O F the series of conferences which Herr Hitler and Herr von Ribbentrop are staging almost daily neither the full reasons nor the full results are yet disclosed. One reason no...

the Italians launched their sudden attack on Greece from Albania, and they are now everywhere on the defensive or retreating, and threatened with severe reverses. Not even in...

Events in India, as Mr. Amery's speech in the House of Commons on Wednesday clearly indicated, have taken another unsatisfactory turn. The Congress members of the Legisla- tive...

Gradually even the Petain Government is being forced to realise that Germany intends to treat France in the same spirit as she has treated other conquered . countries. Though M....

It is interesting that Signor Mussolini dates the opening of the struggle which ended in war at November 18th, 1935, when 52 States of the League imposed sanctions on Italy....

The importance of Syria is presumably being recognised by the War Cabinet, but some confirmation of the assumption would be reassuring The position in that highly important...

took place on the Horder Report. Lords Addison and Samuel and the Bishop of Winchester expressed a general uneasiness on the whole question of health in shelters. The Duke of...

with the Home Guard. His written statement was better than his speech. It is a pity that he spoils an obvious command of his subject by manner- isms in speech. Sir George...

he drew from Mr. Amery a significant statement on the contribu- tion being made to the war effort by India and Burma. The House of Commons is never sufficiently alive to...

is good that Parliament is now meeting regularly, preserving national unity at the centre while allowing the maximum criticism on all matters of policy. It is a mistake to...

Discussion of the difficulties and dangers Involved in the scrupulous neutrality of Eire, carrying with it the refusal to grant to the Royal Navy the use of the Irish ports...

Lord Horder's committee on health in shelters having re- ported in four days, the Ministry of Health has issued its recom- mendations—not its report—after two months. It is...

Our Parliamentary Correspondent writes: I write on the last day of the most mcmorable session Parliament has ever knowm It is too near to assess the remarkable events which have...

Postage on this issue: Inland zd., Foreign and Imperial id., Canada id.

N EVER in this war or any other have the potentialities of air-power been more convincingly demonstrated than in a week which has seen the crippling of the Italian fleet at...

unoccupied France. One reached me last Monday—November Ath. I looked to see when it was posted. The date was August ath. jANUS.

passes from the twentieth-century stage. The long beard, the monkish gown, the biretta, made him that to the outward eye, and the variety of his accomplishments justify the...

reply to various persons who denounce my reluctance to see Rome bombed. If I thought bombing Rome would carry us any measurable distance towards winning the war I should have...

is progressive and deplorable. That the news service is being deliberately used by the Ministry of Information for disguised propaganda I hesitate to believe. It would be little...

of a state- ment in a letter by Neville Chamberlain to his brother Sir Austen: " I have had my time of scorching humiliation," and suggested that it might refer to the late...

r HE new and extensive changes in the higher commands in the R.A.F. inevitably raise some questions as to whether things are not• a little too static at the Admiralty. Commander...

By STRATEGICUS A DISTINGUISHED British General has just committed himself to the statement that the disadvantage of being compelled to act on exterior lines is that "whilst the...

By VERA LADY ELDERTON [COMMUNICATED TO "THE SPECTATOR" BY MAX BEERBOHM] Y ES, I shall be roo years old tomorrow morning—at 4.15, to be exact. And I think it was a very good...

By ROSE MACAULAY D R. VENN'S magnificent enterprise of recording all Cambridge men down to 1900 goes bravely on through peace and war. The four great volumes of Part I ran from...

By LORD DAVID CECIL ITERARY persons in these last disturbed years have spent 1.1 a lot of their time arguing as to whether they 'should or should not write about politics. "The...

By A MILITARY CORRESPONDENT I T is more than dangerous to indulge in prophecy, but it 1. seems at least probable that next spring will see the crisis of the war. How operations...

By RANJEE G. SHAHANI A LITTLE before the present war broke out—to be more A exact, in August, 1939—I had occasion to go to Cannes for the day. I had boarded the train quickly,...

By W. B. SELBIE T HERE lies before me the old Liddell and Scott which I used as a boy at school more than sixty years ago. It is dirty, thumbed, dog-eared, and the binding is...

(oh. 30 X. 40.) By V. SACKVILLE-WEST T ALWAYS thought of her as a sturdy pony. The tragedy 1 to us, her friends, is that the pony was not so sturdy as w e thought! It trudged,...

Birds and Raids My attention is constantly being drawn to the fact that "the birds hate the air-raids." But oddly enough, though I must by now have watched some hundreds of...

have gone into the campaign for the increased production of vegetables, which appears generally to have been based on the Continental gibe that the English eat nothing but...

one could possibly have dreamed that onions would sell for a shilling a pound (a price of nearly £6 per cwt., as compared with 6s. per cwt. for potatoes), a note in this column...

