing to fill up his census form and. Sir Ernest Benn has...

SIR,—With regard to that strange paragraph inA Spectator's Notebook of May 11th, the " entertainment " value of Proverbs vit is nil, particu- larly when, alas, its striking...

Sut,—Janus has drawn attention to our alternative spellings of judgement and judgment, with his personal preference for the fol - mer. May I suggest that your readers would...

SIR,—I think Miss Laski,' in her latest review in your paper, has confused the title of The King who was a King with that of The Man Born to be King, thus producing a truly...

D ENTON WELCH was an unexpected artist. He was born (at 6 p.m. on March 29th, 1915) to a family irreproachably mercantile and philistine, Shanghai English on the one side,...

Sermons in Stones A Land. By Jaequetta Hawkes. (Cresset Press. 2is.) SERMON is an equivocal term for this remarkable book. For its absorption is entirely with earth, and, if...

Wisdom, Madness and Folly. By John Custance. (Gullancz. 16s.) MR. JOHN CUSTANCE suffers from manic-depressive insanity. In this book, much of which was written while he was a...

PROFESSOR FELIX GILBERT may perhaps have congratulated himself that the source of this book consisted of no more than the 800 pages recovered out of the 200,000 pages comprising...

THIS genially erudite and extremely readable work is not likely to please everyone. It is honest, emphatic and occasionally too magis- terial. Mr. Partridge, that famous and...

PUBLIC atchitecture of the front rank is now so rare that when an example as notable as the Royal Festival Hall gets built it is worthy of the fullest record. - This 'is here...

varied and curious. As the son of a sea-captain he was taught to worship an eighteenth-century taskmaster God ; but subsequently he was seized by a press-gang and introduced to...

The Brigand. By Giuseppe Berto. Translated by Angus Davidson. (Seeker and Warburg. 95. 6d.) Christina Claimed. By Giles Romilly. (Putnam. sos. 6d.) POTENTIALLY we are all...

IA Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the ton coma solution of this week's crossword to be opened after noon on Tuesday week, June 12th. Envelopes must...

1' I D / A I EMr•I SOLUTION ON JUNE 15 The winner of Crossword No. 626 is Miss HILDA M. CHAII.ENOR, 40 Ripon Road, Harrogate, Yorks.

By CUSTOS THERE is still very little give in markets, not so much because of any insistent pressure to buy, but simply on account of the wide- spread reluctance to sell. I am...