Developments in France have been influenced by an odd co- incidence of time. The month of July has become thick-set with historical memories and anniversaries for the French...

L ORD WAVELL ' S magnanimous invitation to the various Indian sections to blame him and not themselves for the breakdown of the Simla Conference has been taken up with alacrity...

King Leopold ' s decision last week-end not to abdicate, but not to return either, has opened a new phase in the now prolonged constitutional and political crisis whch torments...

General Franco has for several months past steered Spain more and more definitely towards a restoration of the monarchy. His speech at the Falange Council last Tuesday was the...

The important report of Mr. Justice Cohen's committee on the amendment of Company Law is dealt with in our Finance column on a later page more fully than is possible here, but...

To the outside spectator Eire's politics remain truly Irish. Mr. de Valera, having declared categorically that "Eire is a Republic" (and in 1934 that, " though we are in the...

The housing problem, as was observed here last week, has many aspects, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, addressing his Diocesan Conference on Monday, performed a very necessary...

M EVER in the history of human conference has so much been j' determined for so many by so few. That adaptation of the Prime Minister's historic epigram may well prove in...

William Malkin. While he lived normally at Gerrard's Cross, he had inherited a family estate in the wilds of Inverness-shire. It had been in his family since 1845, just a...

the Hurri- cane in the Battle of Britain show that more than half the Ger- man machines destroyed in that epic struggle were ' the victims of Hurricanes, which therefore...

scarcity has elicited some interesting information. The Board of Trade, it appears, is already doing exactly what I appealed to it to do— issuing licences for the importation of...

hope they like the idea of fraternisation better now that they have had the opportunity of gaping at pictures of close-packed boat- loads of British soldiers and German girls in...

as some little learning. Mr. Quintin Hogg, as is well known, is Conservative candidate for Oxford City. Outside the Oxford railway station there is, or till very lately was, a...

another, which on the whole is just as well. The Li,000 awarded to Mr. F. A. Voigt of the Nineteenth Century and his associates against Mr. Cedric Belfrage of the News Chronicle...

was signed at Runnymede in 1215, the Great Charter which has legal validity today dates from ten years later, and bears the signature not of King John but of King Henry III....

W HATEVER the nature of Lord Justice Goddard's report on the hushed-up trial of a Roman Catholic priest at Longton, in Staffordshire, the evidence given at the inquiry conducted...

By PATRICK LACEY T HE failure of the Simla conference may remind you of sums almost equally hated at school. I mean sums like this: " If twenty-one politicians take nineteen...

By EDWARD DALE O VER eight years ago an American Air Force officer, Colonel Claire Chennault, was appointed Aeronautical Adviser to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. He arrived...

By SQUADRON-LEADER E VEN from the air Germany looks an abandoned country. Sunk barges wallow, like crocodiles, in the Rhine, and the bridges lie crumbled in the water. Beyond,...

By MARTIN HALLORAN L IFE in Italy today is fantastically expensive. The exchange was fixed at 400 lire to the £ when we first came, and while prices have gone up and up it has...

By M. W. PALMER I T is easy to be dogmatic and sentimental about the coloured question in America. It is easy to settle our neighbours' pro- blems when they are not our own ;...

HARVEST and Haysel have coincided in my neighbourhood. The meadow hay was cut late. The oats have ripened early. In saving, or salving, hay more use is made each year of common...

it was queer rather than lovely, a plant that was quite new to me, and carried off some seedlings. It is Morina Longifolia. The leaves are the leaves of a giant thistle, but the...

In a child's bedroom in Oxford a robin has built a nest, and brought up a family, in a bookcase in a space left at the end of the shelf. This in itself is no oddity. For...

About half of Scotland has written, in response to a perhaps foolish query about the habitat of the rosebay willow-herb, to say in effect that it is likely to be " the curse of...

to dramatic situa- tions that we are by now almost impervious to the ironies of history. Yet to even the most numbed among us it must seem strange that Truman, Stalin and...

extracted from personal conversation between the Big Three, while at the same time avoiding the imprecisions of the conversational method, is obviously the creation of...

of Frederick the Great still lingers. It is to the east, upon the little hillside where Knobels- dorff erected from the King's own designs the lovely little pavilion of Sans...

By HAROLD NICOLSON T HE Conference of Potsdam is likely to prove the first of many successive Conferences at which, gradually and over increas- ingly wide areas, " peace " will...

the resultant imprecision. The representatives of three great Powers meet together for a few days only, in circumstances of immense public attention, and often after...

Sadler's Wells Opera THE production of Britten's new opera at Sadler's Wells must not be allowed to push completely into the background the standard works in the company's...

