29 DECEMBER 1928

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If we took this homily out of its context we

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shouki think it unexceptionable, but the reason of the recent disappointment with Sir Austen is that he has in effect taken sides. He has not seemed fairly to hold the balance...

The special correspondent of the Times says that it is

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probably a " record " for a Foreign Minister to have discussed and concluded seven Treaties within twenty days. All this was done by Mr. Wang in spite of his house being wrecked...

We have written elsewhere of the good news that a

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British Treaty with the Chinese Government has been signed at Nanking giving China tariff autonomy. There has been a shower of Treaties between China and the Foreign Powers...

Terms have been agreed upon for the appointment of the

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Committee of Experts who are to draft the final settlement of Reparations. The experts are not to be bound by instructions from their Governments, but this provision does not...

News of the Week

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T HE happiness of Christmas was this year dependent upon a single event. If the King's illness had become more serious all merriment would have been blownout like the flame of a...

. In the House of Commons on Thursday, December 20th,

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Sir Austen Chamberlain repeated at greater length what he had said before about the conversations at Lugano. What had been done by France, Germany, and Great Britain was "...

EDITORIAL AND PUBLISHING OFFICES : 13 York Street, Covent Garden,

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London, W.C. 2. — A Subscription to the SPECTATOR exults Thirty Shillings per annum, including postage, to any part of the world. The 8rEcrezoa is registered as a Newspaper. The...

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Last Sunday the women and children at the British Legation

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at Kabul were removed by aeroplane to Pesha- war. This was done with the consent of the Afghan Government. Sir Francis Humphrys, the British Minister, has remained at his post....

Turning to the subject of Anglo-American relations, Sir Austen said

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that the American proposal of a new Arbitration Treaty had surprised him as he had been previously informed that the American Government wanted merely to renew the old Treaty....

* * Lord Melchett is the pioneer of British rationalization,

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which only means reorganization on rational lines. There will be no surprise therefore at the announcement that a huge nickel fusion, involving £100,000,000, is in prospect,...

We regret to record the death of Marshal Count Luigi

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Cadorna at the age of seventy-eight. As a young staff- officer and ardent student of war he had a meteoric career, but when as Commander-in-Chief he suffered the disaster of...

* * The decision of the smaller trade unions in

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the West Riding Woollen Industry to support an application for safeguarding, though employers in the Bradford area had hitherto piped to them in vain, may not have much result...

By far the most encouraging industrial development in the last

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month has been the desperate effort of the principals in the cotton trade to compose their differences, as revealed in the Report of the Joint Committee of Cotton Organizations....

" Big business " in Great Britain has been compara-

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tively slow to appreciate the proper functions of com- petition and co-operation in the modern world, but recent developments in the iron and steel trade—and indeed in other...

The consolidation of voluntary agencies with the Lord Mayor's Fund

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for the relief of the mining areas has been carried a good deal further. On Friday, Decem- ber 21st, Lord Eustace Percy presided over a meeting of these organizations when...

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* * * * At 8 a.m. on Thursday, December

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20th, a man surrounded by flames was seen ascending from a manhole in High Holborn, and a moment later a tremendous explosion tore up the street for several hundred yards....

Some of the damaged streets looked like an Arctic sea

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in an ice-jam, slabs and wedges of the surface being forced upwards in confusion. One manhole cover weighing 31 cwt. was thrown on to the top of a roof, and crashed through two...

Now that the Cotton leaders are convinced that rationalization is

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not a cranky idea, their natural gift for organization and dogged perseverance will overcome the special difficulties of this supremely individualistic industry. Financial...

* * * On January 8th the members of the

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High Council of the Salvation Army, who are coming from all parts of the world, will assemble for the first time at Sunbury-on- Thames to decide whether or not General Bramwell...

On Thursday, December 20, certain important interests, including railway companies,

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hotel proprietors, and so on, formed an Association to attract visitors to Great Britain. Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister said that the Government would ask Parliament for a...

