24 MAY 1940

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NEWS OF THE WEEK TN less than three hours on

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Wednesday the Government took complete command of the lives and liberties and property of every man and woman in this kingdom. Liberty of the subject has disappeared, so far as...

Towards Stabilisation

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The military situation as we go to Press shows some signs of stabilisation. Arras, which a small body of German mechanised troops occupied on Tuesday afternoon, was retaken the...

M. Reynaud's Frankness

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The course of events has run swiftly. Within two days after the military and Cabinet changes M. Reynaud with courageous frankness told the French Senate the whole story of the...

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Drastic Steps in France

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The first clear sign that all was not well in France came when M. Paul Reynaud announced drastic changes in his Cabinet. To those who could read between the lines there had...

Relations With Russia

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From the periodical and fragmentary statements issued regarding the progress of the Anglo-Russian trade negotiations it seems safe to infer that in fact they are making no...

Arms and Equipment

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For the moment all eyes are concentrated on the gigantic struggle of the armed forces to stem the tide of invasion by an enemy who in arms and equipment is far superior to the...

The Education of Nazis

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In his pastoral letter for Trinity Sunday Cardinal Hinsley assured his readers that the Pope rests his hope for the renewal of society on the Christian education of youth; and...

Enigmatic Italy

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Whilst Count Ciano has been content to speak of Italy's " natural, just, indispensable " aspirations and the necessity of defending her prestige, the inspired Press continues to...

A Neutral Ally

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Stirring herself to realities, as this country began to do after Munich, the United States is today manifesting an intense awareness to the possible, indeed probable,...

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The Week in Parliament

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Our Parliamentary Correspondent writes : The scene when the House of Commons reassembled on Tuesday would have been, at any normal time, of absorbing interest. There. sitting...

On Tuesday the House was undoubtedly somewhat shaken by the

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news from France, and there was not a very good attendance for Mr. Malcolm MacDonald upon the introduction of the Colonial Development and Welfare Bill. On Wednesday, calmnesss...

It has been a week of tremendous shock and strain

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for us as for the whole nation. But we are finding our level again and shall not be easily thrown off our balance. And it has been pleasant to recognise in Mr. Duff Cooper, as...

Oddly enough on this occasion it appeared to Sir Herbert

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Williams a matter of supreme importance not to allow to Mr. Lees Smith unchallenged the right to put questions to the Prime Minister relating to the business of the House....

Such an Opposition, if it appears, might well collect itself

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from the more intractable supporters of the old administration. Some of them are showing signs of restiveness already. They cheer Mr. Chamberlain pointedly on all occasions ;...

Mr. Harold Nicolson

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It is necessary at this time to take the broadest views, and on that basis to say of Mr. Harold Nicolson's appointment as Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of Information...

The Export of British Books

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In the drive for the extension of British exports it has not been overlooked that books hold an important place among exports, though many potential markets have been neglected....

Readers are again reminded of the necessity of ordering ,‘

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

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ASSAULT AND ENDURANCE

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" W HEREFORE take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand." Every man must decide for himself how he...

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TO DEFEAT PARACHUTISTS

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T HE whole country from Land's End to John o' Groats has become parachute-conscious. Its imagination has been grimly stirred by the stories of German soldiers, disguised in...

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In spite of the daily references to the Fifth Column

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peril a good many people are still enquiring about the origin of the term. It dates from the Spanish Civil War, when at a certain crisis General Franco observed that he had four...

When a Daily Mail representative interviewed Air Vice- Marshal Croll,

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the head of the Royal Canadian Air Force and chief organiser of the Empire Air Training scheme, he was greeted with the question, " This is for the people back home, isn't it? "...

The attacks on what it is fashionable in some quarters

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to style " the old men of Munich " seem rather damp squibs in the light of M. Reynaud's action in calling General Weygand and Marshal Petain to be the saviours of France. Who...

It is tragic that the university library at Louvain should

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have been destroyed for the second time in quarter of a century, and by the same unhallowed hands. After the last war the noble work of re-stocking the library was organised by...

A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

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A GOOD many people have been perplexed and disturbed by some figures of American aircraft production given by Raymond Gram Swing in a broadcast some three weeks ago. According...

If the B.E.F. can manifest the same stubborn obduracy which

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so conspicuously distinguishes the B.B.C., the issue of the war should be secure. What I have in mind in particular are the news bulletins, especially " the nine o'clock news."...

No one, I think, has noted, what a leading historian

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pointed out to me the other day, that in his slaughter of the aristocrats Mr. Churchill, himself a grandson of the seventh Duke of Marlborough, has shown himself little less...

