, TOMOS OP THE DAY A DVERTISING IDEAS.. .. 801 Agriculture and the Tariff ....441 Air Routes, Empire America, How She Sees Herself .. 754 — Middle West in Blinkers .. 701...

More than half the Members of the House of Commons having petitioned the Prime Minister to set on foot an enquiry into the working of the Post Office, with special reference to...

T HE international conference on reparations will 1 certainly be held some time in the latter half of this month, the principal European countries being represented, and the...

London. W.V. 1.—A Subecription to the SPECTATOR caws Thirty Shillings per annum, including portage, to any part of the world. The SPECTATOR is registered as a A eicepaper. The...

The change of Government in Nanking following General Chiang Kai-Shek's resignation has at least been effected without the violent upheaval that had been feared. To this extent...

Figures the Belgian Government has taken the trouble to compile have an interesting bearing in the contention an important section of American Congressmen and American public...

Monday, did well to urge that grand juries at quarter sessions should be abolished. It may be hoped that other county benches will pass similar resolutions, so as to call public...

Prime Minister to Mr. Will Thorne, M.P., confirms the suggestion made in these columns last week that the real trouble about the new Cunarder is not to find the money to...

Manchuria and has secured the evacuation by Chang Hsueh-liang of Chinchow, the last remaining Chinese foothold in the province. That having been duly effected according to plan...

undoing. Mr. Lin Sea, the President, is seventy years old, respected but a nonentity. There is no real leader, and it is an unfortunate fact that Northerners and Southerners can...

in a special aspect by "..A.uspex " on a later page of this issue. Meanwhile the retiring directors have been re-appointed with the exception of Sir Gordon Nairne, replaced by...

Figures just published in Paris have an instructive bearing on the demand of the iron and steel industries for protection in this country. In protected France production in...

damage done to the Vatican library two days before Christmas should have been somewhat exaggerated in the first reports. It is unfortunately true that five persons were killed...

The question of whether English Professors should so far intervene in the controversies of another country as to protest against the action of the Italian Government in...

We record with sincere regret the death, at Harlech on Sunday, of Mr. Alfred Perceval Graves, the distin- guished Anglo-Irish poet and essayist. The son of a former Bishop of...

With the Disarmament Conference no more than a month distant the general attitude to it of the principal countries concerned is a matter of increasing importance. The Spectator...

A conference is to be held at Geneva on Thursday at the request of the British Government to try to secure the simultaneous application by the coal-producing countries of Europe...

on September 21st, 1931. War Loan (5 per cent.) was on Wednesday 93/ ; on Wednesday week, 951 ; a year ago, 103*. Funding Loan (4 per cent.) was on Wednesday 821 ; on Wednesday...

"NTOTHING," an English publicist has written in a - LI New Ycar message to a German paper,' " is more important for the world in 1932 than a final settlement of reparations at...

TIRE situation regarding India may be summed up 1 in the statement that the British Government is going steadily forward in its prosecution of a policy, the establishment of...

Br SIR W. BRACH THOMAS. (We publish hero the first of a short aeries of articles on Agricul- tural policy. Next week Mr. F. N. Blundell, late member of the...

The Force Behind the Brynmawr Experiment W ORDS have become deeds," wrote Madame de Stall in the year before the taking of the Bastille. She meant that talk had ceased to be...

BY GEORG BERNHARD (late Editor of the Vossische Zeitung). A DOLE HITLER is at present endeavouring to gain political power in Germany by legal means. And since he is always...

BY E. B. CASTLE. N EARLY fifty years ago Madame Bergman Osterberg opened the first Physical Training College for women in this country. Since that time several other highly...

Bird's-Eye View By PETER FLEMING. I AWAKE with a guilty start, though for no particular reason. The cabin of the aeroplane is full of the loud, slightly over-confident roaring...

BY HAROLD MITCHELL (President, the Scottish Ski Club). T E last few years have seen a rapid increase in the popularity of ski-ing in Scotland, due to various causes, amongst...

Br RABINDRANATIL TAGORE. [Translated from the Original Bengali by Bhabam Bhattacharya.] I N the kingdom of Bhoja, the girl who went every morning to sing in the temple was a...

home need not limit their interest to ski-ing and their area of quest to the Scottish Highlands. Let me recom- mend a sport accessible to any one—wildfowl-shooting on the...

region in South Wales where the rivers descend from the Black Mountain range and cut their way in deep trenches to the sea. It is a macabre place in a murky December—at the...

dull norm of platitude on which there was general agreement. One criticism has been often heard lately- In the talks on current questions it is urged that far greatci...

THE new Parliament is shaping well. The vast Government majority is very different from that produced by the 1918 election. There are few of the suc- cessful business-man type,...

on current literature of the lighter kind seems to me unavoidable, but not for the reasons so hotly canvassed in the news- papers. Books of a scientific and scholarly type are...