The English team who have won the first two Test

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matches so handsomely are, on paper, very little stronger than the English team who preceded them in Australia. There is Hammond, of course, a lion-hearted young cricketer, but...

Bank Rate, 41 per cent., changed from 5 per cent.,

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on April 21st, 1927. War Loan (5 per cent.) was on Wednesday 1021 ; on Wednesday week 102* ; a year ago 1011. Funding Loan (4 per cent.) was on Wednesday 90/ ; on Wed- nesday...

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Mr. Chamberlain's Feat

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M UCH the most impressive performance of . the past session has been that of Mr. Neville Chamberlain. When Mr. Churchill introduced the derating scheme, the Unionist Party, and...

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" From Penury to Existence " in Aberdare S OMETIMES a

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trivial incident lights up a situation, such as that of the South Wales unemployed and partially employed miners, more vividly than an acre of statistics or a bushel of facts. I...

Our Aberdare Fund—L4,564 I 5s. 8d. so far

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Owing to the Christmas Holidays the following list represents subscriptions to the SPECTATOR Aberdare Fund received up to the first post on Friday, December 21st, 1928. All...

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Great Britain Leads the Way in China

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G REAT BRITAIN'S formal recognition of the Chinese National Government on Thursday, December 20th, is a landmark in the histories of both countries. Since the days of the Opium...

THE SPECTATOR.

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Before going abroad or away from home readers are advised to place an order for the SPECTATOR. The journal will be forwarded to any address at the following rates :— One Month...

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M. Venizelos on the Victories of Peace

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[This is the first of a series of articles communicated by our .Special Representative who is making a study of conditions in the Near East.—En. Spectator.] S O well known is M....

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Children's Ailments A PARENTAL victim of " children's ailments "

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gave utterance in the Spectator, not long ago, to the feelings of millions of parents. Here are these wretched infections, apparently inevitable, one following another, costing...

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Mr. Shaw and the Traveller

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w HILE I was reading Mr. Bernard Shaw's monu- mental work on the future of the world, called The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism'and Capitalism, in which our lives, or,...

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In the Bibliotheque Nationale

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I SIT in the bi g Work-Hall of the National Library of France. It is a g reat s q uare room, with a wide centre passa g e : at one end of this the entrance, at the other—in a g...

THE INDEX TO VOLUME 141 OF THE " SPECTATOR "

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WILL BE READY FOR DELIVERY ON JANUARY 19Til, 1929. . Readers resident outside the British Isles and Libraries Overseas are asked to inform the SPECTATOR Office in advance as to...

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The Bank

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When I walk down Threadneedle Street I hear the multi- tudinous feet of those who crawl and limp and caper for the love of a handful of crumpled paper. And some of them find...

Poetry

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The Blue Wind of the Yangtse Valley THE blue wind from the lake Blows, and over me Sad showers of leaves fall To cover me. Sorrow is in the blue wind ; There is none to greet...

A Hundred Years Ago

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In a comfortable stable in the town of Haddington, there dwelleth a horse, whose name is Cakes. He knows all the landlords and public-houses on the road from Haddington to...

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"Spectator" Conference for Personal Problems

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The Oedipus Complex [The SPECTATOR Conference offers to readerd a service of advice on personal problems in which they would like impartial help. The Editor has appointed a...

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BIRDS AND AIRPLANES.

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Mr. Orville Wright's pioneer airplane, which has just been honoured at South Kensington, was shown to me many years ago by its artificer ; and we talked very little about the...

SUGAR BEET FACTS.

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It should be generally known among farmers how very successfully sugar beet has been grown in England this year. Records have been shown me of light land yielding 12 tons to the...

Country Life VILLAGES AND ME B.B.C.

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What subjects are English villagers eager to debate? The question arises over the new enterprise of the B.B.C. Active steps have already been taken. A particular village has now...

The organization is not easy. On the part of the

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B.B.C. the talk must be at any hour suitable for the social life of the village ; and the men and the women probably want a different hour. The subject must he simple,...

