T HE Spanish situation has in the past week taken a turn distinctly more favourable to the Government and distinctly more reassuring to the world. It is more favourable to the...

Thursday and the threat of the Congress Party to "end the Constitution" may be received with equanimity, though refusal to accept office in the six provinces in which Congress...

formally recognised Rumania's sovereignty over the province of Bessarabia will inevitably make a deep impression on the Little Entente delegates now in conference at Belgrade....

Carr-Saunders is the Chairman, has this week published an admirable pamphlet which makes available to the general public the results of an enquiry undertaken last autumn into...

Japanese Diet is the result of another clash between the soldiers and the politicians. The resistance to military domination is slowly growing, but it is still far from being...

1936-7, which ended on March 31st, have been variously interpreted as showing a surplus of £7,530,000 and a deficit of £5,597,000. The former is the more accurate...

Premier of Alberta, has received three rebuffs in the Legislature, which have brought him to the verge of resignation and defeat—the crisis being caused not by his financial...

of Nations and the chairmanship of Dr. Colijn, Prime Minister of Holland, the representatives of countries producing some 90 per cent. of the world's sugar will meet in...

Davis, who still holds the rank of Ambassador-at-Large of the United States and will certainly not confine his activities to attendance at a Sugar Conference, is an opportune...

National Union of Teachers last Saturday, Mr. R. J. Patten laid striking emphasis on the Social activity for which the school serves as a centre today. As he said, the work of...

the Ministry of Transport's analysis of too,000 fatal and non-fatal road accidents reported during six months in 1936 are important, particularly in so far as they confirm...

motion for the Easter adjournment unexpectedly produced a full dress foreign affairs debate. Thus once again the traditional object of these adjournment motions, which is to...

T HE 28o,000,00o inhabitants of British India have entered this week, despite certain adverse omens, on a new chapter of India's secular history. One more step forward has been...

OR most men Easter is a time for idleness and - pleasure, for Christians a religious festival, for Socialists an opportunity to hold conferences and pass resolutions. This year...

N EWS reaching me from the United States confirms impressions gathered from other quarters, all going to suggest that a door to a fruitful Anglo-American understanding stands,...

By DOROTHY L. SAYERS From my fifth to my thirty-fifth year my home was in the Fen country. My father's first parish was at Bluntisharn- cum-Earith, just at the junction of the...

By PROFESSOR HAROLD TEMPERLEY T HE utterances of official speakers on the elections, whether in India or here, have struck me as lacking in realism. Their allusions to the...

Ry PROFESSOR C. M. YONGE The animal which forms the threads which the Italians are using is known to zoologists as pinna nobilis, and it has allies in all seas. All possess...

By COLIN CLARK Before we say anything about the economic position of the average family, the first thing we must examine is its size. This is falling rapidly. Everyone knows...

By Dr. ERNEST BARKER R EADING Sir Thomas Elyot's The Book Named the Governor last summer (I wanted to construct a lecture on "the Ttdor conception of the 'Gentleman," and this...

By JAMES HANLEY filHE teacher looked at his class. It was just turned I nine o'clock. He was an earnest young man. If only they were as earnest. And then he thought," If only...

Lur me be rid of this huddled townland, Rid of hot rooms and loud talking, Continuous, sound overtaking sound ; And climb into the north, walking Where mountain upon mountain,...

By E. L. WOODWARD I LISTENED, with several million others, to the broadcast 1 of the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race. These accounts of races and prize fights and football...

Commonwealth and Foreign By OUR PRAGUE CORRESPONDENT THE conference of the Little Entente is taking place in Belgrade this week, and next week Dr. Benes is to pay a visit to...

THE way is less long from China to Stockholm than is the imaginative distance between these two pictures. One is about . life and the other is about—what ? I find it hard to...

THE THEATRE The Taming of the Shrew is the play of Shakespeare's which is least capable of giving pleasure today either when it is read or when it is acted. Considered as...

Non einem deutschen Korrespondenten1 &JIM ist es iiberall zur Osterzeit, wenn Krokus und Primeln ihr kleines buntes Haupt aus dem Grase stecken, urn neugierig in die lichte...

Vibrato and Tremolo THE sureness of eggs is proverbial, but there are other cer- tainties. As sure as any critic writes on the subject of singing, his editor will receive...

Green England The returning traveller from any extra-European zone must rejoice in the exceeding greenness of England. There . is no evergreen that can compare with grass. What...

