The disaster which struck the village of Lynmouth last week was not of a sort. which could be foreseen or pro. vided against. In twenty-four hours parts of Exmoor had more than...

MOVEMENT AT MOSCOW T HE news from Moscow, if not momentous, is at any rate of the highest importance. The Congress of the Russian Communist Party is not summoned for the first...

On the face_of it the demand of the National Farmers' Union for a review of the guaranteed prices of farm products, as result of the increase of 5s. a week in agricultural...

South Africa, thanks to the activities of Mr. Gandhi in the early years of this century, has become the home of passive resistance as a political technique. In the end Mr....

Dr. Moussadek has been obliged to reimpose martial law in Tehran only a week after it had been lifted. The interval has seen daily disorders in the streets of the capital; these...

Last week's industrial disturbances at Alexandria are still somewhat mysterious. It is understandable that the factory workers, like other sections of th6 Egyptian population,...

Transport House, where both the Labour Party and the Trades Union Congress have their homes. Last week some attention was directed in this place to a Labour Party pamphlet,...

The FOreign Secretary at present lives at 1 Carlton Gardens, and there is no reason why he should not go on living there, as Mr. and Mrs. Bevin did for a considerable time. But...

Schumacher, the chairman of the Social Democratic Party in Germany, ends a life darkened by per- petual suffering. Schumacher was doubly crippled, having lost both an arm and a...

Drummond and his wife and daughter were murdered, and to all appearance the French police are as far from making an arrest as ever. Appearance may, of course, be deceptive, and...

interest, but it has always to be remembered that dispositions made some years before death may have considerably diminished the amounts returned for probate. Scholars do not...

I NTO – the controversies aroused by the comments of the Church Times on Mr. Eden's marriage I do not feel it partic- ularly profitable to enter, except to observe that the...

eight, were charged on Tuesday with abstracting mail-bags and their contents from a train at Portsmouth has been adjourned. I there- fore make no comment on the legal aspect of...

Britain, and has a suggestion to make in regard to them. Why he is so worried I am not clear; my impression is that it is difficult to discover enough alleged monopolies to keep...

By EDWARD ATIYAH T HE air passenger from Khartoum to Juba—making today in five hours the one-thousand-mile journey which used to take fourteen days by Nile steamer—can see at a...

By MICHAEL SWAN N EXT Sunday, in his villino at Rapallo, Sir Max Beerbohm will welcome, perhaps with courteous surprise, the arrival of his 81st year; but the youthfulness...

ByIAN STEPHENS* I NDIA is not what she was. I mean this in no loose conversational sense, nor (still less) disparagingly; but as a statement of geographical fact. Large bits of...

By D. W. BROGAN W E are " at the Coast," which, it is probably necessary to explain, is not the same as being "doon the Water." For going " doon the Water " is a journey,...

By BRIAN INGLIS T HE earliest sufferer from a printers' strike is the man who likes to read his morning newspaper at the breakfast- table. Since mid-July Dubliners have had no...

By HAROLD NICOLSON I N every age and every clime writers have grumbled about the small vocabulary of their native language and have denounced the patrii sermons egestas. In...

A RECENT Third Programme talk on contemporary poetry, entitled " The Petrified Muse," developed an argument whose relevance to the sister art of music was often striking. Poetry...

CINEMA OCR great-grandchildren, I suppose, will look back on the days when men were sent underground to hack out coal with much the same scandalised amazement as we view the...

When a countryman has no gun and little time to go out with a ferret and nets, he often puts down a snare. This is not the best time for snaring because - the grass is high,...

To a man who works on the land the signs of good husbandry *re plain. He looks at a field, the height, colour and richness of its grass, the absence of weed, neatness of its...

Casualties on the road'are not confined to human beings. The toll of birds, rabbits, hedgehogs and frogs is considerable. No one makes a return of the rabbits killed by cars at...

FEW people seem to gather meadowsweet, probably because, although its scent on the evening air can be wonderful, like the honeysuckle it can be too much. The sun was going down...

