T HE Moscow Conference is in articulo mortis and its members will disperse after seven weeks of discussion having reached agreement on practically nothing but the place and date...

Nobody expected last Sunday's elections to the three State Parlia- ments of the British Zone of Germany to be epoch-making affairs, and nobody was disappointed. The vote in all...

Details of the revolt that broke out in Madagascar on the night of March 29th-3oth are still confused ; but certain facts have emerged. One is that the rising was far more...

Both at home and abroad King Christian of Denmark showed what constitutional monarchy could accomplish. The figure who for so many years rode unaccompanied each morning from his...

When the International Wheat Conference began its meeting in London rather more than a month ago, it was forecast in this journal that its main difficulty would be to achieve...

Contemporaneously with the flowers of spring a new set of posters blooms on the hoardings. Another production drive has begun, and its beginning revives the question why all the...

As each of Britain's major shortages comes under review, and as its power to slow up the whole economic life of the country is revealed, the first reaction of the...

There is something which is both purposeful and speculative about the recent actions of the iron and steel industry. The decision of Guest Keen Baldwins, backed by the approval...

In two different spheres moves, very desirable and very necessary, have been made this week in defence of individual freedom. The British Council of Churches on Tuesday adopted...

week bore some of the signs of repetition. There was on Monday the Report Stage and Third Reading of the Scottish National Health Service Bill, whose English counterpart had its...

T HE statement made by the Minister of Town and Country 1 Planning on Tuesday on the construction of a vast electric power station on the south bank of the Thames opposite St....

The statement of the Minister of Works that the fate of the statue of General Gordon which used to stand in Trafalgar Square is under consideration is disturbing. Why should...

continue to reach me. They are hardly worth reproducing here, except one—and that as a specimen of American English rather than of American opinion. " The favoured topic for...

B Y his Cabinet changes the Prime Minister has achieved variety without achieving visible improvement. To Lord Pethick- Lawrence, who leaves the India Office for well-deserved...

in the latest ecclesiastical intelligence. Here is some that has reached me this week from Madras, featuring one or two not unfamiliar personalities. It takes the form of a...

reaching settled convictions about Russia. Stories emerge of things that happen there which seem to open between us a gulf it is impossible to span. I had not till this week met...

By WILSON HARRIS W ELCOME as the celebration of Princess Elizabeth's coming-of- age would have been in these austere days if it had taken place in her native land, there is a...

By DR. ROBERT M. HUTCHINS (President of the University of Chicago) T HE American Commission on the Freedom of the Press, which has just presented its report, differs from the...

By SIR NORMAN ANGELL New York. A RECENT issue of one of the popular illustrated American weeklies reproduced the results of a number of polls dealing with Anglo-American...

By JOHN SUMMERSON HE report of the committee on the Regent's Park Terraces has T been published, and the Government has pronounced itself in sympathy with the committee's main...

By H. G. RAWLINSON TT has been the custom in Indian political circles, and to some extent among Britons and Americans, to describe the history of British rule in India as a...

By B. IFOR EVANS T HE Exhibition of the King's Pictures made me realise that Charles I was the greatest collector in English history. It was a fact not mentioned in the...

Watch the sea's ebb. They seem one mind And body t in single mood resigned. So the drained rock accepts the sea As going, and the night to be, Hovering on twilight's vacancy,...

By HAROLD NICOLSON T HE Master of the Rolls, as President of the Classical Associa- tion, delivered last week an address upon " Classics and the Social Revolution of our Time."...

THE THEATRE "Present Laughter." By Noel Coward. (Haymarket.) ONE of the odd things about Mr. Coward is' the way people take him for granted. If he were a horse learned men...

IT is curious that the enormous power of the film as a purveyor of realistic impressions should be so frequently devoted to stories whose motive and construction are entirely...

Rosenkavalier has always had a cachet of its own, and apparently attracts an audience which better and worse operas leave cold. It would be interesting to know the reason, which...

WORK by the American painter Ben Shahn may be seen in an Arts Council exhibition at the Mayor Gallery. It stretches over a period of about fifteen years, during which time Mr....

LISTENING to Deirdre of the Sorrows last week, I found myself comparing it with Louis MacNiece's recently broadcast versions of Icelandic sagas. Both deal with age-old,...

for the schools, for which he pleads with such moving wit. But he suppresses two points of real importance. (1) Many boys, who for the full develop- ment of their ability and...

