How far there is advantage in adding to the tornado of words whirling from and about Moscow is matter of opinion, but there can be no serious complaint of Lord Pakenham's plain...

T HE United Nations Assembly, having got through its pre- liminary alarums and excursions, is now settling down to a programme of solid business which will put to the proof its...

Trade relations with Argentina are of considerable importance to both countries, and the ban imposed by Senor Miranda on the export of tinned meat and of almost all imports was...

Bulgaria, it must be assumed, has identified herself so completely with the terrorist systems of Eastern Europe that the opinion of the democratic world means nothing to her....

The report issued on Wednesday by the Special Committee on Footpaths and Access to the Countryside mentions, and itself reflects, the change of opinion which has taken place of...

The result of the General Election in Ceylon, the first to be held under the new constitution, promulgated as a resulted of the recom- mendations of the Soulbury Commission, is...

In the past week the British coal industry has almost been a parody of itself. The decision on the working of longer hours has been postponed once more, the miners' demand for...

T HE sheer practical achievement of the Committee of European Economic Co-operation is a most refreshing contrast with the results of most of the other post-war conferences....

T HE petrol muddle is getting hureasingly intolerable. First of all the Prime Minister announces early in August that the basic ration is to be cut by one-third and the...

late in offering congratulations to Mr. J. R. M. Butler on his election to the Regius Professorship of History at Cambridge, but so was R. C. Lehmann in producing (in 1889) his...

ago that I thought them bad and getting worse. I still think that, but when a contradiction comes from as far afield as Istanbul, of course there must be a place for it. Two...

he then was, retired from his post as Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Supply and went back to Oxford as Provost of Queen's, I quoted Bernard Shaw's pronouncement on the...

be rather of an oscillatory character, and it is really not our fault. Unhappily Argentina has one permanent complaint against us—she holds that the Falkland Islands, which...

The derivation offered me last week was- based on a Sussex Dialect Dictionary. This week I am indebted to the Town Clerk of Chichester for a quotation from the Victoria History...

I don't know, but it is making a powerful amount of work for other people. Quite apart from its voluminous questionnaire-32 questions, the last divided into twelve...

By GEORGE WINDER T HERE is no shortage of labour in Great Britain. In 1939 there were 17,929,000 workers employed in industry and in providing us with services, while today,...

By CYRIL RAY T HE Venice film festival is just over, and the Cannes festival is well under way. Within the past twelve months there have been festivals at Prague, Brussels, and...

By THE RT. REV. MICHAEL HOLLIS, Bishop in Madras T HE time (if I may anticipate what can reasonably be regarded as certain) is 8 o'clock in the morning of Saturday, September...

By E. H. F. MORRIS E IGHTEEN HUNDRED hours is a large slice out of the school life of a boy. At the grammar school where I teach, and at similar schools throughout the country,...

(SEPTEMBER, 1947) I HAVE seen them— Do you doubt it? —In serried flights the grey birds Noiseless, silent from some secret mission Come, linger, and then go Under the autumn...

By HAROLD NICOLSON I RECEIVED this morning from an unknown correspondent in Winnipeg a letter in which he refers to an article which I wrote one month ago upon this page. In...

"Something in the Wind." (Leicester Square.) — "Deception." (Warner.) Miss DEANNA DURBIN has come into her own again in Something in the Wind. As an adolescent she was...

THE THEATRE "Happy as Larry." By Donagh MacDonagh. (Mercury.) IT is much easier to praise this play than to describe it. Four con- temporary tailors (who, except that their...

THE Vienna State Opera have raised a strange diversity of critical opinion, and the days are manifestly past when England accepted more or less open-mouthed any body of singers...

SEVERAL very odd incidents in natural history may be recorded from different parts of England. The strangest concerns a sparrowhawk and a cat. The hawk descended again and...

the best of eating apples, of course after Cox, is Saint Everard, in respect both of taste and consistency, and it is a small apple. Its predecessor in date, Langley's Pippin,...

It is an old problem how to persuade a hydrangea to produce blue flowers ; but, whatever method is advised, there are always some growers who find that buried razor-blades or...

of the grain farm, but the machine advances in all sorts of farming, not least in fruit farming. I know quite a small fruit farmer who thought it well worth while to spend £500...

K. B. INDOE, who produced Emanuel Litvinoff's drama for broad- casting, The Star was Death, in the Home Service on Wednesday, must have enjoyed himself immensely. So did I in...