Each instant of his life a task, he never rests, And works most when he appears to be doing nothing. The least of it is putting down in words What usually remains unwritten and...

a breeding-ground for 17= flies and other insects harmful to the garden, unless the heap is

We will post the SPECTATOR to any of your friends residing in any part of the world at the following rates :— 52 weeks, 35s. ; 26 weeks, 17s. 6d. In addition a Birthday...

Set by D. R. Peddy The practice is increasing of advertising certain products with " educational " (historical, geographical or scientific, &c.) copy, e.g. " It was 1752, the...

prize of £5 was offered for a poem entitled " Disillusionment," based on and including the following lines from Wordsworth's poem :- She was a phantom of delight When first she...

Sim,—The problem posed by your correspondent Mrs. J. Lindsay can be solved in this, and to the best of my knowledge, many other towns, through enquiries to the local Education...

The Conquest of Death Ste,—To read the Spectator is one of the pleasures of life, but I doubt if the consideration of these two articles by the learned doctor would give me...

must appreciate the vigour with which Mrs. Lindsay has presented our predicament. The professional class retains the social conventions which make it impos- sible for its young...

SIR, —In your issue of August 8th your music critic comments on Dr. Vaughan Williams's statement at the International Folk Music Conference that England gets her painting from...

Con- quest of Death. Having nearly lost my life by drowning during the late war, I can attest further, if it were necessary, that dying is very much like falling into a deep...

religion," and once in the second to " those who believe in the existence of a soul." These references invite a comment from this other angle. To the doctor human " personality...

Sue,—As the librarian for the Ministry of Health sanatoria in Davos, I wonder if it would be possible to make a request for books through your journal. There are 130 patients...

The overwhelming ambition of the French President appears to shoot beyond the setting up of a mere temporal kingdom for himself, to the establishment of a theocracy. Louis...

the needs of today. The necessity for specialisation com- pels study along narrow lines, and a balance is needed by regular attendance at places where we shall of necessity meet...

SIR,—As one who has been a cook in schools for several years, I should like to express the wish that on no account should any ban be placed on the use of the prune. Often, when...

Snt,—Many years ago a small band of brothers, persecuted and hounded beyond endurance, sailed in the Mayflower' from Plymouth to seek the freedom of a new world. With the...

Snt,—Janus seems to have a curious notion that some kind of rivalry exists between Peterhouse and Pembroke in relation to Thomas Gray. Perhaps a little chronology may serve to...

SIR,—In his good-causf.appeal on August 11th Gilbert Harding stated that the hostel for incurables at Clapham Common did not receive help from the Government. Two days later a...

letter writers say, I know a fat wrinkled prune who is none the better for being soaked in gin or in port-wine either, and as for getting bottled I would rather not say. I can't...

Old Man Thames Time on the Thames. By Eric de Mare. (Architectural Press. 21s.) A RECENT American film celebrating the work of the Tennessee Valley Authority presented us with...

The -k Critical Years " by General Baron Geyr von Schweppenburg, the Bishop of- Southwell " The Christian Society ' 2 by Bishop- Stephen Neill, Sir Norman Birkett a new edition...

IN a book about India, by a writer whose connection with that country extends over fifty years, one half expects to find nostalgia and sentimental regret as the dominant note....

Gardens. By Sir William Beach Thomas. (Burke. 21s.) IT is safe to prophesy popularity for this book. Sir William's name alone commands the adherence of many faithful, and both...

KEPLER'S three laws of planetary motion are fundamental to modern astro-physics ; it wet - he who first stated that the motion of the planets around the sun is elliptical and...

Fts - ry years ago Anglo-Saxon art was known to few save archaeo- logists ; though it has now been made familiar to us by Baldwin Brown, Clapham, Sir T. D. Kendrick, Professor...

Sweet Corn. (Granta. 5s.) THERE was a time when I used to spend at least one day each summer trying to explain and justify cricket to foreigners. I should have known better ;...

IA Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution opened after noon on Tuesday week, September - 2nd, addressed Crossword, 99 Gower...

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The Frontiers. By John Strachey. (Gollancz. 10s. 6d.) IN these days of restricted space the choice often lies between giving a novel an inadequate notice or none at all. On the...

tone in the stock markets and, in spite of the resumption of trustee borrowing on a modest scale, are making good progress. At last, it seems, \ the big institutional buyers who...