added to the East German Republic in the last week ; it is to have an ambassador in Moscow and its worst-fed citizens are to be a little better fed. But the general atmosphere...

With all their differences Mr. Attlee and Mr: Morrison on the one side, and Mr. Churchill and Mr. Eden on the other, are on one point in full agreement—that the road to recovery...

Frenchmen are themselves uneasily conscious that the traditional method of reshuffling a Cabinet leaves a lot to be desired, since the working basis of every government must...

American Communist Party on a charge of criminal conspiracy restates in its simplest form the oldest dilemma of democratic government : to what extent can the right of free...

The tide of Chinese Communism now laps the borders of Hong- kong, and so far nobody seems any the worse off. Canton gave itself up without a murmur, and the Nationalists have...

King Leopold's Memorandum on the Belgian Surrender, first- fruits of the great German offensive in 1940, is presumably addressed mainly to the Belgian people, and 'it is,...

The Council of the Arab League, which has been meeting at Alexandria this week for discussions, is not at the moment in a happy state. Several knotty problems require solution ;...

* * * a Development charges are a headache to Members on both sides. They apply not only to the retired worker who has bought himself a plot of land on which to build a...

The recent Army manoeuvres in Germany, of which some account is given elsewhere in these pages, were on a large scale by British standards. Two complete divisions (the znd...

The virtual confession of failure of the groundnut scheme at Kongwa in Tanganyika will surprise no one who has read various articles on the subject that have appeared from time...

W HEN M. Vyshinsky speaks the first question to ask usually is what, in fact, he means. He spoke at Lake Success on Tuesday, not as might be expected to the United Nations...

not been announced as I write, but I hope Sir Stafford Cripps is still consider- ing, not merely on financial grounds, his suggestion that National Health Service patients...

Navy aban- doned brandy for rum. The Colonial Office has just been investi- gating the how and why and when of that, as the result of questions Prompted by a speech by the...

T HE hoary old proposal for a State Lottery to bring funds into the Treasury is being fitfully pushed again. Since one of its sponsors is Field-Marshal Lord Birdwood, it cannot...

my capacity to remember the appearance of Kipling's "Absent Minded Beggar," coupled with incapacity to remember who it was that set the poem to music. I am told it was Sir...

it her or was it him ? " Counsel in the Tierney murder case. And substitute, I should hope,

other day that if children went less to the pictures, listened less to the radio and read more books instead they might be able to spell better than they do. I expect he is...

By R. G. JESSEL F OR the first fortnight of this month the British Army of the Rhine and the British Air Forces of Occupation in Germany have been holding their combined...

By G. F. WOODS p LASTER casts of the statue of Winged Victory in the Louvre are not expensive. The problem is transport. The polite lady at the counter suggested that I might...

leading men in the banking and commercial world of the City of London was assembled on Wednesday, by the Lord Mayor's invitation, to hear an official explanation of the plans...

Procedure" By SIR GILBERT CAMPION* B EHIND the well-lit stage of parliamentary politics patient research will discover a rather dusty shelf-full of stage directions. It is...

MICHAELMAS daisy and dahlia Put off their full regalia, Each crown Is ragged grown. But the beech tree tall, More lovely in her fall Than in her prime, Puts on the splendour...

By HENRY COLMAR A S you enter the Eastern Zone from Czechoslovakia, the first im- pression is decidedly that of a sovereign State rather than of an occupied country. Everywhere...

By DR MARGARLT NELSON JACKSON I 4t 'M poor, I'm proud, and I'm particular," the old song ran ; "1 don't like work, I never did." The cynicism pleases because it hits home on a...

Changing Sardinia i, H. G. KLEMPERER (Christ Church, Oxford) B 1' travelling one may visit not only other countries but other periods of time. Features of all past ages arc...

By HAROLD NICOLSON ISE men have told us that you can prove anything by statistics, and that it is therefore uncultivated to attach credence to such modern methods as Mass...

THE THEATRE A Streetcar Named Desire. By Tennessee Williams. (Aldwych.) MARRIED in her teens to a young poet who, when she discovered him to be a pervert, blew the back of his...

"The Velvet Glove." (Odeon, Marble Arch.)—"Any Number Can Play." (Empire.)—" Red, Hot and Blue." (Plaza.) IT is lovely to see Miss Rosalind Russell again, so elegant, cool and...

THE performance of Bloch's Sacred Service at the Albert Hall by_ the London Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra on October 13th was, unaccountably, the first in this country of a...

was an entertaining idea for the B.B.C. to send out its 1st XI of commentators to explore London at 5 a.m., to investigate the markets and the Admiralty wireless room and the...

to culmination the tradition that they had inherited, and founded as a result the Flemish school that was to dominate art north of the Alps for a hundred years. Of the painters...

series of Foreign Corre- spondent, where Messrs. Alan Bullock and Edward Ward dealt last week (aided by maps and diagrams and films) with the Benelux countries. I got the...

Mediaeval Disputation on the Third Programme. This debate which was held in the Old Hall of Lincoln's Inn, was on the thesis of "the Necessity of an Ethical basis of Human...

SIR, —Mr. Walston, in answering my letter, has put words into my mouth which he admits I never wrote, and which I certainly did not mean. May I make it completely clear that I...