Sue—Many will join Dr. Terry Thomas in deploring the loss of any real values which have been developed by the grammar school. The cause he mentions—a desire to achieve...

THE HOUSEWIFE'S BURDEN SIR,—In a note on population in The Spectator of April 4th, Janus implies that, after "consistent replacement," a " steady growth " is desirable. It...

flourish. But its vague hopes of helping the harassed and overworked housewife are somewhat dimmed by the findings of the Markham Com- mittee last year that the problem is...

of the problem he presents is one that confronts those of us who are convinced that the emphasis today in religious education should be placed on the education of the adult. The...

Snt,—Your correspondent, Mr. B. Johnston, is sceptical about the claim that there has been an increase in mechanisation in the coal-mining industry. His doubts appear to be...

prescription, " Stronger doses of dogmatic teaching," as the right remedy for our religious or non- religious condition today has much to justify it. Modern man is utterly...

most pressing dilemma of our day in the religious sphere "? Is it all dogmas or only " incredible " dogmas? A dogma is defined in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary as "(1)...

SIR, —In recent weeks many papers, including The Spectator, have pub- lished remarks amounting to the allegation of wholesale black-market dealings with German narks on the...

siR,—In his reply to Brigadier Longrigg's letter, your correspondent, Mr. Israel Cohen, objects to the description of the Zionists in Palestine as an " invading community " on...

—Yours, &c., 2 5 Catherine Place, S.W. 1.

surprisin g fact that more or less un- educated country folk habitually use words which the literary have be g un to avoid as affectatious. " Slay " is one of these. It is a...

WATER has an extra attra c tion for birds—and indeed bees—when sprin g comes. I have been watchin g from a window a shallow concrete pond overhun g by a weepin g willow ;...

patiently bided its time than the Al g erian iris. It is flowery in the third week of April, thou g h it usually flowers two months earlier, and is later even than the lovely...

THE followin g is an extract from a letter received from Professor F. A. Hayek, chairman of the Austrian Book Committee: " We are tryin g to or g anise a collection of the more...

Examples of country humour also reached my ears on the Bud g et. In a g roup outside a small and very rural public house one man held up a ci g arette-li g hter and offered it...

SIR, —I a g ree with Canon Smyth that the correspondence columns of The Spectator (like the pulpit of the University Church) are not the appropriate place in which to discuss...

April in some respects is a hun g ry as well as a thirsty month. The most common, and fatal, omission of amateur bee-keepers is the starva- tion of the swarms in early sprin g ....

Ciano's Diary : 1939-1943. (Heinemann. 21s.) DURING the four years covered by these diaries Ciano was Mussolini's Foreign Minister. The last entry but one is for February 8th,...

The Labour Victory The British General Election of 1945. By R. B. McCallum and Alison Readman. (Oxford University Press. 18s.) IT is interesting and encouraging to observe the...

French Tapestry. Edited by Andre Lejard. (Paul Elec. 36s.) AT times, when travelling, I have been much impressed by the advantages of ignorance. To see a place first and read...

A History of Tonbridge School. By D. C. Somervell. (Faber and Faber. 10s. 6d.) LYrrom STRACHEY suggested that Victorian biographies were written by the undertaker, as the final...

&Act( are publishing the first full-length biography of Albert Schweitzer by George Seaver, who has already written a monograph on this subject. The first part of the work gives...

AN Anglican priest, a New York newspaper columnist and an actor come forward with this week's fiction offering. Not only their titles distinguish them but also, interestingly...

A E a K o NAG 1 i5 IS E u 7 T ID R , 1 IN G P A R'GL E R R Im:r4iEL , C'AKIE A G E L TIE R Tom , L $ 6 4 1 c !ri:s L S R SF If A iris! jA.hhE RFIIE T E,n1rl ielrarr A " i"...

for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution of this week's crossword to be opened after noon on Tuesday week May 5th. Envelopes must be received...

to place a firm order with their newsagent or to take out a subscription. Newsagents cannot afford to take the risk of carrying stock, as unsold copies are non-return- able....

that the Budget would prove a help to gilt-edged ands a stumbling-block to ordinary share investments have been falsified in the event. Mr. Dalton's beating of the cheap money...