T „,,.. HE most hackneyed of all the epithets usually applied to British Cabinet Ministers is the word " massive " applied to Mr. Ernest Bevin. Yet it is the right word with...

The reasons which the Minister of Fuel and Power gave the Commons on Monday for the latest coal shortage were increasing demand due to full employment, reduced output of...

The cautious United Nations advance towards the Manchurian frontier continues against mainly climatic opposition. Mystery still surrounds the purpose and scope of the Chinese...

Regarded as an instrument for furthering the unification of Western Europe, the Council of Europe is not achieving conspicuous success, so far as Britain is to be regarded as...

The conference of Anglicans and Free Churchmen responsible for the important report on Church Relations in England (S.P.C.K., 2s. 6d.), published on Tuesday, consisted of seven...

There is nothing very new in Pastor Martin Niemoller's campaign of speeches and articles, in which he insists on subordinating a great number of political complications to the...

A major curse of German politics is exaggeration—the tendency to represent small adjustments as fundamental swings. Consequently, the West German Socialist leader, Dr....

W E had been promised a tranquil week save for Thursday's conflict over the Sunday openin g of the amusement fair of the Festival of Britain. This apart, there was to be nothing...

"There is an ur g ent need for more specialised g eriatric hospital departments," wrote, Mr. An g us Maude in an article on the care of the old in the Spectator last week, and...

A lettdr, printed on another page, from an American citizen on the Festival of Britain has come to us out of the blue, but it is too pertinent to be i g nored. Why, it is asked...

0.M., on Rutherford and the Atom, lain Macleod, M.P., on the National Health Service and Dr. Victor Purcell on the situation in Malaya.

T THE journey of nine delegates of the People's Republic of China to Lake Success is an event fraught with immense possibilities of good or evil for the world. It will reveal,...

of the Socialist candidate in South-East Bristol. Is this form of political recommendation to become current coin ? If so, with honest gradations, I hope: "Certainly a...

afford to suffer at all, will suffer heavily in the country as the result of recent events in the House of Commons—particularly after Lady Violet Bonham Carter's trenchant...

at 7 p.m., referring would-be diners to the Station Hotel as an alternative, brings me a letter from a baffled traveller who followed this advice, paid 7s. 6d. for the hotel...

of the nation's finances to spend more money on the roads, it may be still more difficult not to spend it. It depends partly on what is considered to be the cash value of human...

on Thursday morn- ing. Organisers of by-elections and similar fixtures would therefore oblige by putting their climax not later than Tuesday. Handsworth omitted this courtesy,...

the See of Truro. It should, I think, be offered to the Dean of Canterbury, on condition that he never thereafter crosses the Tamar. And now I apologise to all Cornishmen.

Royal Commission on the Press, which in the event passed a 1 erdict so very different from what he had hoped for.' But there was one straw to clutch at. The Commission (with...

on resurrecting, on the day the latest coal-crisis was reported, a helpful observation made by Mr. Aneurin Bevan in 945: "This island is almost made of coal and surrounded by...

By SIR SHENTON THOMAS* A S a people we are prone to understatement, but to speak of the winter in North Korea as "cold weather," as happened recently in the House of Commons, is...

BY WILSON HARRIS T HERE are few books with contents so familiar and a back- ground so unfamiliar as the New Testament. Use and wont are the reason. We are so much accustomed to...

T O the ordinary man it will always remain surprising that anyone should choose to be a Prime Minister—more especially in France. A French Prime Minister's attention is divided...

By BERNARD FERGUSSON p ERCHED on a spur overlooking Fez from the west is , a Moorish café, and in its garden is one of those flat tables on which lines are drawn towards land-...

By HILTON BROWN Her reigning Majesty, Queen Salotte Tubou, G.B.E., can trace unbroken descent to Ahoeitu, the Tui Tonga of the tenth century, with every intermediate name ....

By A DURHAM CORRESPONDENT i Consider the industrial and political background against which this storm has broken in Durham County. For generations trade unionism has been inbred...

By SU-HUA LING CHEN 46PT1HJNGS in old days which one recalls all pitiful, all lovable! " I don't know in what poem I read this line, but it always seems true whenever I think of...

By SETON GORDON T HERE are three small islands, western outposts of the Outer Hebrides, on which most of the Atlantic seal population in Scottish waters assemble each autumn to...