One of the pioneer counties is Gloucestershire, the first to

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form .t " county preservation society." On this body landowners are taking a prominent part, as in yet more notable degree are the Thames-side landowners of Berks, Bucks, and...

* * REGIONAL PLANNING.

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Now regional planning, which was brought to birth by the Ministry of Health, will go ahead very quickly in the coming year. The counties will now for the first time possess...

ESPECIALLY BUZZARDS.

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The bird they watched above others was the buzzard, a great hawk that is common in America. I have seen a group of them circling hour after hour above Washington as if they were...

Mr. Wright was so impressed by this practice among birds

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that he advanced his theory beyond the probable. He thinks, or at one time thought, that the buzzards have learnt a mechanical device for creating, or at any rate increasing...

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OUR ABERDARE FUND

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[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—We have now been able to organize to our satisfaction the distribution of the Spedator parcels which have been arriving here, and we have...

Letters to the Editor

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ABERDARE AND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR, —Three hours by the Fisbguard Express from Paddington to Cardiff, and then a longish hour while...

THE FUTURE OF THE DISTRESSED AREAS

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[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Snt,—We shall fail in our obligation to the miners if we do not go beyond the matter of relieving inunediate distress. We ought to take...

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WHAT IS WRONG WITH BRITISH AGRICULTURE ?

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[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Ste,- —As my views on co-operation have been quoted in a recent letter in the Spectator, I may perhaps be permitted to make a few remarks on...

OUR . ABERDARE FUND—POINTS FROM LETTERS. A further selection of excerpts

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from the letters of contributors to our Fund is printed below. Many writers express the hope that some proportion of the money may be used in exploring the possibilities of...

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SCRUTAMINI SCRIPTURAS"

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[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I must apologise for writing upon matter contained in one of your book reviews in your issue of December 8th. My excuse must be that the...

THE COLLECTIVE KEEPING OF COWS

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[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sia,—Your " Country Life " page, on July 7th, contained a most interesting account (though, of course, necessarily superficial) of...

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]

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Snt,—A great many people have been writing lately on the difficulties of farmers, but no one seems to have realized one very great difficulty which the education authorities...

SAFEGUARDING

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[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Sir Henry Page Croft in your issue of December 15th cites figures to prove that between the years 1880 and 1927 three protected countries...

TWO CATS

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[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I think your readers may be interested in two cat stories from Australia. The truth of the following was vouched for by a friend. Her...

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THE UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM

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[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sin,—Far too much time and energy has been wasted in Shouting at the Government to solve the Unemployment problem, when the solution may not...

THE PRAYER BOOK

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[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—There seem to be two alternatives in the present dilemma : It is proposed to give permission under certain safeguards for the use of...

THE SPIRITUAL DIFFICULTIES OF THE PRESENT GENERATION

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[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—There was an article in the Spectator last week headed " The Civilization of the Future," in which, violence was done to the feelings of...

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POINTS FROM LETTERS

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SOME SAFEGUARDING FIGURES. In your issue of December 15th, Sir Henry Page Croft gives figures showing the rate of increase of exports of manu- factured goods between 1880 and...

LOOKING FOR A HUMANE TRAP

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[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Since writing to your paper on the subject of humane rabbit catching on October 20th, I hear that the Women's Institute authorities in...

[Owing to preisure 'on our space we are obliged to

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_hold over our usual League of _Nations articie.-.7 7 Ep. Spectator,]

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Mr. I'Anson Fausset has shown a wide range of choice

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in his literary biographies. In each one, however, he has tried in the same way to show the quarrelling motives under- lying the man of whom he writes. He has been particularly...

Mr. Charles Brown deals with a most attractive theme in

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his little book on The Romance of Dedications (Talbot, 6s.), including foreign as well as English churches in his survey. Many readers will be interested to know, for example,...

Some Books of the Week

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IN Noah's Cargo (Black, 10s. 6d.), Mr. George Jennison, a former head of the Belle Vue Zoological Gardens in Man- chester, gives us some very curious chapters of natural...

