Fascists and Communists, behaving as they always tried to behave before the war, have managed in the past week to give the forces of order in Trieste a bad shaking, to create...

T HE reply of the Western Powers to the Soviet Note on a peace treaty with Germany is a well-drafted document. It is commendably brief, commendably clear, commend- . ably firm....

-What makes the future of the Saar a potentially dangerous question is not so much the difficulty of giving the territory a stable relationship to both Germany and France as the...

If the drop in demand for textiles which is causing difficulty in Lancashire and Yorkshire is not quickly cured it will not be for lack of public interest. The sudden emergence...

Mr. Glenvil Hall had some justification for asking Mr. Eden, after the Foreign Secretary had outlined his proposals for the remodelling of the Council of Europe in the House of...

The decision by Mr. Justice Danckwerts that the national health service pool for the remuneration of doctors should he increased by 0,719,000 in the financial year now ending is...

The death of Mr. Senanayake will be felt as a severe loss both by the Empire and by Asia, which can perhaps less well afford it. The strategical advantages of living on an...

Hilali Pasha could not afford a direct clash with Parlia- ment, as that would simply have given the Wafd an opportunity for public propaganda. A dissolution was therefore...

I N carrying the war to Mr. Bevan, as he has been doing in the Labour Party meetings ever since the defence debate, Mr. Attlee has won all the rounds save one. He failed to get...

When, last December, the Minister of Education called for a saving of five per cent. on local authorities' education estimates for 1952-53 she said that "the essential fabric,...

Number. It will contain, in addition to all the usual features by Harold Nicolson, Virginia Graham, Martin Cooper and Ken Tynan, articles by Wilfrid Blunt, Neville Cardus, Peter...

C RISIS is clearly not too strong a word to use when the Prime Minister is announcing his intention of defying the Supreme Court, when political demonstrations in different...

adopted its new standing orders in an atmosphere of complete placidity. But whether the calm is enduring will depend on the interpretation put on the conscience clause in its...

political discussions is "holding the line of the Elbe." It might be supposed that the Elbe represented an approxi- mately straight north-and-south line which the Russians were...

more than any others to influence the life and thought of the average middle-class intellectual Englishman—and his wife, or the equivalent ? I ask the question because I heard...

Wyatt, deserve great credit for speeches they made last week-end, designed to keep rearmament out of party politics— not, indeed, out of intra-party politics, for the whole aim...

the last tram thunders through it on Saturday of next week, to make that dramatic emergence up a steep slope into the upper air at the junction of Southampton Row and Theobalds...

charges" in hospitals, i.e. to exact from patients kept in the hospital for a period of several weeks some proportion of what they would have spent on food at home, is no doubt...

T HE views of the massed peerage on the B.B.C. and its future are interesting. My Lords Halifax, Bessborough, Brand and Sandford have all graced the columns of The Times in the...

who feels strongly on the refusal of the B.B.C. News Department to refer to the German Chancellor as anything but Herr Adenauer. From one quarter comes the question why the...

By ERNSTFRIEDLAENDER This may appear a simple story. But the Remer trial has, in fact, stirred public opinion in Germany to the highest degree. Not on account of Remer. The...

By VERNON BARTLETT N OTHING, 1 thought, had changed in Madrid. Six months earlier I had found everybody busily spending in his imagination the American dollars that were either...

By EDWARD HODGKIN L O NDONERS may be relied on to betray less interest in the London County Council elections than they do in the almost simultaneous Boat Race. In one way this...

F EW countries have embarked on independence under conditions seemingly so unfavourable as those which' attended the creation of Pakistan in 1947. The Indian leaders naturally...

By C. HENRY WARREN T HE deeds of Thurstons Farm, loaned to me by its present owner, Mr. Harold Jackson, arrived straight from the solicitor's office, tied up in a brown paper...

Night Solo By DESMOND E. HENN (King's College, Cambridge.) I T was already dark by the time I reached the airfield, and the slight uneasiness which had been troubling me all...

By HAROLD NICOISON W HEN I was in Russia before the first war I was frequently told the story about Catherine II and the crocus. It seems that the Empress, walking one morning...

THEATRE The Tempest. By William Shakespeare. (Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon.) ANYONE who did not see Mr. Michael Benthall's production last year, when Mr. Michael...

Viva Zapata ! (Odeon, Marble Arch.)—Distant Drums. (Warner.) Fr is difficult to criticise VivaZapata ! From every angle, the technical, the artistic, the histrionic, it can be...

ON three consecutive nights, from March 21st to 23rd, the Festival Hall was packed for programmes consisting almost entirely of Mozart's music. True, there were some...

