T HE great Lord Salisbury was surprised and rather dis- turbed to find that he had led the Conservative Party to victory in two consecutive elections. 'Of course.' he i• wrote,...

No. 6621 FRIDAY, MAI' 20, 1955 PRICE 7d.

this week have continued to be carried on in a climate of universal benevolence. Nowhere was this more apparent than in Vienna, where on Sunday the Austrian treaty was signed by...

paralyse the nation's electricity supply is doubtful and it will not attempt what it cannot hope to achieve. For the rest, employers must resist demands which it is beyond the...

An Irish Correspondent writes : I T is probably not generally realised in Britain that twelve d the candidates in the General Election are pledged to overturn the Constitution...

Elsewhere in the world the local bonfires are crackling away merrily. The Pakistan Prime Minister has been having talks in New Delhi, the most concrete result of which seems to...

for a new Lepanto won in the teeth of the infidel, and the inhabitants , of small, highly industrialised countries can only envy, but hardly hope to emulate, his splendid...

One issue which has apparently been causing some trouble to Labour is the question of unofficial strikes, and Mrs. Braddock showed herself to be in touch with the electorate...

General news this week ranges from Trafalgar Square to San Francisco. The National Gallery has announced that a Virgin and Child with an Angel attributed to Francesco Francia,...

By HENRY FAIRLIE N OW that everyone knows that the prices of Lyons teas range from 5s 6d. pee lb. to 8s. per lb.: the only pos- sibly lasting effect of dip television broadcast...

all started when, as I predicted a fortnight ago, Mr. Dingle Foot announced in the News Chronicle that, for the first time in his life he was going to vote Labour. This brought...

THE ELECTION campaign has been pretty clean so far, and, considering the pessimism which lies heavily on the Labour ranks, I find this mildly surprising. The temptation to bring...

Soper in 1955.

by Mr. Tom Driberg and a few other Socialist journalists, a Royal Commission on the Press was set up, and out of the Commis- sion's report came in due course the Press Council....

voters. `But I was never in danger of falling for them. You all knew for a long time where my heart was—and now you know to whom I have given my hand.' It does not seem to me...

BY R. A. BUTLER, Chancellor of the Exchequer E used no literary artifice, no rhetorical emphasis, no elaboration of language, no finesse of phrase. His style was easy but never...

BY HAROLD MACMILLAN, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs I T has often been said that diplomacy is the art of the possible, and at times, no doubt, it has seemed to the...

T HE basic difference between Labour's'case and those of the Conservative and Liberal Parties lies in Labour's desire to change the structure of our society. The Con- servative...

By RICHARD H. ROVERE I T is just a year since the United States Supreme Coui . t unanimously ruled that racial segregation in schools sup- ported by public funds is...

learned other interesting facts about him. He cut down trees with a dexterity and efficiency which had astonished the wood-cutters of the world; he had invented a marvellous bag...

BY JOHN BETJEMAN i ' NTRICACIES of social life,' says Anthony Powell in his new novel The Acceptance World, 'make English habits unyielding to simplification.' One of the...

to the research men these days. It began long ago with the

that stayed with a shepherd who lost his life in a remote place reminded me of a letter I had from a friend recently telling of a sheep-dog that saved the life of a child in...

A MAN who occasionally detects symptoms of pomposity in his own behaviour can be fairly certain that others detect them less occasionally; and he develops—if I may speak from...

seems to be some misinterpretation of the interest taken in religion in Cambridge at present. I would be surprised—but I am admittedly without a finger on any Cantab's pulse—if...

letter on 'Education for Girls.' One might, in charity, pass over her unin- formed sneers at the activity methods of modern infant schools; they were in any case of doubtful...

D. Bryn Williams The Gallup Poll Henry Durant Christians and Humanists David G. Irwin, Anthony Barnes The General Election Richard FelNen Doomed Canals Enid Airy The Cesspool...

ELECTION SIR,—If, as Henry Fairlic asserts, the General Election campaign is unexciting, may not the primary cause be what Mr. Ormsby Gore calls the 'basic hypocrisy' of much...

and Hannah More and day and Sunday schools for poor children, are other examples that could be cited.—Yours faithfully, DAVID G. IRWIN The Queen's College, Oxford

Euston 3221

THAT the new Bartered Bride at Covent Garden fell flat on the first night was mainly due to everybody's trying too hard to make a good start (it was Kubelik's first appearance...