Not Goethe's life but the development of his mind and

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character is the subject of Goethe and Faust, by F. M. Stawell and G. Lowes Dickinson (Bell, 15s.) Mr. Lowes Dickinson and Miss Stawell r e gard " Faust " as a kind of...

* * * * The Bunyan celebrations have reminded us

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of the undying charm of allegory for those who wish to convey spiritual ideas in an easily digestible form. The latest convert to this traditional method is Sir Francis...

* * * * Farming, by Mr. Edward C. Ash

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(Methuen, 12s. 6d.), is a good book. Some of it would interest the general reader, as well as the specialist ; but the man whom it would best fit is the so-called gentleman...

The Competition

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Barry Island—I send in homage the topaz of my silence— Your threepennybit. The Editor offers a prize of five guineas for the most plausible explanation of this message, taken...

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The Sensitive Plant

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The Motor Mechanism of Plants. By Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose. (Longman. 21s.) The Motor Mechanism of Plants. By Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose. (Longman. 21s.) ANY one who has golfed...

The Last of the Windjammers

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The Last of the Windjammers. By Basil Lubbock. Vol. II. (Brown, Son and Ferguson. 36s.) Ma. Basil. LUBBOCK'S researches into the history of well-known Sailing ships have...

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East and West

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Kahl% the Mystic and her Fellow-Saints in Islam. By Margaret Smith, M.A., Ph.D. (Cambridge University Press. 10e. 6d.) The Life of Richard Rolle, together with an Edition of his...

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Everyday Life in Soviet Russia IN the Introduction to Life

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Under the Soviets Beatrice Webb tells us that Mr. Wicksteed first went to Russia as a member of a delegation from the Society of Friends, to do relief work in the days of famine...

The Teaching of History

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The Junior History Series, Edited by the late Professor H. W. C. Davis ; Drake, by J. D. Upcott ; Queen Elizabeth, by J. Plunket ; The Age of Discovery, by R. Power ; Robert...

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Herrick

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The Poetical Works of Robert Herrick. With a Preface by Humbert Wolfe and Decorations by Albert Rutherston. (In 4 vols. The Cresset Press. £4 44.) IT is a really beautiful...

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All's Wrong with the World

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The Survival of the Unfittest. By Charles Wickateed Armstrong. (The C. W. Daniel Company. 6s.) IT seems almost irreverent to liken the author of this admirable exposure of many...

APPLE SAUCE, by Ina Michael (Brentano's, 7s. 6d.) is an

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affair of headlong vigour and ingenuous crudity. Mildred APPLE SAUCE, by Ina Michael (Brentano's, 7s. 6d.) is an affair of headlong vigour and ingenuous crudity. Mildred...

Fiction

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THE UNFORGIVEN. By General Krassnoff. (Allen and Unwin. 10s. Od.)—This long novel describes events during the Russian civil wars after the Revolution, with all the pass ionate...

THE EMPEROR FALLS IN LOVE. By Octave Aubry. Translated from

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the French by Henry Longan Stuart. (Har- pers. 7s. 6d.)—The new fashion in fiction of taking the stories of famous people, and writing them in the form of novels, is seldom...

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He would be a bold reviewer who would attempt to

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sum up even one essay of Dr. Jung's within the limits of a para- graph ; but here we have two whole books—Contributions to Analytical Psychology (Regan Paul, 18s.) and Two...

More Books of the Week (Continued from page 993) Once

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more Mr. Waley has opened to us the doors of Old Japan. In The Pillow-Book of Sei Shonagon (Allen and Unwin, 6s.) we see again the Empress and her quaint, rather intimate court,...

Whether soldier or civilian, everyone who has ever read anything

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about shikari has read Captain A. I. R. Glasfurd's famous Rifle and Romance in the Indian Jungle. Now that he is full of years and honours, he writes no less vividly and...