The Festival Ballet. (Stoll Theatre.)—Ballet Workshop. (Mercury Theatre.) MARKOVA will be greatly missed by the Festival Ballet audiences, and many people will be asking...

SOMEWHERE in the course of the Renaissance the artist—was it Michelangelo ?—claimed autonomy and ceased to court, but was rather courted by, the patron. Today we delegate most...

THE TRUE EGYPTIAN QUESTION The dispute between the Sultan and the Viceroy of Egypt threatens to complicate many interests; and the diplomatists are up in arms to defend,...

Report by A. D. C. Peterson Competitors were asked to assume that they were junior officials in a Ministry of Town and Country Planning, and that during their first week of...

Set by Lewis Petrie New Year's Day, All Fool's Day, May Day. . . None of the other first days of the month seem to have a title, unless you count All Saints' Day. Competitors...

Sn1,—This society informs me that "all holders of Chairs of Philosophy and Readerships in Philosophy in British universities" are "declared to be entitled ex officio Fellows of...

Public Worship SIR,—So many points of interest have been raised in your discussion of public worship that it is difficult to know where to begin to comment. Mr. Stockwood...

SIR,—Your readers will share Janus's regret that his competition did not produce a masterpiece but not his surprise, if indeed he was surprised as he probably was not. The...

Sin,—With reference to the advertisement of Colonel Van Der Post's book Venture to the Interior appearing in the Spectator of February 8th, under thg heading "3 Epics—I. Of...

SIR,—I should like to comment on the letter of M. Rent Nicolas in your issue of March 14th. I will not discuss his political opinions. I will try to confine myself to facts....

SIR,—Your article on West Africa is refreshingly frank and true. That the British have educated these people from a condition of deep savagery t,to a fitness for self-government...

SIR,—The Spectator, March 21st, 1952, page 357: "this persistent refusal to recognise the German Chancellor's doctorate is a persistent insult . . ." • The Spectator, March...

but trees under walls seldom get sufficient moisture, even in wet seasons. To be on the safe side, a good watering w:th clear water, followed by liquid manure, will be of great...

to visit the bird-sanctuary, but as we journeyed we ran into drifts of mist that hung in the hollows and among trees. At our destination the warden told us we had picked a bad...

Perhaps a naturalist would have an idea how many moles were at work in the field. It was covered with molehills. In places hardly a square yard was without one. At this time of...

its' owner was at the hedge talking to a passer-by. I looked at the ploughing he had done. From the conversation it was evident he was proud of himself. It was the first time he...

THE wind blows along the top of the hill, and the scrub bends away from it, pointing over the slope. Everything that grows is affected by the strength of the wind in such a...

The Soviet Economy The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, Vol. 2. By E. H. Carr. (Macmillan. 30s.) THE second volume of Mr. E. H. Carr's history of Soviet Russia— for The...

The Lusiads. By Luis Vaz de Camoens. ' Translated by William C. Atkinson. (Penguin Books. 2s. 6d.) WHEN one passes, in conyersation, from French, Spanish or Italian literature...

CANON RAVEN, in his book on John Ray, remarks that" when huge and recklessly inflated lists of plants and animals were being com- piled, the primary business of the student was...

WHY yet another book on the Supreme Commander of the N.A.T.O. armies ? Mr. Gunther himself mentions that about a dozen on the same subject have preceded his. It does not mean...

MR. SPALDING had produced an ambitious book with an engaging and, I am sure, genuine air of modesty. For he has compiled a " synopsis " of one of the longest and least easily...

WITH the possible exception of Shaw, no playwright in the last hundred years has had a worse influence on the theatre than Chekhov. We may never hear the end of his followers :...

The Wastrel. By Frederic Wakeman. (Allan Wingate. 12s, 6d.) Fearful Pleasures. By A. E. Coppard. (Peter Nevill. Us. 6d.) Willa, You're Wanted. By Affleck Graves. (Faber. 12s....

Lovely Peggy: The Life and Times of Margaret Woffington. By Janet Camden Lucey. (Hurst and Blackett 18s.) THIS book is an excellent sample of the revived (or Victorian) type of...

IT is astonishing how much information is contained in this companion to the Com- panion. The tables of notation and nomen- clature alone, with the relevant terms in four...

By CUSTOS UNDER the lead of gilt-edged stocks markets are trying to find a new basis. I doubt, however, whether they should be expected to achieve much success at this early...

guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution opened aher noon on Tuesday week, April 8th, addressed Crossword. 99 Gower Street, London, W.C.1. Envelopes...

O 0i0 5 - f A At..)V A N.T V t4 IVVE Solution on April ii The winner of Crossword No. 669 is: The Rev. JAMES B. JOHNSTON, 63 Cluny Gardens, Edinburgh, 10.