BALLET Anglo-Polish THE Ballet, which we habitually think of as Russian, owes a great deal to Polish dancers. ICrzesinska, Nijinsky and his sister, Idzikovsky and Woizikovsky...

"Waterloo Bridge" and "An Unrecorded Victory." At th e Empire.-" The March of Time (On Foreign News Fronts), ONE sometimes wonders whether there is a special depot in Hollywood,...

FROM these now passive, quiet, corrected hands Flow massive rivers, roll the molten lands; There is so much pulsing universe released By this heart's abdication, the annulment...

that subject of bitter controversy that is Neville Chamberlain's handling of our foreign policy, there are one or two points in Mr. Wilson Harris's otherwise fair and...

Sut,—Why should Rome be spared lest antiquities and art treasures might suffer? The destruction of such things is of no military value. But our airmen have shown themselves...

Sut,—With reference to the article "Air Raid Wardens' Claims" by Lady Violet Bonham Carter, in your November 8th issue, I would like to say that if she is dissatisfied with the...

that one potent explanation of the deal at Munich was that Great Britain was at that time in no condition to fight. The inference appears to be that, when eleven months later...

it is essential that letters on these pages should be brief. We are anxious not to reduce the number of letters, but unless they are shorter they must be fewer. Writers are...

The Spectator within a few days of his death has filled the many of us here who take this journal regularly with a nauseating disgust, which will be shared, I should think, by...

SIR,—Recent pronouncements in regard to the Home Guard deal with a number of matters not of the first importance : real issues have been touched upon lightly, and some among us...

pendence of thought and stimulating views. I am moved, however, vehemently to protest at the ill-considered observation of " Janus " recently when discussing the impropriety of...

wish to protest most vigorously against his remarks in your issue of November 8th about reasons for not bombing Rome. He is best answered by the news that 13 Italian planes have...

SIR,—Writing of the appointment of a Minister of Works and Building in your issue of October 18th Mr. Clough Williams-Ellis says: "Is effective, positive town-planning possible...

Sul,—Like Mr. Stonebridge, I regret the eclipse of the Liberal Party —but eclipsed it seems to be. Hence, to say that the Liberal is the only party fit to tackle unemployment is...

Snt,—Miss Lesley Lawrence is not the first of your recent corre- spondents who has repeated the old story that Wren's plan for rebuilding the City was lost "by the pigheadedness...

its military value before we allowed a single shell to explode in Rome. Allow me to support our friend " Janus " in his plea for departed greatness and to urge its claim as a...

Slit,—In the midst of our thanksgivings for the home harvest, let . hold in grateful remembrance this year the bounty of the EmPli crop. For Canada alone the official estimate...

I can, in favour of Miss Rose Macaulay's suggestions in your issue of November a5th, of "starting a propaganda campaign for sleeping in bed "? May I say that I am strongly in...

Sta,—I cordially support Miss Rose Macaulay's letter. I have slept on the first floor of my house in St. John's Wood ever since the war began and intend to continue doing so. At...

Sin,—Balbus murum oedificavit—so my first Latin Primer informed me, but tantalisingly gave no further information about that ancient Roman. Now a new Balbus appears, in the...

SIR, —The Government have made tentative moves to rationalise the retail distribution of milk, but there is unfortunately a small, though active, body of retailers who...

Srit,—Will you be kind enough to allow me to say with regard to the Memorial Stone to King Charles the Martyr, at Bath, that it was never the intention of Mr. O'Horan or those...

Sta,—With the -general lines of the review of Mr Murry's book, The Betrayal of Christ by the Cl-urches, which appears in your issue of November ith I find myself in agreement....

SIR, —Your Parliamentary Correspondent wrote in The Spectator of November r5th that the time has come for the Board of Education and the Ministry of Information to define the...

A Bacteriologist Remembers . . . As I Remember Him. By Hans Zinsser. (Macmillan. r2s. 6d.) DR- HANS ZINSSER, the eminent American bacteriologist, died this autumn. This book...

Memoirs of Madame Pilsudski. (Hurst and Blacken. ios. 6d.) THOUGH the enslavement of Poland by Hitlerism was the imme- diate occasion of the present war, few English people have...

: Poems Written in Youth ; Poems Referring to the Period of Childhood. Edited by E. De Selincourt. (Oxford : Clarendon Press. zrs. Tms volume represents the first instalment...

What is at Stake, and Why Not Say So? By C. E. M. Joa (Gollancz, 2s. 6d.) What is at Stake, and Why Not Say So? By C. E. M. Joa (Gollancz, 2s. 6d.) HERE is a little volume which...