AMERICA AND THE VETO Sul,—From the European point of view it is difficult to be enthusiastic about Secretary Marshall's move to circumvent the veto. Not that there is anything...

SIR,—Mr. Harrod's remark that I have failed to quote any instance of oversight in support of my criticism of his article is somewhat perplexing, for in his reply he is actually...

only those who turn the Nelsonian blind eye to the signal fail to understand the Liberal plan of development. In 1946 our Reconstruction Committee wrote: " In the years that lie...

Minister " for his letter dealing with my article on the village church. I share his sorrow that some form of inter-communion has not yet been achieved. Yet the sins of many...

Sut,—The article by Marjorie McIntosh under the above heading in your issue of September 19th is completely unrealistic. In the first instance, it is quite certain that only a...

Sta, — The replies to my letter: A Challenge to Liberals (The Spectator, August 29th) and the letters headed What Edge Hill Means, focus atten- tion on the failure of...

in your issue of September 12th, express his surprise at a statement in Lord Camrose's book on newspaper controllers that Lord Riddell had an interest in the Church Times. As I...

Sta,—The Government has provided a cynical postscript to Mr. Gerard Hopkins's recent article on the difficulties of book-production. The Board of Trade has recently made an...

Snt,—Many will share the views expressed the other week in your article Conscripts in Germany. They will be interested to learn that at the recent Oxford Conference of the...

Sta,—Even among writers of repute there seems to be a growing tendency to use the terms " infinite " and " infinitely " without considering the meaning of " infinity." Two of...

Christians " had all things common .. . . As many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, and laid them down at the...

Sta,—As a German journalist I am very much interested in the articles of The Spectator, especially about foreign problems. I get a copy hence and then, but I should like to get...

Snt,—Mr. Tatarynowicz's letter will surely make us realise that it is time for the British people to put an end to the scandalous treatment of the Poles in this country by the...

Sta,—The prettiest use of the word " few " I ever heard was in the early days of Welwyn Garden City, when as Clerk of the Parish Council I was inspecting the two-year-old,burial...

Shelley the . jrotean OF all the tasks to be imagined for a biographer, that of writing a life of Shelley must be the most nightmarish—and the most enthralling. Who is,...

Such is the Kingdom. By Lord Elton. (Collins. 6s.) THIS essay is highly relevant to the present crisis because, whatever else may be truly said about it, the crisis is a moral,...

The Economic Problem in Peace and War. By Lionel Robbins (Macmillan. 3s. 6d.) THE common impression is that the present economic purgatory would be less difficult to bear if...

BOSTON holds a unique and some no doubt might assert an out- moded place in the American story. Site of the Tea Party, then of the first " battle " of the War of Independence,...

DRAINED and desiccated by the catchment board of centralised mass-production, the regional spirit still finds indirect outlets and oozings for itself for the simple reason that...

The Unselfish Egoist : A Life of Joseph Joubert. By Joan Evans (Longmans. 10s. 6d.) JOSEPH JOUBERT was born in 1754 and died in 1824, and therefore lived through the most...

The Pageant of Middle American History. By Anne Merriman Peck. (Longmans. 21s.) The Pageant of Middle American History. By Anne Merriman Peck. (Longmans. 21s.) Tills Pageant,...

Indian Short Stories. Selected and edited by Mulk Raj Anand and Iqbal Singh. (New India Publishing Company. 10s. 6d.) A Dinner with the Dead and other stories. By Moray McLaren....

[A Book Token for one g uinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution of this week's crossword to be opened after noon on Tuesday week October 7th. Envelopes...

0 R E AIP. T N 0 L A A' T . Rh SOLUTION ON OCTOBER 10th The winner of crossword 442 is : E. V. OvERELL, EsQ., 18, Westbourne Terrace, London, W.2.

The Lakes : An Anthology of Lakeland Life and Landscape. Edited by G. S. Sandilands. (Muller. 15s.) ANTHOLOGIES with themes, abounding today, are often useful in drawing...

3s. 6d.) " No apology is necessary for the appearance of this book," says Sir Henry Richards, Chairman of the Central Council for School Broad- casting, in his preface. ". . . A...

By CUSTOS IF Mr. Dalton intends to give us an autumn Budget he is disguising his intentions remarkably well. Not that I think his problem is an easy one ; it certainly is not....