SIR,—I have just mad with interest the remarks of Janus in the Spectator of October 7th about overcrowding at Cambridge. No one, he says, can suggest a solution ; no one knows...

StR,—I feel that it is most timely that you should again raise in your columns the matter of the extravagances of the National Health Service. The issue of spectacles concerns...

Responsibility for Munich sIft,—I was glad indeed to read Lord Perth's letter in the Spectator of October 14th on the subject of Sir Charles Webster's review of the latest...

is payable are as follows:—" If the local National Insurance Office is not informed of the incapacity within the first three days the insured person may suffer a loss of...

Sta,—Dr. Thomson's letter is a valuable warning, and for me a well- deserved correction. I ought to have made it plain that I was only speaking, and as he points out could only...

SIR, —Jantis's comments on Robert Lynd will very much please hosts of people, especially those in Belfast, his native place, where he was held in the highest esteem. Throngs of...

of the cleanest footplates I have ever seen" would suggest that a clean footplate is today the exception. As a pupil on the G.W.R. I had some experience of footplates on all...

visit to Spain, I was very interested to read Father Cary-Elwes' impressions of the Franco regime. Conditions there, such as the extreme drought and the widespread poverty, were...

to dwell on the spectacle of full shop windows and the presence of luxuries inaccessible to us at home. They do not mention, however, the problem of Germany's twelve million...

SIR,—Obviously the Spectator does not intend to give undue preference to any one of the many university periodicals. It is a remarkable coincidence, however, that the first...

by a bee-keeper for writing of "swarm" wheq,I meant "colonies." Now bee-keepers are very particular about word: They won't allow us to speak of the honey of flowers. Hon.:c is a...

ST. LUKE'S summer, which is dated from October 18th, has one other summer to follow—St. Martin's—but it is often the last real bit of summer, warm and green like its...

of pcnstemons, flowers for which had no particular affection, but penstemons today are not the penstemon , of yesterday. A lot has been done for the flower—by selection, by...

It is really a very odd thing in the psychology (if the word be allowed) of birds that new habits spread rapidly ; birds, in short, learn readily. A member of a well-known...

Snt,—The R.S.P.C.A. fully shares Mr. Scott's view of this matter, but I wonder what his reaction, and those of your readers, would be to the attitude of the chairman of a Bench...

SIR,—The story, doubtless authentic, in your columns of the dog which discriminated between the daily and evening paper, is no more strange than that of my friend's dog. It...

rural craftsmen have neglected to notice the really solid successes of the revised and enlarged Rural Industries Bureau, whose Youth's Opportunity in the Countryside (35 Camp...

The Haworth Family The Four Brontës. By Lawrence and E M. Hanson. (Oxford University Prcss. 25s.) THOSE of whom much has been written, and of whom there is much to write, are...

TODAY everything we once took for granted is being questioned, and it is therefore only right that at the beginning of this excellent little book Professor Wood should examine...

QUITE frankly, it seems a pity to have translated this book. It was Monsieur Francois-Poncet's conversation, mordant, polished, gleam- ing, which flashed its lights across the...

The American People : Their Civilisation and Character. By Henn Bamford Parkes. (Eyre and Spottiswoode 15s.) Jr used to be a justified complaint that the British public would...

Mr. Swinnerton's Confessions MEETING Mr. Swinnerton in these essays, many of which are personal confessions most revealing of the " I," one sees at once that he is a brave...

Piero della Francesca: Frescoes. Introduction by Roberto Longhi. Iris Colour Books. (Batsford. 2 Is.) THE history of the classic principle in European art and, incidentally,...

Bricks and Mortar. By Sir Harold Bellman. (Hutchinson. 169.) IT is commonly said that everybody is the potential author of one book, the story of his own life. Men of affairs...

TIIIRTEEN years ago the first small television screen displayed its flickering picture, and the viewer beheld a miniature counterpart of the early cinema film, complete with...

MR. FUSSELL'S book on the English labourer is a painstaking account of a subject on which he has read and written much. It is divided into three sections—" Tudor and Stuart...

Character and Situation. By Christopher Sykes. (Collins. 8s. 6d.) The Pick of Today's Short Stories. Selected by John Pudney. (Odhams. 8s. 6d.) THE short stories in these two...

44 ii1 , - .. * Ri l io u 5 - r p.tm tt 62 _.,.... A. .) 1 . 41 ...i _AIC' A - 17 E 1 51111 , 111i: IN TIrtIy . ls E - Ale .■ . ■,.1131E11:■ T E 11 L'S SOLUTION ON NOVEMBER...

IA Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct ,,,,, of this week's crossword to be opened after noon on Tuesday week, No: ember 1st. Envelopes...

THIS is the success story of a Hungarian who emigrated to America at the turn of the century, practically penniless, and decided to become a doctor. He paid his tuition fees,...

By CUSTOS MARKEIS are now awaiting the "consequential measures" following devaluation which, it is hoped, will set the stage for an all-out effort to raise production and...

Richard Southern. (Muller. 2Is.) Jr is commonly supposed that the difference in their values sets a gulf between the theatrical practice of professionals and amateurs. This...