Armies of Freemen. By Tom Wintringham. (Routledge. 58.) AT this moment in our history it is our duty to think clearly and realistically about our military policy, and anything...

The Irish Free State and its Senate. By Donal O'Sullivan. (Faber. 25S.) THE Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1924 so widely acclaimed at the time, has been a failure. In his well-written,...

THIS is an account by a Cambridge Professor of two trips to the tourist resorts of Mexico, but it pretends to be rather more. The professor is a Spanish scholar—and that should...

Plato : Selected Passages. Chosen and edited by Sir R. W. Living- stone. (World's Classics : Oxford University Press. 28. 6d.) IT needed an unusual measure both of audacity and...

British Admirals and Chinese Pirates. By Grace Fox. (Kegan Paul. 125. 6d.) THREE great services, bringing benefit to the whole word, were performed by the Royal Navy during the...

Kilvert's Diary, Vol. 3. Edited by William Plomer. (Cape. 12S. 6d.) Tuts vapouring and sentimental, though sensitive and observant, clergyman was a novelty when he appeared in...

Simeon and Church Order. The Birkbeck Lectures for 1937-8. By Charles Smyth. (Cambridge University Press. t6s.) . MANY years ago a very young man visiting Cambridge referred,...

The Book of Hartland. By R. Pearse Chope. (The Devonshire Press, Torquay. 5s.) THERE are two schools of thought about Devon : those who prefer North, and those who prefer South...

Tins is a chatty book about old churches. Unlike many chatty writers, Miss Anderson is accurate and, unlike many accurate writers, she is readable. She is at heart an...

(Hogarth Press. 7s. 6d.) THE author calls this book a self-portrait, and is thereby probably more candid than he intended to be. For the revelation of his infancy in a rich...

Rare Prologues and Epilogues. 1642-1700. Edited by Autrey Nell Wiley. (Allen and Unwin. Iss.) THIS finely edited selection of prologues and epilogues more or less inaccessible...

Selected Poems. By Henry Newbolt. (Nelson Classics. 2s.) THE literary tide has turned since the days when we laughed at "Clifton Chapel" and " Vitai Lampada,' and it is Mr....

Masterpieces of English Furniture and Clocks. By R. W. Symonds. (Batsford. 2 gns.) THERE are few trades in which, technologically speaking, the nineteenth and twentieth...

The Child's Discovery of Death. By Sylvia Anthony. (Kegan Paul. Its. 6d.) THIS study will interest people who are not psychologists, though its main reference is to...

A Kind of Insolence. By Margaret Steen. (Collins. 75. 6d.) ALTHOUGH you will hear it said that the new writers cannot write, that the new writing lacks the human touch, and is,...

One, Two, Buckle My Shoe. By Agatha Christie. (Crime Club. Death of a Cad. By John Bude. (Robert Hale. 7s. 6d.) IF Sherlock Holmes were alive, he would undoubtedly write 'a...

Canadian Occasions. Addresses by Lord Tweedsmuir. (Hodder and Stoughton. 8s. 6d.) THIS collection of Lord Tweedsmuir's speeches in Canada is an impressive display of the wide...

8s.) (Michael Joseph. 8s. 6d.) Mn. OTAOLAIN'S work has all the vividness of the practised writer's, the sharp definition of character, the sway of the emotions, the sense that...

6d.) THIS first complete and unabridged edition of the Seven Pillars is one of the most welcome books of the autumn. Whatever our opinion of the author's personality, expressed...

and Stoughton. _25s.) - Trus--surely rather expe_nsive--collected edition of Rudyard Kipling's verse has made a "positively last appearance." The excuse is a batch of two...

would be interesting to trace the course of the change in meaning of the word " wit " from the days when it meant intel- ect (or one who had it) to its modern sense of amusing...

25. 6d. DOES all this seem fantastic and impossible?" asks the writer of this foolish and mischievous little book, after a hundred pages advocating the fomenting by Great...

6d.) NIL IRVING is well known as a sound mountaineer and one who has given many young climbers their introduction to the Alps. He is the author of an admirable history of...

"The Spectator" regularly, since newsagell can no longer be supplied on sale-or-return terms.

By CUSTOS AFTER the recent rise one cannot be surprised that markets are pausing. President Roosevelt's re-election, the victory at Taranto, these and other external factors...

L R The winner of Crossword No. 87 is Miss E. W. airdne. 7, Inverleith Terrace, Edinburgh, 4. IN REGULATIONS

Token for one guinea will be given to the of the first correct solution of this week's crossword puzzle b e opened. Envelopes should be marked with the words "Cros:d Puzzle" and...