NEWS OF THE WEEK is being suddenly mooted in different quarters, as it has been from time to time in the past. It is a question which needs constant consideration, provided the...

ballot in the .French Elections have the interest of great confusion. On one point, however, they throw a clear light : for the size of the poll shows that, in spite of the...

as such events often do, at an inopportune moment, when war is in progress not far from the frontiers of Egypt and actually on the frontiers of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan ; when a...

continues. Its speed may be less than is anticipated, for at least one obstacle of great natural strength remains, and Marshal Badoglio may find it necessary to consolidate his...

report that Austria is moving troops into the .Tyrol, that a German invasion is imminent ; but the prominence which is given to such reports reflects clearly enough the pre 7...

misunderstand- ing about the questions which Mr. Eden has undertaken to address to Herr Hitler regarding the German memor- andum of March 7th. There is no ground whatever for...

to discover the source of the Budget " leakage," but no harder than, the importance of the event justifies. That the Budget should become a means to speculation in the form of a...

The debate in the House of Commons on Wednesday on the B.B.C. was not based on the decisions of the Cabinet regarding the Ullswater Report, for the Cabinet has as yet taken no...

First Lord of the Admiralty in succession to Lord Monsen, though it is still only a newspaper rumour, is regarded as a certainty. It is believed that the announcement will be...

in connexion with the stories of Budget leakages. The Government will certainly not stand in the way of any enquiry. But it seems unlikely that anything will emerge from it....

of the Road Fund. Here the Labour Party received valuable aid from Mr. Gwilym Lloyd George, who is developing into a really formidable debater. He made one point to which the...

It is not surprising to learn that in recent years there has been difficulty in maintaining' the supply of English recruits to the Indian Civil Service. The officers of that...

supporting a recommendation, made in the report of a British Medical Association committee, that the legal position of doctors who undertake abortion for therapeutic reasons...

resolution authorising the increase of the tea duty was passed in the House of Commons on Monday with surpris- ingly little difficulty after only one and a half hours' debate....

Red Cross Committee at Geneva to give the League of Nations access to information in its possession regarding attacks on the Red Cross in Abyssinia raises questions which must...

demands on public attention. Ministers have for the last ten days been bombarded with questions in the House of Commons on their intentions regarding British colonies and...

x a series of articles in this journal, Sir Bernard I Pares has given his impressions of Moscow revisited after an absence of nearly twenty years, and those who remember him...

T HE Budget leakage has naturally enough filled the air with rumours, none of which I propose to quote here—interesting though some of them are. Lloyd's underwriters have, I...

By SIR STANLEY REED A FASCINATING if sometimes baffling study for those who live overseas is the paradox of Empire. Lord Willingdon, who Avill reach England on Monday after his...

By F. YEATS-BROWN W E are standing, in stockinged feet, before the tomb of a princess who died in Delhi three hundred years ago, describing herself in her epitaph as " the...

By GORDON TORRINGTON The latest contribution towards this valuable work has been made by the Standard Motor Company, at whose Canley factory musical broadcasts are now given in...

By J. A. SPENDER Indeed, no one can have visited Egypt in recent years without being aware that British-Egyptian friendship was on the wane, and that the chief reason was that...

By THE HON. MRS. GEOFFREY YOUARD It will be seen at once that the measure is designed to remedy the notorious evil, common to most towns, of numbers of women practising...

By A. D. WILSON Eyell if the composer attacked me by all means, . turning on the "smcllies" and the "fcclies," I would not surrender ; even if he could give me all the...

(i) A Garden . Speaks [After Arabius] WATERS and orchards are mintrellis of apple and vine Ordered, and bordered below the sea caresses my wall ; Pler.ty of all that I lack...

By ROSE MACAULAY A BISHOP has conic opportunely to the aid of the War Office against pacifist clergy, referring the Minister for War to a passage in one of those Articles of...

Commonwealth and Foreign By PROFESSOR W. K. HANCOCK T o understand the present position and possibilities of Anglo- Irish relations it is necessary first of all to understand...

"Parnell." By Elsie T. Schauffler. At the Gate I-I - is understandably rare, the law on the subject being what it is, to find a biographical play introducing a public figure of...

With the possible exception of wealthy recluses who have spent a part of their life out-East and decorate their libraries with the Iris, the blow-pipe, or the executioner's...

"These Three." At the Leicester Square Theatre - --" The Student of Prague." At Studio One I HAVE seldom been so moved by any fictional film as by These Three. After ten minutes...

Wagner and Vcrdi at Covent Garden Die Meistersinger began on Monday with such a precise and militaristic flourish of trumpets that anyone ignorant of the work might have...

Ingres at the-National Gallery IT has now become the duty of everyone remotely, interested iii art to revisit the National ,Gallery. Quite apart from the newly ,opened Dutch...

Power Farming It has happened, by a sort • Of accident, that Oxford has become the research centre both fOr'economies and engineering in Agriculture. It follows that Oxford must...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,-1 have been reading with interest the correspondence on empty churches. Having spent most of my ministerial life out of England I have...

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR [Correspondents are requested to keep their letters as brief as is reasonably possible. The most suitable length is that of one of our " News of the Week"...

against both the spirit and matter of Lord Tavistock's letter last week ? There is hardly a sentence in it with which I . do not disagree. Some things, however, are lot i...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] Sin,—In his article which appeared in your issue of January 24th Mr. H. G. Wells wrote : " among other assump- tions of Islam, God the...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—You say that if the League States hold on " in the enforcement of the present measures in restraint of the Italian aggression on...

