T HE meeting between Herren Hitler and von Ribbentrop and M. Laval in Paris is evidently an event of some importance, even if the slippery French politician simply received...

supplying their Egyptian front and marking time in apparent expectation Of German moves further north, attention becomes more concentrated on the Balkans. Germany is...

the Middle East, where he has had consultations with General Wavell, the • Middle-Eaitern Commander, has visited Jerusalem, and been received by the Emir Abdullah of...

Frenchmen in occupied and unoccupied France and in the French Empire overseas will have heard with mingled feelings Mr. Churchill's address broadcast in their own language last...

decision which is certainly right and should have been taken before—that the Government will reimburse local authorities the whole cost of future contracts for the...

At the moment when the war in the Middle East threatens to assume greater proportions it is reassuring to know that today the Viceroy of India is opening an Imperial conference...

The strategic importance of Thailand, as we are learning to call Siam, is obvious from a glance at the map. The bulk of the country lies between Indo-China, which is in process...

Yugoslavia is fully alive to all the dangers, but it is difficult to see how she could put up a serious resistance if Italy or Germany decided to march across her territory to...

The Burma Road is open, lorries are pouring into China along it and the Japanese Air Force is doing its best to bomb them as they go. There is little likelihood that air-raids...

The Home Guard, as Sir Edward Grigg reported last Saturday, is as much a part of the armed forces of the Crown as the Grenadier Guards—as an over-audacious enemy at any time...

Close on seven thousand people—actually 6,954—were killed in Great Britain by air raids in September. For October the figure may well be higher, for intensive and...

A . CORRESPONDENT in the United States writes: What people in any country think, and say privately, and what they say in public are often very different things; just now in...

I N ten days' time the American election campaign will be over. Mr. Roosevelt, stung by various charges and allegations of his opponents, will have delivered the five speeches...

petrol shortage. Certainly there can be none if petrol consumption by the army is any indication. Of the ceaseless streams of lorries charging up and down our main roads in both...

killed some time in October by enemy action. A cousin of J. D., the novelist, he was a civil servant by profession and a writer by choice. His essays were thoughtful, delicate,...

releasing for publication, or passing for publication, in the daily papers, a photograph of what was left of an apartment-house in Berlin after a raid by the R.A.F.? Day after...

contained a curious reference to the share Polish troops had taken in British "expeditions to the Conti- nent." A London paper recently published a photograph of newly-arrived...

late-comers —though only late relatively, for it was before eleven—wander- ing up the aisle and into the transept in vain search for a seat. There was not one left, for the...

taking from his Sunday night postscripts, and he is very wise to take it. No man can keep on indefinitely with this exacting type of work, and Mr. Priestley has been doing a...

L ORD LOTHIAN abundantly deserves any short holiday he may be giving himself in Scotland. (I note, by the way, that good Scot though he is, he referred to this country as...

new Fellow of Trinity, who at the time of his election was residing in an internment camp somewhere in Canada, having been transported thither from a similar institution in this...

By STRATEGICUS HE Axis moves in the Balkans may be interpreted in various ways; but whatever they may involve ultimately, they are a recognition of temporary strategical...

By PUBLIUS B Y a long series of experiments we believe ourselves to have reconciled civil, or Parliamentary, control of the Armed Forces of the Crown, with professional...

By CANON ROGER LLOYD U NLESS we become a dictatorship when the war is over, which may God forbid, the necessary basis of all recon- struction must plainly be the British...

Dy ROSE NIACAULAY HE city of Bath, with a most admirable detachment from present troubles (perhaps these, in their acutest form, havemt visited Bath-much),-is seething with...

By A. M. CHIRCWIN W HEN French Equatorial Africa decided to join General de Gaulle the question of the future of the whole French Colonial Empire was raised sharply. The fact...

