27 SEPTEMBER 1963

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LABOUR

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C

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THE END OF THE AFFAIR I ORD DENNING has said what

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he had to , say, and the long-drawn-out Profumo affair is at an end, or should be. And we can all be glad of it, whatever our political views. NO doubt, there will be those who...

— Portrait of the Week— EARLY PUBLICATION of the Denning Report

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was promised, so the Stationery Office 'opened half an hour after midnight to satisfy 'the crowds who wondered just how blue a blue book could be. But the long-awaited box of...

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FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1963 No. 7057 Established 1828

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Two for Tomorrow

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T RE most satisfying thing about the past week's reports on a Channel link and a decimal currency is that neither doubts the value of these innovations. The real arguments are...

Out of Isolation

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T tiE semi-paralysis which has a ffl icted British foreign policy since the breakdown of the Brussels talks shows no sign of abating. The message which Lord Home will carry with...

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Marching as to War

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MALCOLM RUTHERFORD writes: The Freedom Group filled the Caxton Hall last Friday to celebrate the takeover of Wad- dington's printing press. Beneath the speakers' raised...

Out from Under

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HE departure of five more or less dissident I members of the executive of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is no particular sur- prise. For some months the movement has been...

The Purge Goes On C zecH Stalinism was particularly unpleasant. The

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Slansky trial 'was the only one in Eastern Europe which resulted in a majority of the accused being executed : the only one, too, which, coming in Stalin's last period, had...

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The American Family

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From MURRAY KEMPTON WASH INGTON A MERICANS must be the first people to have /111, raised a generation of children equipped to assassinate their parents. Our young, painful...

God, Sex, War

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ROBIN DENNISTON writes: God, sex and war for 3s. 6d. sounds very good value, but the latest collection of lectures from the Cambridge frontiersmen* is rather more modest in its...

Enter. Sir Frederick CLIVE BARNES writes : The Royal Ballet

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programmes at Covent Garden last week marked the end of a ballet epoch. For thirty-two years, first as the Vic- Wells Ballet, then the Sadler's Wells Ballet and, finally, the...

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A Definite Slur

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In a hysterical access of sales-consciousness, Her Majesty's Stationery Offices, in London and Edinburgh, opened for an hour at half-past mid- night this Thursday morning to...

Twelve Tiny Fingers The big switch to decimality will be

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a load of fun, and I look forward to the transition period, quite seriously, with as much innocent pleasure as to a week at the seaside. But how on earth did we ever come to...

Fire at Will Following this year's Edinburgh Festival, some newspapers

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in Scotland have published whole shoals of letters from indignant rate- payers who want the entire thing scrapped at once. This always happens. Its importance mustn't be...

A Spectator's Notebook

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S TILL another fact-finding inquiry is being launched this week, of more lasting im- portance, I think, than some I could mention. Launched with a Nuffield grant of £70,000, the...

Owt For Nowt The burning national issue of the next

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five years is going to be trading stamps, I fear. Every- body's at it, and I have even read a long analy- sis by the economist Dr. L. Sonkodi, which is pretty solid stuff but...

Gaggers at Work Live and let live has long been

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the guiding philosophy of woolly-minded humanists like my- self, and I propose to stick to this childlike maxim; but it's getting tougher these days. and I'm thinking at the...

The Final Solution

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From another, personal, letter from America, I learn that Adlai Stevenson turned up at a party at Justice Goldberg's house the other day (neither of these men is known...

Errors and Omissions

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From past experience, I ought to hesitate about saying anything about any American cult in public, because there are always at least twenty cultists poised at their typewriters...

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LABOUR AND THE WILL TO GOVERN

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By HENRY FAIRLIE T liE most significant political fact of the past year will be celebrated at Scarborough next week, For the first time in twelve years, the Labour Party looks...

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How to Pass Your Driving Test

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By BRIAN BEHAN I HAD failed. The examiner with a wintry smile said smugly, '1 am sorry to have to tell you, Mr. Behan, that you have not reached the standard required by the...

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SIR,—As a sexagenarian Guardian addict, 1 have studied Mr. Clive

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Irving's article with great interest and a certain amount of wry agreement. To me, how- ever, as possibly to other readers, the Guardian's outstanding merit—outweighing whatever...

SIR,—I was very interested to read Clive Irving's article in

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last week's issue of the Spectator, but I would like, if I may, to correct for the record certain figures which appear in the penultimate paragraph of the article. Mr. Irving...

CATHOLICS AND BIRTH CONTROL

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SIR,—Not a Roman Catholic, I have to ask not your permission alone, but the courtesy of your Catholic correspondents to allow me—for I live in a country about 80 per cent...

SIR,—Mr. Henry Fairlie has probably never written a more misleading

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article than the one he con- tributed to your columns on September 6. To sug- gest there is something sinister behind Mr. Grimond's smile is ludicrous. He ought to know by now...