SIR,—As I read Mr. John Betjeman's obituary list each week I sometimes wonder if the depression he must suffer can only be borne because so many of us share it. In February....

Randolph Churchill's articles. It has always seemed to me to be a blot on our public life over the past forty ,years, that one of the easiest ways of gaining) a peerage has been...

THEATRE 'YES, I suppose we have to bring Shaw into this The comparison is unavoidable, though per- haps Thierry Maulinier's Jeanne devout ses Juges provides a more relevant...

newspaper strike to learn earlier of the shocking threat that now hangs over two of the loveliest valleys of the Lake District. If a halt is not called, overhead elec- tric...

IT seems to me that Arthur Bliss is one of those composers who is either inspired or nothing. He has little capacity for musical maintenance; patching up, making do with poor...

WE shall hardly know until after the election whether wireless and television have had much effect on voters, If you pay attention to what is written on the subject you might...

SIXTY-THREE Picasso drawings—about one- third of the cycle which marked his great burst of activity the winter before last—may be seen at the Marlborough Gallery. They show a...

The DAM BUSTERS. (Empire.) — 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA. (Odeon, Marble Arch.) THE heroes of the last war continue to haunt our screens, the danger being that the passage of...

(RECORDING COMPANIES : A, Argo; C, Columbia; Cap, Capitol; D, Decca; DT, Ducretet-Thomson; H, HMV; LI, London International; M, Monarch; OL, Oiseau-Lyrc; P, Parlophone; T,...

Pudd'nhead Wilson . BY JOHN WAIN T HIS book* is an unhappy mixture of genres; as a fable, it has wit, structure, and a fine irony; but it is offered— the technique specifically...

THE late Matthew Arnold was jerked out of his Balliol superiority by the news that the President of the United States had been assassinated by an actor who had enough culture to...

MR. SECRETARY CECIL AND QUEEN ELIZABETH. By Conyers Read. ONE of the paradoxes of Tudor history is that the man who must have written and received more documents than a dozen...

BULL FEVER. By Kenneth Tynan. (Longmans, 18s.)

THE SUN. By Noel Barber. (Bles, 16s.) SOME travel books have the power of making one eager to leave the trivial round as quickly as possible and go off to see the places they...

Gazette de Lausanne the other day, pretending to speak for Britain. Snug in our private constellation, Europe thinks, our interest in the rest of the cosmos is confined to an...

B ONJOUR, TRISTESSE. By Frangoise Sagan. (John Murray, 7s. 6d.) THAT Mr. Parry has talent we already know from Going Up. G oing Down and (particularly) his last novel Horseman,...

add to the already swollen list of Nelson biographies is that they could hardly leave him out of their Story Biography series, the lives of famous people. It would seem that...

naturalist is also an ethnologist and an in- domitable traveller. His journeys in the Austra- lian territory of Papua-New Guinea cover an area bounded by the Torres Strait...

WHO wants to read two hundred pages about the Foreign Service? In theory, all sorts of people, including MPs who think (quite wrongly, by £180 million) that it costs £200...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT PERHAPS the most unpopular politician today in the banking parlours of the City is Mr. Butler, although I hardly think the Conservatives will lose any...

By CUSTOS THE new account on the Stock Exchange, 4hich will last for three weeks, started on Wednesday , in fine fashion. Even the gilt- edged market turned better. ROLLS-ROYCE...

ACROSS I A short note to the railway (6). 4 Set forth for old-fashioned prison (8). 8 Sam Lover (anag.) (8). 10 'I'd - resign to call thee mine' (Old Song) (6). 12 Mother and...

Set by Allan M. Laing A rumour, much too good to be true , credits Sir Winston Churchill with the inten - tion of rounding off a versatile career by writing ballads in the...

SPECTATOR COMPETITION No. 272 Report by Hilbrian Competitors were asked to submit the chorus (not more than twelve lines) of a suitable Election Song for any of the three major...