-The Cure for Love." At The Westminster.---” No Room at the Inn." At The Embassy. h 1st in ig )rt rs it re .11 THIS play is about a Lancashire sergeant who returns from the...

The Victoria and Albert Museum. " The Age of Grace." At the Delbanco Gallery. IF the reopening exhibition is anything to go by, the Victoria and Albert Museum may be...

"The Affairs of Susan." At the Plaza.—" The Dough-Girls." At Warners. — News Reels from the Paific. Generally released. IT is easy to be impatient with the social froth of the...

Sta,—Dr. Maxwell Garnftt, in his letter, repeats the statement with which the American State Department has confused the issue of the United Nations Organisation veto. It is not...

EVANGELISM BY ADVERTISING siR,—The conviction of Canon Roger Lloyd that the cause of Christianity in this country can be fostered by skilful advertisement in the Press is a...

SIR,—Miss Rebecca West has shifted her ground. In her first letter she described my paper as " artless ": now she applies that term merely to my proposal of tinted voting...

week's Spectator there is one remark which seems to require some explanation. Mr. Williams thinks that " the United. Nations should be able . . . to prevent or deal with minor...

Sts,—Your correspondent "Honours Graduate" asserts that the R.A.F. higher authorities have no interest whatever in the further education of their personnel under the Education...

SIR,—May I express my appreciation of the letter by Mr. Smyth re Students in Arms, printed in your issue of July 6th, and the hope that, if the general view of the university...

agreement. (i) That the victorious conclusion of the war with Japan is vitally important. (ii) That, as far as possible, men who have been in the Far East or in India for four...

SIR,—Sir Walter Monckton in his Report on the O'Neill children wrote, " There was in neither authority a sufficient realisation of the direct and personal nature of the...

the R.A.F. which is in such marked contrast with the grand work done in the Army? Here are a few actual facts. . a. The director of my area was asked to send a lecturer from...

SIR,—Some misapprehension appears to exist as to the " targets " fixed by the Ministry of Works for certain building trades. The Payment of Results scheme, as it is known, was...

So o —In your issue of July 6th an article, over the name of Brian Stuart, entitled " Syria and the Beduin," made the following extraordinary state- ment: "Thanks entirely to...

Sut o —I do not propose to argue the pros and cons of nationalising the railways in this country, but I do think that Mr. Lyttelton picked a bad example in the Swiss Federal...

SIR,—Prof. W. J. Rose in his letter on " The Polish Settlement " in your issue of July 13th, said many tragically true words about the implications of the " surrender of the...

So o —Before leaving for a short visit to the West Indies and the U.S.A., the Netherlands Welfare Commissioner, Lt.-Colonel A. M. Meerloo, asked me to submit the following...

Sta,—I read with great interest the article by Mr. A. L. Kennedy, ",Talk- ing to the World," but our experience here in the Netherlands does no t exactly coincide with his plea...

A Liberal Statesman Memoirs. By Viscount Samuel. (Cresset Press. 15s.) ANYONE who knows Lord Samuel and has followed his public career would expect to find his autobiography...

M. MAILLAUD is well known to English listeners as Pierre Bourda one of the broadcasters in the French service of the B.B.C. The broadcasts in which he took part were better than...

Chungking Diary. By Robert Payne. (Heinemann. 12s. 6d.) READERS who turn to this book for information about Chungking as the war-time capital of China, to learn about military...

Watering Place. By Robert LiddelL (Jonathan Cape. 7s. 6d.) A VEIN of rather chilly malice is often to be detected in those brought up by aunts. With some—Saki, for instance—the...

dim Comes Home is the story of an English soldier who goes on leave in defiance of a last-minute cancellation and stays away for twenty-one anxious days. Frank Tilsley's main...

Pacific Partner. By George H. Johnston. (Gollancz. 7s. 6d.) Tim book by a well-known Australian war correspondent gives a lively and well-informed account of the activity of...

the sender of the first correct station of this week's crossword to be opened after noon on Tuesday week, s ly wt. Envelopes should be received not later than first post that...

The winner of Crossword No. 33o is Mr. A. KILBURN, Berwick St. James, Salisbury.

by Louis Bromfield. (Gollancz. 7s. 6d.) Tins is a rollicking story of the cosmopolitan crowd of engineers who went out to run the famous Tata Iron and Steel Works at...

By CUSTOS AT. long last the Company Law Amendment Committee has hatched out its report, and a very workmanlike document it is. Nobody would try to argue that reforming the...

(Phaidon Press. 25s.) Holbein's Drawings at Windsor Castle. Edited by K. T. Parker (Phaidon Press. 25s.) THIS valuable catalogue of the Windsor Holbein drawings is re- inforced...