IF I had loved you when you loved me We'd have been bound, both you and I, In delight whose summit is to die. Now we know loneliness and liberty. Loving you now when we are...

"Max. and Mr. Max"; A Comedy in Three Acts, adapted by Coil Madden from the Spanish of Jose Lopez Rubio and Eduardo Ugarte. At the Vaudeville Theatre. DISGUISED on the one...

THE " SPECTATOR," DECEMBER 31ST, 1831. THE COURT. No news, says the adage, is good news. Of our good King, wo have this week nothing to announce. We could wish that we could...

Requiem MIDNIGHT has come across the open tide And struck the old year dead. On the shore side I stand remindfully ; but no bell swings. No altar fills the sky and no voice...

we have noticed have been of Greek tragedies acted at Cambridge and Brad- field, efforts to produce with dignity and grandeur high themes and great poetry. The performances at...

we are organizing a wholesale destruction of the grey squirrel, the people of Boston are trying to save it. The squirrels on Boston Common are in hundreds ; and many were found...

men a soldier (who possesses a marvellous store of personal obser- vation) has two instances of birds seeking protection among his men. In the barrack square at Athlone, where...

One sort of trapping is practised much more in America than in any country, especially by the students of bird migra- tion. Instead of ringing nestlings, though this also is...

This year's circus at Olympia has many domestic and few wild animals, a selection that will rejoice some critics. Watching the dogs playing a sort of football with bladders I...

ditches and ladders of a sort were substituted for gates to the great convenience of all concerned. The device is simple and effective. This girder-like bridge with rungs in...

Now that the appropriate season has come for winter spraying of our fruit trees, to the end of the destruction not only of fly and moth and fungus, but of the dirty crevices in...

MORE 'MILE. The more one looks into this question of milk as the foundation of national health, the more one is struck by the coincidence of advantages that accompany its use....

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR, —In your last " News of the Week " you say that the Foreign Office denies the suggestion of any compact, formal or informal, over...

[In view of the length of many of the letters which we receive, we would remind correspondents that we often cannot give space for long letters and that short ones are generally...

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] ' - ST11,—No one is likely to oppose your contention that " it is no part of the B.B.C.'s business to popularize writers who chooie tei...

Sin,—The contentious question as to the propriety of broad- casting criticisms of books, plays, &c., might be settled with general satisfaction if the ethereal reviews of...

against the article in a recent issue of the Spectator, under the unwarrantably patronizing title, ." The Storm in the B.B.C. Cup." It is serious that, when intelligence and a...

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sue,—Sir Henry Dixon Kimber's article on . British hotels, in your issue of December 19th, must cause dismay to many Englishmen, with...

Smn, — I have recently made a motor tour during which I stayed at over a dozen hotels, only one of which to my mind came up to a reasonable standard of comfort. They were all...

Sin, —It is not often that The Times, the .Spectator and the. Daily Mail are engaged in the discussion of the same problem at one and the same time ; and there is something a...

SIR,—After reading in the Spectator for December 19th an article by Sir Henry Dixon Kimber headed " British Hotels of To-day," in which he refers to me, I haVe to confess that...

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Mr. Green and others have no difficulty in refuting Miss Pitt's arguments in defence of Field Sports. But this is so precisely because...

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Most of us will cordially agree with your proposition that " Europe as a 'whole must tell the United States plainly that if reparations...

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sus, —Will you permit a comment on your paragraph on The Statute of Westminster, in your issue of November 28th? It carries us back to the...

too much to hope that we shall ever hear the last of the unfortunate conscientious objector with his ravished wife and tortured children, but if Mr. Bingham were to put his "...

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sin,—I have just read with great interest your correspondent's letter on " Water Divining " in the current number of the Spectator. The estate...

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—It is interesting, though exceedingly depressing, to read some of the letters that seek to answer this much vexed question. Interesting,...

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—May one of your older readers crave space for a brief tribute to that most worthy and accomplished Irish gentleman, Mr. Alfred Perceval...

THE DISARMAMENT CONFERENCE. In my usual Sunday reading I chanced upon the following lines of Euripides, which the members of the Disarmament Conference might well carry with...

THE Editor of the Spertaior offers a first prize of Lie tog, and a second prize of E5 ss. for a short story of not more than 1,5oo words, written in English. Entries should .be...

RULES AND CONDITIONS Entries must be typed or very clearly written on one side of the paper only. The name and address, or pseudonym, of the competitor must be on each entry...

d Body Contemporary Schools of Psychology. By Robert S. Wood. worth. (Methuen. 7s. 6d.) Psychology and the Individual.. By the Rev. R. S. Birch. (Sampson Low. be.) _ The Mind...

Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury. Vol. 111, 1887-1892. By Gwendolen Cecil. (Hodder and Stoughton. 21s.) LADY GWF-NDOLEN CECIL'S fourth volume has not quite the play of...

Survey of International Affairs. By Arnold Toynbee. (Oxford University Press. 21s.) Ic readers of the Spectator were not so erudite I should say at once dogmatically that...

A History of Smoking. By Count Corti. (Harrap. 128. 8d.) WHAT knowledge the average man has about smoking is common knowledge. The moralists, the statisticians, the advertising...

Northern Lights. By Mikkjol Fonhus (from the Norwegian). • (Longmaus. 8s. gd.) WHAT is sometimes called " the animal story "—as if all stories were not that—is enjoying a...

Greek Comedy. By Gilbert Norwood, M.A. (Methuen. 12s. ed.) kr is in some ways a misfortune that so much less has survived of Greek comedy than of Greek tragedy. As an...

All Is Grist. By G. IC. Chesterton. (Methuen. Os.) Essays in Little. By Eden Phillpotts. (Hutchinson. Os.) Visibility Good. By E. V. Lucas. (Methuen. 6s.) ALL is grist for the...

Market Research. By Paul Redmayne and Hugh Weeks. (Butterworth. Is. tid.) Tuts is the second volume of the nine which form the Library of Advertising under the editorship of Mr....

Volcano Volcano. By Amabel Williams-Ellis. (Cape. 7s. 6d.) Mies. WiLirasis-Erris ranges a wide field. The first of her long and short stories of revolution in Russia takes us...

punishment is abolished. Murderers of all nations are concentrated on a remote South Sews island. This exciting but gruesome story (Which might serve as anti-abolitionist...

Lincoln, most of itindiseriminating,ly laudatory. Mr. Edgar Lee Masters (who from internal evidence seems to be an American writer) is in his Lincoln : the Man (Cassell, 21s.)...

The actions off Coronel and the Falklands, in which a German squadron destroyed an English squadron, and was itself destroyed six weeks later, were memorable episodes of the...

find thcm- selves compelled to counter his persistent assaults by means of fisticuffs, yet the problem of Evil remains as mysterious as ever. The Story of the Devil (Macmillan,...

Before ironical titles were invented, this novel would have been called The Worm that Turned. A wilfully eccentric technique rather spoils a convincing study of the Freudian...

hours elapse from the moment when—" Going up- ward on the iron foremast ladder of the ' Glamorland ' Able Sea.. man James Morgan seemed to be disappearing slowly through a...

Od.)—The only story of Merriman's whose scene is laid entirely in England has particular interest for us now, because it gives a picture of Bohemian life in London in 1880. The...

DARK BRIDWELL. By Vardis Fisher. (Gollanez. 6d.)—We have here the sort of hook that is the despair of a reviewer, because it makes him turn out from his mind's store such stale...

MRS. PEF.L'S book, The Stream . of Time (The Bailey Head, 18s.), is very cleverly conceived. Her aim is to depict social life in England between 1805 and 1861. A wealth of -...

How security prices will fare after the conference will be dependent largely on the attitude adopted by the participants, and the ultimate reaction of public opinion in the...

firms has acted as literary midwife to various works famous and not so famous, and this has brought him into contact with many writing people of whom he has much pleasant chat...

The Times Book Club have been :— Nox-Ficriox.--Bernard Shaw, by Frank Harris ; The Inn- keeper's Diary, by John Fothergill ; Fear and be Slain, by the Rt. Hon. J. E. B. Seely ;...

by Cortes, we shall probably go to Prescott or, better still, to the account of it by honest Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who was himself one of the conquistadores and wrotc of...

The Investment Outlook Two dominating facts which emerged from our examina- tion last week of investment tendencies during 1931 were the force of international finance as a...

Institute, 32) is a great improvement on its predecessors, and the name of its editor, Mr. Monroe N. Work, is sufficient to guarantee its accuracy and the value of its contents....

In view of the restrictions on overseas purchasing power implied by many of the factors enumerated above, it appears almost idle to discuss the possibility of British trade...

(Allen and Unwin, 2s. 6d.) Miss I. F. Grant continues her good work of encouraging the rising feeling of a true Scottish nationalism by giving the children of the country a...

suffered a setback in the year to September 30th last, a reflection of the general depression of trade in the countries where the company distributes its products, this setback...

Where money is available, it is generally desirable that it should remain invested, whatever the uncertainties of the time. The general policy may theref3re be suggested,...

NEW YEAR HOPES. Warn the Stock Exchange closed on Friday and Saturday of last week, the few days prior to the turn of the year were not expected to be productive of much...