By A LAY READER F 1VE months ago the vicar left our village for work overseas': No one, as I write, has been found to take his place. We are Low Church and old-fashioned in our...

WITH wide unblinking stare The cat looked ; but she did not see the king. She only saw a two-legged creature there Who, in due time, might have tit-bits to fling. The king was...

DICKENS'S DAVID COPPERFIELD. Tins story has less of London life and town-bred character than most of its predecessors ; but what may thus be gained in variety is lost in...

Innocents in Wards By PAUL WELLINGS (University College Hospital) j t t UNIOR Clinical Course ? " He repeated our question, and then said, "Yes, sir, go out of my door, turn...

By HAROLD NICOLSON T HOSE who, in their passage through this intricate life, have had opportunities to observe the working of the adeninistra- tive machine, are aware how small...

THEATRE “ Twelfth Night." By William Shakespeare. (Old Vic.) SHAKESPEARE'S fools are ignes fatui in pursuit of which even the most experienced producer is liable to go off at...

(Leicester Square.) The Clouded Yellow is a variety of butterfly, and, save that it is caught and skewered by that ardent lepidopterist Mr. Barry Jones, it has little bearing on...

company on November 18th, has many of the traits of the most popular con- temporary films, containing as it does scenes of sexual passion and torture, a near-rape, a murder...

SoLomox (for H.M.V.) plays Beethoven's op. 111 very finely, but the extreme ranges of the pianoforte make it a very difficult work to record. Kathleen Long plays Faures 13th...

Magazine Pau) ld•

Report by R. S. Stanier Reform of time-tables is in the air.- For the comfort of passengers h is surely just as important to know that a horde of school-children will invade...

Set by Guy Kendall A prize of £5, which may be divided, is offered for a sonnet, Petrarchan or otherwise (Meredithian not excluded), on the passing of the London i tram....

sentence reads: "Next year Britain Kittery Point, Maine, U.S.A. throws her doors wide open in welcome to the world." There is great confusion of thought in the United States...

SIR, —In his interesting article published in your issue of November 1 7 1h, Mr. Angus Maude, M.P., though possibly rather over-solicitous about the care of the old, does old...

SIR,—Lt.-Col. E. B. Hoyle, in his letter in your issue of October 27th, asks what I mean by writing that "to introduce the Kenya complex to Tanganyika would be a major...

your issue of November 17th, ,s mistaken in his statement about the formation of M.I.5.. It came into existence as M.0.5—I was present at its birth and the dates have been...

SIR, —Your correspondent F.C.I.I. seems to be under some misapprehen- sion. In suggesting that teachers will be adequately remunerated under the new scales he equates the...

SIR. —May I thank Mr. Warren Postbridge for his timely and lucid explanation of how and why private-ward facilities are available in State hospitals for those who, for various...

8nt. — I am glad to have Mr. Ray's explanation—I regret that it readied me only now. He did not advocate miscegenation, but said that Brazil which practised miscegenation is...

state that "to issue visas to delegates . (to the Peace Congress') abroad and then stop the delegates at the pen s is to play a very unattractive game." Mr. Ede showed recently...

Si,—Like many of your readers I was greatly entertained by the extract "from a GovernmencOrder " quoted by Janus from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. My enjoyment was in no way...

SIR, — Other readers besides myself may have been puzzled by some of Janus's references to the form of prayer with thanksgiving formerly used on November 5th. He seems to imply...

Sta.—The opposition of the Free Churches to gambling in any shape or form is not based upon any spoil-sport attitude ; still less is it due to bigotry or the " fanaticism"...

by one of the smaller miracles of life. I went out on to the southward-looki ng terrace of my hillAop home this morning to watch the sunrise. After a savage day and Might of...

from a gentleman In a vicarage who says that a Conservative Prime Minister in 1935 subordinated, on the eve of a General Election, national to party interests, avowing in...

I always keep a pair of opera glasses (I've had them for forty years) standing on the window-ledge, ready to be snatched up instantly. They serve me well, and I am reluctant to...

Since I cut down a quince tree (a carrier of rust) on my ground some months ago, I have been astonished by the process of change which I then set in motion. First, the free...

Personal temperaments of owners and makers show in gardens as , vividly as in clothes, choice of food, and the arts. And where the control is shared, some compromise is always...

should like to call your attention to a misprint in my review of Mr. Craig Bell's Alexandre Dumas. The novel of middle-class life to which I referred is called Black. This...

may possibly regard the eighteenth century as the high- tide of British achievement, when he considers the prose of Addison, the poetry of Pope, the conversation of Dr. Johnson,...

