The British electorate had better decide, with great deliberation, what its attitude should be to the various relaxations of controls and rationing which are taking place, and...

I T was never expected that there would be many obstacles in the way of an armistice between Lebanon and Israel, since the fighting between them had never been urged with much...

" We have been colossally patient in this matter," said Major- General Bourne, referring to the question of the Berlin currency. He was not over-stating the case. Indeed, our...

Dominion, and its own internal politics are its own affair, but public opinion in this country neither will nor should be content to be completely silent on the attitude of...

All the discussion on the terms of the Atlantic Pact, published last Friday, has done nothing to suggest that they need to be amended,in any particular. Firmly confined within a...

It would require a deeply jaundiced imagination to envisage a meat situation worse than the present one. It is not merely that the British ration at rod. a week, including ad....

That the Commissioner of Police should have had to request, and the Home Secretary to concede, a reimposition of the Order pro- hibiting all political processions in London is...

The President of the Board of Trade has been obliged to cut the quota of British films which exhibitors are obliged to show, for the excellent reason that, at its present level...

P RIVATE Members' Fridays have provided a welcome break in the flow of Government business ; but there have been moments when the Government must have regretted their...

W ITH the Atlantic Pact, designed primarily for the defence of Western Europe (both for its own sake and as an outlying bastion of the United States) on the point of signature,...

favour of Sebel Products, Limited, against the Commissioners of Customs and Excise is being officially considered, for on the face of it a more indefensible attitude has rarely...

SUGAR PROBE BLAMES GOVERNMENT FOR BAD HOUSING. jANUS,

will so much as squeak over the exclusion from the United States of one distinguished British scientist and three other persons less dis- tinguished who wanted to attend a...

0 NE of the most cheering features of the House of Commons this week has been the return of the Foreign Secretary . to form. On the occasion of each of the last two or three of...

defence of a famous Oxford view raise a subsidiary question which must be decided before the main issue is raised. There can be no adequate re-planning, they write, " so long as...

attention not merely to the extraordinary fecundity of that royal and religious foundation in Fellows of the Royal Society, but to the hereditary element in the achievement. One...

By HONOR CROOME I S there really less money in the average man's purse, or can the conviction that there is be explained away ? Studying the Economic Survey for 5949, the...

By SIR JOHN THORNE ISITING India again this year—New Delhi and the smith, with glimpses of Hyderabad , and Bombay—I have found a welcome as warm as ever. Looking back on my...

By T. E. UTLEY HE recent correspondence in The Times on future Conserva- tive policy, to which many eminent members of the party have contributed, has resembled nothing so much...

By EDWARD MONTGOMERY New York, March 18th T HE United States is rapidly returning to political normal. The President and the Congress are at loggerheads ; the economic...

WEALTH OF HONDURAS STEPHEN L. CAIGER j UST before the war the Spanish-American Republic of Guate- mala issued a five-centavo postage-stamp map of Central America showing...

By OSBERT LANCASTER 0 F all the achievements of the late Serge Diaghileff none was more remarkable or widespread in its effects than his reintroduction of the painter to the...

SUBSCRIPTION RATES Ordinary edition to any address in the World. 52 weeks LI 10s. Od. 26 weeks 15s. Od. Air Mail to any Country m Europe. 52 weeks £2 7s. 6d. 26 weeks LI 3s....

SANATORIUM STUDENTS By DEREK LINDSAY (Corpus Christi College, Oxford) I N all there were seven of us—six men and one woman. Of the six men four had spent periods of between...

By HAROLD NICOLSON I WAS pleased to read in the Spectator last week Mr. R. H. Cecil's measured summary of the report on The Criminal Law and Sexual Offenders. This report...

` 4 The Accused." (Plaza.)—" Easter Parade." (Empire.)—"Aux Yeux du Souvenir." (Studio One.) Timl is , on the whole, kind to film stars. Although it robs them of the sparkle and...

THE THEATRE "Adventure Story." By Terence Rattigan. (St. James's.) IF Mr. Terence Rattigan needs a test of the innate vitality of his Adventure Story he must surely have found...

Loth to leave, yet eager to look For what, beyond my travel, I shall at last unravel, I close all knowledge with the book, Lock the small, familiar room, And walk toward my...

I THINK that most honest people will admit that they found Wozzeck in concert form almost unbearable, because practically unintelligible. Following the text and stage directions...

SOVIET RESHUFFLE SIR,—I hope your contributor,' Mr. Richard Chancellor, will forgive me, but after reading his article Soviet Reshuffle in the Spectator of March 11th, I am...

SIR,—The man-power shortages of the Royal Air Force have caused a considerable amount of comment during recent weeks, and as one released from that Service some eight months...

does not take into consideration the fact that most children are in hospital for a serious illness. If they were not seriously ill they would be treated at home by their own...

leave a child in hospital can only hope that whilst its bodily ills are being tended its mind will not suffer irreparable damage. When I collected my three- year-old daughter...

SIR, —Your correspondent's letter raises a very acute problem. Parents would no doubt be willing to waive their rights if they were certain that this was for the good of the...

Sta,—Dr. Allen is wrong. Mr. Pickwick was not unwise in taking the first cab on the rank for, according to The Hackney Coach Directory by James Quaife, Surveyor to the Board of...

Snt,—When writing to you the letter which you were good enough to publish in the Spectator of March 11th, I also addressed another letter to British Railways, sending it this...

to reply to the letter from Miss Mowat, which was published in the Spectator of March 11th, making the allegation that letters addressed to British Railways receive no...

Sm,—Sir William Beach Thomas alludes in his column to some weather prophecies, so perhaps the following may be of interest to your readers. A peasant living iu the province of...