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THE WAR SURVEYED : FACING CRISIS

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By STRATEGICUS T I HOUGH much is obscure, we have now to face the fact that the military situation is grave. The enemy, putting into operation, apparently, the later Schlieffen...

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WEYGAND AND PETAIN

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By BRIG.-GENERAL E. L. SPEARS (the well-known author of " Liaison, 1914 " and " Prelude to Victory ") IT was, I believe, the chance of war and a great emergency that threw...

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HOLLAND FIGHTS ON

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By DR. M. VAN BLANKENSTEIN H OLLAND has been trampled down because the Germans have with totalitarian thoroughness betrayed every trust they had been given and every service...

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AMERICA FACES FACTS

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A MERICAN public opinion is now feeling the fuller effects of total war, is realising its terrible consequences and some- thing of its meaning for the new world, and is...

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A ROAD, A RAILWAY AND A WAR

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By GEOFFREY WILSON T HE Japanese occupation of the Eastern seaboard of China not only forced the Chinese to retreat into their vast and hitherto almost unknown interior, but...

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ON RE-READING DANTE

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By E. L. WOODWARD B Y accident of war I am a temporary clerk in a Government office, with my evenings to myself. I am neither a high- brow nor a low-brow, and, therefore, I do...

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DEATH OF A TOWN

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By MARTIN LINDSAY F OR a week we had been disembarking troops and unloading stores at Namsos. The work was all done at night, and at daybreak the ships had moved out of the...

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THE RETURN OF THE NIGHTINGALE

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By ROBERT NICHOLS I T was April the nineteenth and day had just broken when I awoke. A grey, blank and uninteresting light filled the space between the curtains. The sparroWs...

BIDDYA

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AT noon they fell upon Biddya, Fariz Azzoni, Hamid Zwatta, And forty of their fighting men. The heat of the day gave way to heat of battle; Blood added scarlet to the grey of...

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In the Purple It is sometimes interesting to decide consciously,

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as they do each week at Kew, which is the loveliest thing in the garden at particular dates. In my patch I am quite sure at the moment that the prize goes to a bush of the...

The War Garden All war-time gardeners should take note of

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certain results obtained in Lincolnshire and other places regarding the potato crop. Potato diseases are much more common and disastrous in gardens and allotments than elsewhere...

Out-of-Date Food There came an almost exact moment when the

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tits in the garden, who had fed greedily on the nuts provided for them, ceased to pay the least attention to the feast ; the caterpillars had hatched out. Already the old birds...

COUNTRY LIFE

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Scottish Migrants By way of personal letters and newspapers I continue to receive evidence that in Scotland, if nowhere else, enforced migration from the towns has inspired...

War Weather The hoary jest about the old gaffer who,

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told there was a war on, said : " Anyway, they've got a fine day for it," has been strangely justified, again and again. I never remember more lovely days than those I spent in...

THE CINEMA

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Empire Film Week. At the Tatler.—.. Mein Kampf—My Crimes." At the Regal. THE enterprise of Donald Taylor, of Strand Films, in organising a special Empire Film Week at The...

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Sul,—The campaign for the internment of all or most refugees

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from Nazi oppression starts from premises which are almost unbelievable illusions, and it may have consequences prejudicial to important British interests. The refugees have...

SiR,—May I defend myself against Fr. Prime's implied accusa-

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tion that I apply the word " idiosyncrasies " to other men's views, but not to my own? I might even claim to surpass Fr. Prime himself in the matter of tolerant respect for...

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

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[In view of the paper shortage 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...

ROMAN CATHOLICS AND THE SCHOOLS Sin,—A few years ago a

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Roman Catholic bishop wrote to our Cambridge paper appealing for State support of his schools on the ground of equal justice for all citizens. I put to him a question which...

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SUNDAY, MAY 26th stit,--It must be a matter of deep

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thankfulness that the heads of the Christian Churches throughout this land have unanimously decided to call the nation to prayer and penitence on Sunday, May 26th. As a parish...

THE BRITISH " INVASION - COMPLEX " SIR, —Being a Czecho-Slovakian

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refugee, alien but friendly, I have had ample experience to look closer into certain historical problems which have come again into the limelight of this Tamerlanian theatre of...

THE BEST BOOKS IN THE WORLD Sta,—I think I should

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begin by apologising to the worshippers of Jane Austen for a too cursory dismissal of this writer in my letter of April 26th, for she was a favourite of my undergraduate days :...

HIGH WAGES AND INCOME TAX SIR, —With reference to the Rev.

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J. H. Shackleton Bailey's letter, I suggest that what Sir John Simon said (or meant to say) was that if all the income in excess of £2,000 was taken from each of the...

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Stalin in Black and White

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THE publication in English last autumn of M. Souvarine's long and detailed biography of Stalin is now followed by Mr. Eugene Lyons' more impressionistic portrait and by an...

