The American requisitioning of the Reichsbahn building in west Berlin is already being referred to in this country as a mistake. It was only a mistake in the sense that the move...

AFT ER the remarkable outburst of nationalistic speeches and actions in Western Germany in the past week it is neces- sary to assess with extreme care just what difference they...

Once more the administrators of the groundnuts scheme have proved impossible to work with. The decision by one of the three big contractors engaged by the Overseas Food...

The realities of the capacity of the atomic bomb, as demonstrated at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are almost relegated to insignificance compared with the inconceivable possibilities...

When the city of Seattle, in the State of Washington, invited tenders for six power-transformers it was presumably not asking manufacturers to waste their time. There was also a...

It seems clear that the United States has now fully determined to resume full diplomatic relations with Spain, a decision which reveals her as further advanced along the path of...

The remarkable case against Mr. Alger Hiss, the former State Department official at Washington, and one of President Roosevelt's advisers at the Yalta Conference, was marked by...

I N the dispute between Conservatives and Liberals about the right of the latter to exclusive use of the name they have always been known by, common justice as well as common...

T HE Conservatives have undeniably got away to a good start. Mr. Churchill's broadcast of last Saturday has been characterised as vague. That criticism will only hold -if the...

lightly the warnings of those who foresee the confined space of the 1951 Exhibition hopelessly congested by the crowds who are being exhorted to attend it. This is obviously a...

the activities of the Arts Council shows once more how valuable a body the Select Committee is. Of the many features of its report brie is of particular interest here, for I...

Tuesday "in conformity with the rites of the Church of England" may or may not have deleterious effects on the ghost—that remains to be dis- closed—but it recalls the exercise...

applying it to two reviews of the late Edward Stettinius's Roosevelt and the Russians, by Malcolm Muggeridge in the Daily Telegraph and by Q. E. D. in Time and Tide. M. M....

* * * * ERMAN Generals are having a thin time today, compared at least to their counterparts in the British or French or American armies. Two cases, one of which interests me...

By J. R. L ANDERSON T HE study of political anatomy is neglected. The various parties parade as entities ; their names are household words ; and people have become so accustomed...

By C. M. WOODHOUSE S URRENDER, for a Communist, is never more than a strategic manoeuvre—a transition, by the converse of Clausewitz's famous axiom, to the continuation of war...

By J.G. MATHIESON* B EFORE the war rather more than two million tons of sugar was used annually in this country—I write as a sugar-user, not a sugar-producer or refiner,...

By ARTHUR JOHN HOPKINSON C HINA has long claimed Tibet. Repeating that claim the Chinese Communists have for several weeks been promising, or threatening, to " liberate " her....

A continuance of the exchange of letters in which two well- known writers discuss the present plight of the middle classes D EAR JANE,—This is better than being a senior civil...

By SIR EVELYN WRENCH HY is the American taxi-driver so different from any other ? Neither in London nor in Paris does the driver strike more than the necessary contact with his...

readers are urged 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...

By STEPHEN DEWAR T HROUGH the fabric of early memory the scarlet cow runs like a weft-thread of flaming colour across the green warp of time—the cow, ambling awkwardly but...

Mr. Cobden has paid a visit to his Yorkshire constituents in Sheffield, and addressed them at an evening meeting, and also at a public breakfast, on current political topics. ....

By HAROLD NICOLSON I DO not know whether there be any truth in the ancient theory . that there exists some difference between memory and recol- lection. Aristotle argued that...

THEATRE ' 1 14 Venus Observed." By Christopher Fry. (St. James's.) THE duke's butler is a lion-tamer who has lost his,nerve, the duke's footman is a cat-burglar and the duke's...

Intruder in the Dust." (Ritz.) — " Le Roi." (Rialtp.) — 16 You're My Everything." (Leicester Square.) — “Copper Canyon." (Plaza.) Intruder in the Dust is yet another picture...

Forsyth's Heloise, which started from the assumption that in the story of 'Laois. and Abelard "female authority is more evident in the course of events than male." Arguable ;...

Commended: the serialisation of Wuthering Heights on Sunday afternoons. Mr. Compton Mackenzie has continued, in his Royal Encounters and A Year I Remember, to prove himself a...

RADIO drama recently has pursued its way along the usual tight- rope, balanced between Culture and Entertainment. Both The Three Sisters and A Doll's House, on the serious side,...

VISITORS from France provided most of last week's musical interest. I only heard one of the concerts given by the Quintette de l'Atelier- that given to a miserably small...

engagement have been fired. Politics are outside the terms of a critic's reference, but I cannot help welcoming Mr. Churchill's broadcast for two reasons which concern radio...

Report by Marghanita Laski Each morning one opens one's newspaper with a twinge of expectation—of what ? What news would you most like to read one morning when you open your...

Undergraduate articles of higher quality would be wel- comed. No article received this week is up to standard.

Set by Robert Levens A prize of £5, which may be divided, is offered for an open testimonial for employment in one of the following capacities: cook, companion-chauffeuse,...

is to ensure that the Labour (Socialist) Party is not returned to power would, if they were wise, ponder much more carefully than they do the probable influence on the...