By HENRY TRENCH T HERE was no warning whistle when the bombs exploded; they tore the air like calico in our direction. The noise in the small basement-shelter was not so loud...

are out but the pictures are whole, and as lively as ever. Jacob Epstein shows thirty-two water-colours of flowers and three -bronzes. Not quite the surprise here that there was...

THE robin whistles again. Day's arches narrow. Tender and quiet skies lighten the seeding flowers. Spiders beshcen the dew. . . And that tiny arrow Circuiting high in the blue,...

"Britain Can Take It." At all Cinemas.-" Edison the Man." At the Empire. "Now the searchlights are poking long white inquisitive fingers into the blackness of the night. . . ....

Life" and the "Crossword." For these and other probable deficiencies we ask indulgence. There are reasons.

places in which to earn a living, not places in which to live. To live means to satisfy every need of human personality, and in this country less thought than in many foreign...

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...

Si,—No cause, even the best, gains from overstatement. I cannot think that Mr. R. A. Edwards' characterisation of Hitlerism as the flower of Humanism is either just or, from a...

the difficulties mentioned in your leader "The Widening War." The Chancellor of the Exchequer estimates our present war expenditure at L9,000,0001 day. The position and actions...

Spain—Rou- mania (and beyond) had shown very good consecutive long-range vision—a good deal better vision than ourselves, in fact. Surely ton Kludc's " swerve " from Paris...

in which so many small people have invested all their savings is a threat to national morale which must not be underrated. It may be unreasonable to expect the Government in the...

"The ground is. not new; it has been frequently traversed and explored." For instance, in the House, on February 12th, 1793, when the French had declared war in a comparable...

Sta,—A Republican friend with Republican associations writes: "The Winkle campaign is perhaps less encouraging than we had thought, or is he perhaps a more ordinary person?...

Sta,—The survival of culture in these days is of the first importance; but is not Mr. Forster pleading for a special sort of culture, which may or may not be valid in the...

SIR, — Absolutes are dangerous, and " all " is apt to cover more than it is entitled to. Mr. Graham Greene might be justified in claiming that generally a "spirit of Charity"...

give essential help now. The long-foreseen state of emergency has arrived . at last. Yet Austrian and German refugee nurses are not allowed to work. Our hands are tied. Even if...

Snt,—I wish to protest against the attack on the railways made by your correspondent R. C. Evans in The Spectator of October 18th. The line from this place to London serves...

SIR, —Mr. Richard Turner writes very glibly about showing the Germans that there is a "more excellent" way than war. But it does not seem to occur to him that excellence is...

Friends of a Lifetime : Letters to Sydney Cockerell. Edited • by Viola Meynell. (Cape, 18s.) WHETHER the letters he writes or the letters he receives give the hater picture...

How Holland Fell The Rape of the Netherlands. By E. N. vaa Kleffens. (Hodder and Stoughton. 7s. 6d.) M. VAN KLEFFENS has been since July, 1939, Foreign Minister of the...

Judge Jeffreys. By H. Montgomery Hyde. (Harra2. 12s. 6d.) UPON the tablet erected to the memory of Judge Jeffreys in St. Mary's, Aldermanbury, the church where he worshipped,...

THE popularity of Punch is one of the best examples of the English taking their pleasures sadly. The Janes, Angelas and Georges who romp so decently and interminably through the...

I Do not know how other people will be affected by this little volume contributed by Mr. C. S. Lewis to the Christian Challenge' Series, b - at I am myself very grateful for it....

The Voyage. By Charles -Morgan. (Macmillan. 9s.) IN all his novels, Mr. Morgan is concerned with deep and serious questions of human experience. The Voyage, with its heightened...

(Heinemann. 7s. 6d.) How Briggs Died. By D. E. Harding. (Harrap. 7s. 6d.) Into My Parlour. By Paul Dallas. (Methuen. 7s. 6d.) IN odd corners of that distorting mirror which the...

By CUSTOS ALTHOUGH temporarily denied the use of their normal faci- lities on the floor of the .Stock Exchange, brokers and jobbers have somehow succeeded in keeping the...