M. Oliver Pike believes that the study of nature in

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England can-be carried on usefully and intelligently from the seats of a motor-car. The principle is that the many dramas and comedies that are always enacted on the stage of...

With Last Changes, Last Clumces (Nisbet. 15s.) Mr. 11. W.

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Nevinson concludes his line autobiographical trilogy, the earlier volumes of which have already been reviewed in these columns. We need only assure those who have read them that...

We have received from the Cambridge University Press (the publishers

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jointly with the Oxford University Press and Messrs. Eyre and Spottiswoode) three copies of The Book of Common Prayer with the Additions and Deviations proposed in 1928. They...

Students of Napoleon will find that Mr. John Theodore Tussaud's

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The Chosen Four (Cape, 7s. 6d.) fills, succinctly and interestingly, a few minor gaps in their knowledge. Mr. Tussaud recounts the early careers of Charles Tristan Montholon,...

* * *

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Mr. E. Boyd Barrett, a Jesuit for twenty years, does not at all convince us that there is an enigma about his Order. His superiors, by his own story, seem to have been most kind...

* * * *

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Mr. Humbert Wolfe, in his preface to Messrs. Lanes beautiful edition of Selected Poems of Swinburne (21s.), approaches the poet by recalling the memory of his (Mr. Wolfe's)...

* * * *

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Few writers have a more intimate knowledge of any English dialect than Mr. S. L. Bensusan has of the East Anglian. Not only does he know how to record the country talk as he...

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Nothing could be better suited to its purpose than the

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little volume of Two Minute Bible Readings which two anonymous % tudents have compiled for use in opening school or in hospital wards and homes (Student Christian Movement,...

From Major to Minor : Some Keys for Anglers. By

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Major Kenneth Dawson. Annotated by The Wag. (Country Life. 12s. 6d.)—An imaginary schoolboy translated from East Anglia to Devon finds himself beside a river and consults an...

* * * *

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A hand-book of information which will be of interest and service to our readers is Voluntary Social Services (from 26 Bedford Square, 2s.). The title sufficiently explains the...

The position of slaves in the Roman Empire has recently

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been investigated by Mr. R. H. Barrow, and now the problem of the liberated slaves has been studied with scholarly care by Mr. A. M. Duff. His monograph on Freedmen in the Early...

General Knowledge Questions

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OUR weekly prize of one guinea for the best thirteen Questions submitted 'is awarded this week to the Rev. F. E. Warner, Amberley Rectory, Stroud, Glos., for the following :—...

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GOVERNMENT LOAN RESULT.

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Almost immediately after the announcement of November 28th of the Government's new issue of Treasury Bonds to deal with debt maturing in February of next year, came the...

TOBACCO PROSPERITY.

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It looks as though the old saying " There is nothing like leather " would have to give place to the more up-to-date phrase, " There is nothing like tobacco," especially,...

Financial Notes

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CHEERFUL MARKETS. THE Stock Exchange broke up for the Christmas holidays in thoroughly cheerful fashion, and undoubtedly the chief factor operating was the profound relief...

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- SULPHIDE - CORPORATION. - - - - -

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At last week's meeting of the Sulphide Corporation, the chairman, Lord Kintore, had several very interesting points to bring before shareholders. So far as the past year was...

* * * *

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THE INVARIABLE STANDARD AND MEASURE OF VALUE. This is the title of a new book written by Mr. J. Taylor Peddie and published by P. S. King and Son, Limited. It is a work...

Motors and Motorin

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1 4 h.p, Hillman Safety Saloon THE 14 h.p. Hillman Safety Saloon is a useful type of general purpose car. It has a wheel-base and track of 9 ft. 6 in. and 4 ft. 8 in., which...

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Answers to Questions on the Apocrypha 1. " The Wisdom

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of Solomon " and " The Prayer of Manasses." —2. Wisdom iv. 13-14 by Queen Victoria for the Prince Consort's monument at Balmoral.-3. The Benedicite from " The Song of the Three...