SIR,—I am not a regular reader of the Spectator. Recently the advertise- ment for the Spectator in the Manchester Guardian caught my eye. I read there that the Spectator would...

Intercommunion Sift,—Your correspondent, Mr. John A. Patten, seems to be unaware that a resolution was passed in the Upper House of the Convocation of Canterbury in January,...

for his dilemma. It is a delicate matter upon which we should proceed with the greatest of caution. There is, however, one important aspect of it his letter does not mention....

20th moves me to express my deepest sympathy with his feelings. As everyone knows, the barrier to open- Communion lies in the Supposed prohi- bition in the rubric at the end of...

Government cannot receive credit for the fact that there is full employ- ment, since the needs of reconstruction and the receipt of Marshall Aid have made it inevitable. I know...

SIR,—Strikin g a balance of Labour's achievements in your leading article of January 20th, you place on the credit side (and it is the only item on that side) this Government's...

anonymous) writers seems to be not so much an argument ,as first a lamentation for past privileges (with no consideration of whether they were deserved or not), and second an...

SIR,-1 do not complain of the statement in last week's election notes that "the threatened industries—with-Atte single exception of Messrs. Tate and Lyle Ltd.—have covered up...

SIR,—Bein g an elderly middle-class housewife myself, I read with interest George's and Jane's letters in the Spectator of January 20th. May make a few comments on Jane's ? To...

SIR,—My concern throughout has been with sugar which is refined in this country, and I think it will be agreed that unrefined sugar imported for consumption in that form is...

A "blessed word," now enjoying a daily vogue, is \ marginal, as applied to land. It means, as a rule, though its uses vary, land that oscillates between the desert and the sown....

A GROUP of nut trees—mixed cobs and filberts—were overnight a gay curtain, of the jalousie type, of bright yellom% and bright yellow were the jasmine flowers looking through the...

SIR,—Mary Warnock is misinformed in her remarks on the salaries of university teachers. The systems of payments of lecturers at Oxford and Cambridge are at the present day very...

SIR,—)anus's dictum was, of course, correct, but in these days of legisla- tion by Statutory Orders, regulations and so on ; he might prefer to express it as Ignorantia furls...

A member of a group of French farmers touring East Anglia (where they bought their seed wheats) said to me once: "Everything in England is for beauty," which was his pretty way...

Sut,—I have just seen Mr. Day Lewis's excellent article The Encourage- ment of Poetry in the Spectator of January 6th. Many of his suggestions seem very good, but the one that...

Has anyone, sportstnan or other, found a dead duck ? The question is being urgently asked by those kind experts who are working for the international control of wild fowl. It...

SUBSCRIPTION RATES Postage on this issue: Inland & Overseas lid.; Canada (Canadian Magazine Post) ltk 9 . 9 . 9. 9. 9. 9. 9. 9. 9. ■ • 9. 9. • • 9. • %%%...

Victorian Individualist THE late Lord Crewe, who died only five years ago, was a very different man from his father Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton (" Dicky Manes "), the...

Byron: A Self-Portrait: Letters and Diaries, 1798-1824. Edited by Peter Quennell. Uohn Murray. 2 vols. 42s. the set.) IN a " foreword " briefer than need was, Mr. Quennell...

THE name of the Clyde has a spell of awe and magic. It stiaids for a mighty concentration of industrial power; millions of people packed in towns of blackened stone ; a rich...

Rommel. By Desmond Young. (Collins. 'is. 6d.) • ON page 93 of this book Mr. Desmond Young says: I apologise for liking German generals. I suppose I ought not to do so." And that...

THE majority of Samuel Butler's contemporaries knew him as a man of one book, Erewhon, but his reputation expanded rapidly after his death in 1902. This was due largely to the...

THIS book appears opportunely at a moment when recent events have once again brought the Italian Left into prominence and shown up both its strength and its weakness. Agrarian...

Faith and History. By Reinhold Niebuhr. (Nisbet. 16s.) THIS book is a fully developed exposition of Dr. Niebuhr's challenge to those non-Christian philosophers who profess to...

Style in Costume. By James Laver. (Oxford University Press. 6s.) Gallery of Fashion: 1790-1822. With an Introduction by Sacheverell Sitwell. (Batsford. 6s. 6d.) JAMES LAVER has...

from the Russian by Moura Budberg. (Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Los. 6d.) IN the nature of things, novel-reviewers are perfectionists. It does not follow therefore from the...

ONLY the first of these three novels about crime comes within the usual definition of a detective story—the story which has the solution of a murder as its problem, and which...

Tfus volume completes the version of the Old Testament prepared by Mgr. Knox at the request of the Archbishop of Westminster. It exhibits all the characteristics already noted...

By CUSTOS ROUNDING Off the bank chairmen's statements, Lord Linlithgow, of the Midland, and Mr. Rupert Beckett, of the Westminster, have both ventured on to controversial...

for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first coma

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