GEORGE CLARK APPEAL SIR,—The issues raised by the sentence of

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eighteen . months on Mr. George Clark at the London Sessions on September 10, affect the personal liberty of us all, Mr. Clark was convicted of 'inciting' people to 'commit a...

SIR,—At the risk of being condemned as an 'ill- educated

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small businessman' I am impelled to say that the best possible thing the Conservative Party could do in their own interests so far as your readers are concerned would be to...

The House of. Scott Alastair Hetherington,

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R. 1 Fraser, Rachac'! Bates Military Pacifists Charles Radcli f fe George Clark Appeal Canon L. John Collins and others Liberal Extremism Edward Martell, Jack Holmes...

MILITARY PACIFISTS SIR,—I must disabuse the reviewer of Constantine FitzGibbon's

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new book (Spectator, September 13), albeit belatedly, of at least one of the consolations which he offers to Mr. FitzGibbon. Wellington College has provided a past treasurer of...

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LAWYERS' LOOT

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SIR,—I hesitate to cavil at your generous reference to Harrow House Owners' Society (Spectator, Sep- tember 6), but I would like to bring your readers up-to-date on the...

SIR,—May another Catholic join in? Mrs. Fallaux's letter is touching

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and obviously deeply sincere. But she doesn't know what it is all about yet. After her lovingly planned first baby arrives, she'll probably want to breast-feed. No periods for...

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Abstract Worlds

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inevitable. With these breezy addresses Rivers immensely heartened our exponents of visual satire and of the new figurative painting which may lift what it needs from recent...

The Arts

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Lost Among the Committees By TERENCE BENDIXSON W irniN five years there is almost certain to be a National Theatre on the South Bank. As long ago as 1949 Parliament authorised...

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Myths in the Living Room

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By DAVID PRYCE-JONES The Lover and The Dwarfs. (Arts.)—Power of Persuasion. (Garrick.) —What Goes Up . . . (Theatre Royal, Strat- ford, E.)—So Much to Remember. (Vaudeville.)...

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Der Freischiitz

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By DAVID CAIRNS THE comparative ease with which Der Freischiitz has vindicated itself and estab- lished its right to exist on the modern operatic stage is a measure of the...

Less Than Kind .

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`Chabrol, the trend-setter,' Penelope Houston calls him in her excellent new Pelican The Con- temporary Cinema, and so he is; trend-setter for, but embodier of, the whole French...

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BOOKS

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The. Myth in Action BY RICHARD G. STERN F OR tracking purposes, one might consider the young American writer John Updike a latter- day John O'Hara. The large measure of differ-...

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Sword into Chrysanthemum?

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Thought and Behaviour in Modern Japanese 30s.) WRITING over fifteen years ago in that indispen- sable guide to the understanding of modern Japan, The Chrysanthemum and the...

Act One

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World War I : An Outline History. By Hanson W. Baldwin. (Hutchinson, 2.1s.) A GREAT deal more argument about the First World War can be expected as the publishers rightly make...

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At the Abbey Door

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THE six volumes of O'Casey's autobiography which appeared between 1939 and 1954 are now presented in paperback format, and a word of congratulation is due to the publishers for...

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Ever Interesting Topic

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A Girl I Knew. By Axel Jensen. (Deutsch, 16s.) ONE of the gravest problems confronting twen- tieth-century man, as he is laughingly called, is whether there is too much sex in...

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Counting Coppers

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IN crime fiction we have quite a convention of hatred for State justice. It is unusual to come across a novel which is pro-police. We prefer our heroes to be clumsy innocents,...

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Ear and Eye

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Medieval English Lyrics: A Critical Anthology. Edited with an introduction and notes by R. T. Davies. (Faber, 45s.) THESE two books are well worth possessing by anyone who is...

Crusade for the Under-Dog

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By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT MK. M AUDLING must have thought that the White Paper on Aid to Developing Corm- -, tries (Cmnd. 2147) was lack- ' ing in any sense of moral obligation...

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Investment Notes

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By CUSTOS rTIHE Chancellor's optimism has been the main- ' stay of the equity markets recently, and the official statistics have been backing him up. Industrial production is...

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The Lonely Ones

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By ELIZABETH GUNDREY LONELINESS seems to be re- placing poverty as society's disease. Its grip is not con- fined to any one class or age-group. `Everyone experi- ences it,' Eva...

LESLIE ADRIAN is on holiday.

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Company Notes

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By LOTHBURY A S SOCIATED -REDIFFUSION, the London weekday commercial television contractor, Will, says the chairman, Mr. John Spencer Wills, be applying to the ITA for a...

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Afterthought

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By ALAN BRIEN When Carl Reiner interviews Mel Brooks on the American comic record, The Two Thousand Year Old Man, and asks the ancient survivor what was the principal means of...