Slit,—May I beg space for a postscript ? My letter on mental patients' lot confined itself to beds, basins, scrubbing-brushes, not because these are necessarily more important...

[Correspondents are requested to keep their letters as brief as is reasonably possible. The most suitable length is that of one of our "News of the Week" paragraphs. Signed...

Sta,—I am sorry the Bishop of Jarrow sees my attitude of mind as "the despair of those who take a realistic view of the work of the Church." In reply, may I first clear up a...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR, — It is the Englishman's privilege, and long may it continue, to run down all those things which he most deeply cares about. The Church...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Reading through your correspondence columns last week, I was interested . by Mr. Harry Price's remarks relating" to his experiments with...

Sia,—It was with great interest that I read your paragraph regarding the absence of decent mortuary accommodation in rural areas. I could mention a case where a woman was...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—In your issue of March 26th, a Mr. Bernard Adler indulges in a wholesale condemnation of the English prison system, in terms which reveal...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,--The advice given to your readers to the effect that trespassing is an offence is open to question. A tort is a civil wrong and not...

[To the 'Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR, — The Cambridge Preservation Society is now well under way with the Appeal to preserve the Gog Magog Hills from the advance of building,...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] Sin, — Notwithstanding Mr. J. Stewart Cook's pronouncement, I believe that the vast majority of University electors see no "public scandal"...

CHRISTIANITY [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I should like to suggest to the Rev. Frank Stone that Soviet Russia has not only been the first State to apply the Christian...

BOOKS OF THE DAY By BASIL GRAY WHEN Cotman died in 1842 at the age of sixty of "natural decay," - his only life-long friend and patron, Dawson Turner, considered writing a...

The Irish Republic By Dorothy Macardle. (Gollancz. 25s.) I KNOW of no book that deals with the recent history of any country quite so comprehensively as Miss Macardle deals in...

THE book surveys the British Empire on the eve of the Imperial Conference which will assemble immediately after the Coro- nation. It is, therefore, the book of the moment ; and...

Capital and Employment. By R. G. Hawtrey. (Longmans. I5s.) MR. HAWTREY has long been recognised as the leading exponent of the theory of the vital importance of the short-term...

Diary of a Soviet Marriage. By Pantaleimon Romano'. Trans- lated by John Furnivall and Raymond Parmenter. (Stanley Nott. 25. 6d.) THIS diary, or to be more exact, this series of...

Plato's Cosmology : The Timaeus of Plato. Translated with a running commentary by F. M. Cornford. (Kegan Paul. 15s.) IN his old age Plato planned and began a trilogy in which...

R. L. Stevenson. By Janet Adam Smith. (Duckworth. 2s.) STEVENSON at the moment is in the trough of his reputation, and for that his friends have been mainly responsible. Few...

By LOUIS MacNEICE A Trojan Ending By Laura Riding. (Constable. '8s: 6c1:) Spanish Fire. By Hermann Kesten. (Hutchinson. 8s. 6d.) ; Golden Peacock. By Gertrude ,Atherton....

(Allen and Unwin, 7s. 6d.) charms even when the matter fails. Prolix, immature, they nevertheless provide a racy picture of • Elizabethan life which is unparalleled even in the...

These eight lectures, on the origins and development of Roman satire, display all the grace of exposition and the weight of learning which has made Professor Wight Duff's...

Main Street, are the lessons of this friendly little manual of Pelmsnism (Watts, 5s.). It is an anatomy of "pep," a vade mecum for those who would make themselves tough-minded,...

It was courageous of Mr. Harvey to write his autobiography. He could so • easily have described the circumstances of his twenty-seven years of life - a novel, which might have...

Sir Archibald Sinclair discusses " Rearmament " dispassionately in the Contemporary. It is for us, he says, "an evil and dangerous but inescapable necessity," primarily "to...

AT the moment rubber seems to be well set for the kind of steady rise which brings most good to producers and investors. The is. per pound mark has been safely crossed without...

FINANCE IT is difficult to realise that less than four years ago the world appeared to be suffering from a glut of commodities, including Wheat, and that such was the anxiety...

SHIPPING SHARES STRONG. AT the moment of writing business on the Stock Exchange has scarcely been fully resumed after the Easter holidays. So far as British Funds and kindred...

BY ZENO. [A prize of one guinea will be given to the sender of the first correct solution of this week's crossword puzzle to be opened. Envelopes should be marked "Crossword...

SOLUTION NEXT WEEK The winner of Crossword No. 235 is the Lyminge Rectory, Kent. Rev. P. Lewis :