What the Neighbours Think This week a well-known Irish author and journalist and former director of the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, continues the series of articles in the Spectator...

the scheme pr the subject-matter of this book, and therein lies its boldness. Not only does it invite comparison with the best of classical historians, but it must tempt...

Traveller's Prelude. By Freya Stark. (John Murray. 18e.) MY dear Freya,—They have asked me to review your book for the Spectator, but I do not feel that I can do so. I shall...

English Furniture Illustrated. By Oliver Brackett. Revised and edited by H. Clifford Smith. (Benn. 80.) ' OF some subjects there is never an end—and one of them is English...

Dream and Reality. By N. Berdyaev. (Bles. 303.) THIS " essay in autobiography" is as remarkable as the man who wrote it and almost as difficult to place in any recognised...

THE author of this illuminating and factual book was born in Java and played a distinguished part in the affairs of Netherlands India. Though he is a lucid exponent of Holland's...

by A. S. E. Cow. (CambMge University Press. 2 vols. 63$.) MR. ANDREW GoW's Theocritus, child of many prayers - 6f seven- teen years' creation—marks a happy return to the great...

He that Plays the King. By Kenneth Tynan. (Longmans. 128. 6d.) THIS book is by a very young man, who begins it by saying that it does not contain "mature reflections and...

By Andrew Young. (Cape. los. 6d.) Tins autumn we were regaled on the Third PrOgramme by a series of lectures on "Twentieth Century Literature" and it appeared to be an...

Wild Flowers of Chalk and Limestone. By J. E. Lousley. (Collins. The New Naturalist Series. 2 is.) Wild Flowers of Chalk and Limestone. By J. E. Lousley. (Collins. The New...

The East European Revolution. By Hugh Seton-Watson. (Methuen. 223. 6d.) MR. S ETON-WATSON Is to be congratulated on this admirably com- petent and useful piece of work. There...

Jr is no easy undertaking to write a biography of Cezanne, for not only is much of the detail obscure, but also his life was relatively uneventful. Cezanne was in no sense a...

Ruskin to Rachel Annand Taylor—is that it gives us an opportunity for reconsideration. To meet a writer in a new and different con- 'text is always a healthy jolt to...

The Venlo Incident. By Captain S. Payne Best. (Hutchinson. 12s. 6d.) A visa - to the Lion House in the London Zoo reveals that there are two possible ways of coming to terms...

A Generation,on Trial. By Alistair Cooke. (Rupert Hart-Davis. 125. 6d.) IT is not to be expected that Mr. Alistair Cooke's brilliant book should enjoy the best-seller status...

Essays on Opera. By Egon Wellesz. (Dennis Dobson. los. 6d.) Five of the pine essays contained in this volume are specialist studies in the early history of opera in Vicnna,...

overcrowded, I have no 'hesitation in giving first place in these notes for the Spectator's Christmas Number to a book that has only just joined the queue and which is published...

Ifs no use. Honesty is the last refuge of the critic. There's nothing for it but to stiffen the sinews and declare boldly that I enjoyed The Other Side of the Sun more than any...

Leigh Hunt's Dramatic Criticism, 1808-1831. Edited by Lawrence THE journalists of the nineteenth century were remarkably versatile, remarkably voluminous, and remarkably...

homee, where families who have first tasted opera at Sadler's Wells can find full synopses of opera librettos, written in racy Kobbesque, and strum through simple piano...

THE Stevenson centenary is causing a revival of interest in-the man and his work. Chapman and Hall have published Stevenson anti Edinburgh, by Moray McLaren, which contains...

By CUSTOS THE dividend thaw has definitely set in. It is now becoming the rule, rather than the- exception, for industrial companies which have succeeded in increasing their...

P osig .. E INC A a I 6; .0V L , Gi " G!OiNiTI 1 . .w . r . ' , 1 11 , 4 s r.r _ic IC 6 L. EiA42 I 0:L1A I v N E 0 Dot HI E.,EiL!s E IlzI E 4.:Vi giAJCIAISIAIN A. E 1 •...

for one glance will be awarded to the sender of the first correct al:client of this week's crossword to be opened after noon on Tuesday week, December 5th. Envelopes must be...