SIR,—Our Peers have recently been discussing in the House of Lords the legal implications of this revolting practice which, established between the two great wars in pagan...

SIR,—Janus remarks that the Secretary of State for Air, being a Methodist, would have no place ip - St. Clement Danes (if it became the official church of the Royal Air Force)...

too typical) to Sir Stafford Cripps as he broods over his new Budget ? Though my husband and I started our married life penniless we determined not only to pay our way but to...

Snt,—It seems somew,hat surprising that in R. H. Cecil's article on sexual crimes no mention was made of prostitution, a branch of, the law very badly in need of reform. Every...

Sut,—The following figures illustrate " the encouraging tendency for local politics to follow their own rhythm," to which Mr. Hodgkin referred in his article. There have been 69...

SIR,—The second paragraph of A Spectator's Notebook this -week con- tains the diverting implication that costly mistakes never occur in private businesses. Does Janus really...

Snt—Professor Gruffydd's not unsympathetic reference in the Spectator of March 11th to the Conservative Policy for Wales includes an all too common fallacy. He refers to the...

SIR,—Some weeks ago a friend of mine came to the help of a young man whose discharge book showed that he had been out of the Army only three months. There was nothing about this...

Sta,—Your reviewer Canon Charles Smyth, writing of the book Saints and Their Emblems in English Churches, deprecates the omission from a list of saints of the name of Charles I....

Nor are the first immigrants, such as chiff-chaffs and wheatear, early. What is remarkable is the number of blackcaps seen in the south-west. There is, I suppose, no doubt that...

SIR,—The Sowerby by-election figures show a percentage of the total votes cast of 53 for the successful candidate, compared with 47 for the other. In 1945 the percentages were...

THE arrival of spring—dated last Monday—means probably more to the cottage gardener than even to the poets. He is a diarist who does not put pen to paper. The phenomena of...

We are all familiar with ringing birds with the object of tracing their migrations. The practice has now been extended to butterflies and moths. Many hundreds were marked last...

SIR,—Referring to the article on the Dominion of "Zambezia " (which I am glad to see graced with a question-mark), may one hope that in discussions of this project, which is...

Sim,—Your correspondent, H. T. Ives (in the Spectator of March 11th), errs in attributing " those delightful Brownies " to Kenyon Cox. It was Palmer Cox who chose them for his...

It was feared some years ago that the arrival of the elm disease would wipe out a very large number of our best trees ; but the plague was stayed, or stayed itself, as often...

Most small gardeners, I think, being one of them, are not particular enough about the varieties of their annuals. We sow a coreopsis or an agrostemma or, say, dimorphotheca...

Albert the Good The Prince Consort. By Roger Fulford. Ms.) " To me," wrote Sir Theodore Martin in the dedicatory epistle to Queen Victoria which prefaced the first of his five...

Trial and Error. By Chaim Weizmann. (Hamish Hamilton. 21s.) This is a book of absorbing interest—to the general reader as the life-story of a very remarkable man ; to the...

Vliginia Woolf. By Bernard Blackstone. (Hogarth Press. 12s. 6d.) This book is all that one should require of critical writing. hill learned, sympathetic and lucid ; it is both...

(The Creative Experiment. By C. M. Bowra. (Macmillan. 16s.) , .THE Warden of Wadham has already assessed The Heritage of Symbolism. In The Creative Experiment he brings together...

The' German Potnt of Vie* Studies in German History. By G. P. Gooch. (Lobs-Mans. 21s.) IN this new volume of German studies Dr. Gooch has collected a number of his old esays,...

Dion Juan. By Lord Byron. With an Introduction by Peter Quennell (John Lehmann. 10s. tid.) DON JUAN, in his several incarnations, is always a contemporary. Some of his modes...

Cornish Years. By Anne Treneer. (Cape. 12s. 6d.) Coium11.1. is still fairly remote. The period before the Great War it growing remote. Miss"Treneer has a world to write about...

France Pagan ? The Mission of Abbe Godin. By Maisie Ward. (Sheed and Ward. 10s. 6d.) ONE day it may well seem obvious to every French historian of our own times that the real...

lIvItialcal Chairs. By Cecil Gray. (Home and Van Thal. 16s.) SURELY the autobiography of anyone who regards himself as a 1 ypical Scot and something approaching a reincarnation...

Documents on British Foreign Policy. Edited by E. L. Woodward and Bohan Butler. Third Series, Vol. I. 1938. (Stationery Office. 21s.) THIS first volume of a third series covers...

IT is not surprising that the Battle of Isandhlwana was in danger of being forgotten. It was fought more than seventy years ago (on January 22nd, 1879) ; the name is as hard to...

HERE is a volume which has been long awaited by everyone with an interest either in Greek and Latin studies, or in history, or in things which continue ancient tradition within...

Alfred Wallis, Primitive. By Sven Berlin. (Nicholson and Watson. 21s.) THE first time I saw any of Alfred Wallis's work was at the home of some St. Ives artists whose small boy...

The Silent Company. By Remy. (Arthur Barker. 15s.) " REmv " was the nom de guerre of Gilbert Renault, a young Frenchman who, after. escaping to. England in the tragic summer of...

;THERE is a growing disposition to maintain that critical standards tie merely personal preference writ large. In a sense every work - Of art creates its own standards, by which...

By CUSTOS PERHAPS the most significant and certainly the most interesting development in- the stock markets this week was the emergence, tentative but unmistakable, of...

■ I .:, ,4 - > 1 1/8 1%9 2' I 2/ ACROSS 1. The occupant seems to lack original grasp. (10.) 6. This fly might make a trumpeter. (4.) 9. It demonstrates objects out of all...

The winner of Crossword No. 520 is Miss E. C. ALLMOND, 1 Road, London, S.E.9. Dobell