[To the Editor of Tun SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I notice that Professor Delisle Burns uses the term " Europeans " to describe dwellers on the Continent in Contradistinction to us...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Rats, besides being a great menace to health as carrier.; of disease, do, with mice and voles, an appalling amount of damage, running into...

[To the Editor of TI1E SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Professor Berriedale Keith asserts that the Palestine Order in Council, 1922, was an admission on the part of the British Government that...

[To the . Editor of THE SPEcr.vron.] Sin.—An application for the .Albert Hall for the purpose of holding a meeting has recently been made by the Communist Pa - rty. This...

the issue of April 24th the Rt. Rev. J. E. C. Welldon says, " For, until the other day, the youngest of English Cathedrals may be said to have been St. Paul's." Surely...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] tit F4- " One contemplates with alarm the time when the splendid animals of Africa will have been so far wiped out that it will be impossible...

[Von einem deutschen Korrespondentenj DER Selbstzersetzungs-Prozess des Christentumms, ein chm- nischer Zustand in den letzten zweitausend Jahren, hat nun ins tausendjahrigen...

By H. G. WOOD Tut: question, " what is the meaning of history ? " becomes urgent, whenever an existing social order is threatened with collapse. If we are living in critical...

Empire. By Tatsuji Takeuchi. With an Introduction by Quincy Wright. (Allen and Unwin. 16s.) Tins remarkable book by a Japanese on the conduct of Japanese foreign policy is one...

The Living Jefferson. By James Trusluw Adams. (Scribner. 154.) IN a shrine in the Library of Congress in Washington, there are displayed two doe mts, the Declaration of...

The -Fool "lath Said. By Beverley Nichols.- (Jonathan Cape. is. 6d.) ECROPE, as Mr. Nichols justly observes, " is today more widely and deeply religious than ever before....

Memoirs of an Unconventional Soldier. By Major - General J. F. C. Fuller. (Nicholson and Watson. 21s.) Iv an unconventional soldier is one who is spoiling fur a light, General...

Lost Plays of Shakespeare's Age. By C. J. Sisson. (Cambridgo cniversity Press. 12s. dd.) So far as they mirror Elizabethan life, the records of the pro- ceedings of the old...

many of us are engaged in preparing for the eventuality of the next war, some of us are still busy explaining what happened in the last ; and it is a measure of the extent of...

Michelangelo the Man. By D. L. Finlayson. (Putnam. 15s.) "IN this figure . . . Michelangelo had sounded a ringing challenge to- his 'predecessors. He now girded his loins for an...

Call to the Swan. By L. A. G. Strong. (Hamish Hamilton. 5e.) The Natural Need. By James Reeves. (Seizin Press amid Constable. 5s.) 'MISS RVICEYSER'S book bulges with sex and...

TUE atmosphere of the prison is oppressively present in these letters. They convey the isolation and solitude, the being cut off from the world, together with the stifling...

DicxEss was not the first of Britain's voluble travellers who returned from the United States to deposit with their pub: fishers a manuscript of blithe, and mostly pretentious,...

The Squirrel's Granary. A Countryman's Anthology. By Sir William Beach Thomas. (Alexander Maclehose. 7s. Bd.) PERHAPS the sum of a life experience that has been con- tinuously...

By MARTIN COOPER Skutarevsky. By Leonid Leonov. (Lovat Dickson. 8s. fid.) Pig and Pepper. By David Footinasi. (Heinemann. 7s. 6d.) Hortensius, Friend of Nero. By Edith...

fate of a poet is to be laid in lavender. It is a long way , from the direct impact on his peers to the time when some crumb of him is on every homely table, and it can only be...

La Crepus'cule des Traites, a valuable book on a most topical and important subject, and this excellent translation (Bell, 7s. 6d.) makes it accessible to English readers....

and Temair As the title of this charming book of memoirs (Heath Cranton, Os.) suggests, the Marchioness of Aberdeen has aimed not at writing a formal autobiography, but simply...

By Allan Strawbridge Suspect (Heinemann, 8s. 6d.) is the story of an Australian artist who spent the War years as a prisoner in Germany, wrongly suspected of being a member of...

to write their autobiographies. " After the men as the blurb has it—comes Marguerite IliirriScin with Born for Trouble (Gollancz, 12s. 6d.). In 1918 she gave up a job on the...

To the general reader there is always something attractive in the spectacle of a man running his lingers through a material which he handles with the case born of experience....

-Budget Afterthoughts As not infrequently happens, it is the afterthoughts whieli express more truly the considered view of the community with regard to the annual Budget. The...

(Jonathan Cape, 7s. 6d.) is interesting but super. ficial. The writer, who has been Consul-General of the Netherlands at Sydney, has compiled from other people's books a short...

By Hesketh Pearson No life of Labouchere—gambler. amorist, diplomat, duellist, journalist, politician—eould be dull even if it were indifferently'' written. Actually Mr....

By Mary Agnes Hamilton Newnham was Mrs. Hamilton's own college, but this pleasant little book (Faber and Faber, 5s.) is nat merely the graceful act of piety which a first glance...

ROYAL EXCHANGE ASSURANCE. AT the recent Annual General Court of the Royal Exchange Assurance, the GoVernor, Mr. Vivian Hugh Smith, after stating that in the Life Department,...

The winner of Crossword No. 387 is Miss Winifred Kenny, Nevile House, 15 Berkeley Square, Clifton, Bristol 8.

BY ZENO [A prize of one guinea will be given to the sender of the first correct solution of this week's crossword puzzle to be opened. Envelopes should be marked " Crossword...