Books of the Day

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The End of History IT is never easy to believe in God. It is doubly difficult in the world today. It is not merely that the war has come despite the prayers of so many...

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Horace Walpole

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liorace Walpole. A Biography. By R. W. Kerton-Cremer. (Duckworth. 16s.) IN an article written in 1833 Macaulay condemned Horace Walpole for devoting a lifetime of eighty years...

Misery in East London

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East End My Cradle. By Willy Goldman. (Faber and Faber. 8s. 6d.) IN East End My Cradle Mr. Willy Goldman tells the story of the growth of a Jewish boy, presumably himself, in...

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Three Versifiers and a Poet

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Fisherman's Wake. By Temple Lane. (Longmans. 2s. 6d.) Speak to the Earth. By Andrew Young. (Cape. 5s.) Letter from Ireland. By Ewart Milne. (Gayfield Press. 55.) IF the...

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Fiction

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Iron Gustay. By Hans Fallada. Translated from the German b% Philip Owens. (Putnam. 8s. 6d.) THE simplest thing to say about any new work of fiction whirl: has made its...

Victorian Personalities

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ALL except two of Mr. Lucas's studies were given as wireless talks and published ten years ago. He then prefaced them with a brief Defence of Poetry that has lost none of its...

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HAD Professor Robertson flourished a century ago, Economi,:.; would never

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have been called the Dismal Science. As expound,.1 by him, it is a tongue-twisting, headaching, brain-racking science but emphatically not dismal. To venture on this collection...

The Economics of Agriculture. By Ruth Cohen. (Nisbet. 5s. 6d.)

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Two pitfalls lurk for the undoing of writers on the economics of agriculture—or, indeed, on those of any other particular brand of human activity: on the one hand the lapse...

Shorter Notices

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This is England! Compiled and Edited by C. G. Holme. (Studio. 15s). THE object of this book is to describe England to the foreigner and the interested native in pictorial...

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PRINCESS LIEVEN, who long doubled the parts of a social

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butterfly and a shrewd Russian agent, would not seem to be a very suitable friend for a pious Scottish Tory nobleman like the Lord Aberdeen who led us into the Crimean War. But...

DOWN the garden path again, this time with the author

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of God Is My Adventure, in the Sussex of 1939. Of No Importance (a daring but some will think justified title) is a diary covering about nine months, during which the...

A Virtuous Widow and Others. Edited with an introduction Donald

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Carswell. (Hodge 6s.) THE jacket of this volume is a clout to be cast at first sight. That done, the book announces itself as " A Gallery of Types." Actually it is a collection...

REPORT ON COMPETITION NO. 35

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ON the assumption that the Light Brigade has by now been transformed into a mechanised unit, the usual prizes were offered for a poem (of not more than 24 lines) commemorating a...

THE SPECTATOR COMPETITIONS No. 37 PRIZES of book tokens for

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£2 2S. and LI is. are offered for the most amusing lists of original " schoolboy's howlers " perpetrable through misunderstandings of any five of the following sentences and...

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COMPANY MEETING

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MARKS AND SPENCER LIMITED MR. SIMON MARKS' REVIEW a. fourteenth annual general meeting of Marks and Spencer, Limited, as held on May 21st in London. Mr. Simon Marks (chairman...

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FINANCE AND INVESTMEN1

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By CUSTOS MARKETS are still in retreat, but they are fighting a stern rear- guard action with considerable success. Even the grim turn of events in the middle of the week...

COMPANY MEETING

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CABLE AND WIRELESS, LIMITED (THE OPERATING COMPANY . SIR EDWARD WILSHAW'S REVIEW THE eleventh ordinary general meeting of Cable and Wireless, Limited (the operating company),...

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OMPANY MEETING

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IMPERIAL CHEMICAL INDUSTRIES INCREASED VOLUME OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT OF EXPORTS LORD McGOWAN'S ADDRESS THE 13th annual general meeting of Imperial Chemical Industries,...

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COMP ANY MEETING

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INCORPORATED ACCOUNTANTS -- - AT the annual general meeting of the Society of Incorporated Account- ants held on May 23rd, 1940, the President, Mr. Percy Toothill, F.S.A.A.,...

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NORWICH UNION LIFE INSURANCE SOCIETY

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SOUND POSITION THE 132nd annual general meeting of the Norwich Union Life In- surance Society was held on May 21st at Norwich. Mr. Ernest Hicks (the President) said that when...

HARLAND AND WOLFF

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FIGURES SHOW FURTHER IMPROVEMENT THE annual general meeting of Harland and Wolff, Limited, was held on May 22nd in the Council Chamber of the Federation of British Industries,...