HE two-days debate in the House of Commons on the Schuman Plan, acrimonious though it was at times, by revealing how narrow was the real difference between Government and...

Article IX of the North Atlantic Treaty, signed in April last year, declared that "The Parties hereby establish a Council, on which each of them shall be represented, to...

From the very beginning every statement about the factual con- tent of M. Schuman's proposals for a Western European authority to control coal and steel production has been...

All the elements which produced the French political crisis are old elements—except one. The issue which has been developing in the background for months, and which now seems to...

The demand by the Prime Minister of Australia for an Empire foreign policy is not to be ignored, difficult though some of the questions it raises are. The demand is, on theeface...

In his statement in the House of Commons on Wednesday, Mr. Strachey made perfectly clear, what had already been pointed out in the Spectator, that Private Linsell, who was...

capital .fund of £10,000,000 is the largest endowed charitable trust in Great Britain, is especially interesting as the Foundation is working on a series of five-year plans, and...

developed as a subordinate theme to the unfolding drama in Korea. The conjunction of the two made for as memorable days as we have had in Parliament since the war. The...

The Congress of Cultural Freedom which is being held this week in the American sector of Berlin is intended as a kind of riposte to similar but less blameless rallies which have...

p RESIDENT TRUMAN took two days to make up his mind on the use of American armed force in Korea. All the evidence to date goes to confirm that those two days were well spent....

in a recent broadcast suggested that Charles Kingsley was not a Cambridge man. He ought to have known better. Kingsley was essentially Cambridge (though Oxford can have the poem...

shot off without much thought ; otherwise it is too late to shoot them off at all. That must be Major Peter Roberts' excuse for offering the outrageous suggestion that an atom...

, Our committee has voted you one of the most outstanding writers of recent years, and it is my pleasure to offer you an honorary fellowship of the National Writers' Club." It...

tell a story of the man who was seen walking through Winchester with an oar on his shoulder. Asked why he was doing that, he answered that he was a seaman who was sick of the...

Sir Pelham Warner in his criticism of cricket commentators who insist on referring to every player by his Christian name as well as his surname. It is intended, no doubt, to...

Germany who marry German wives should be required to resign their posts forthwith may not be easy to decide, but the present rule, whereby resignation in such circumstances'is...

of Harrow '(in that chronological order) have declared their profound conviction of the wrongheadedness of the Minister of Education's ruling that no boy may take the new...

T HE Prime Minister was less than fair when in the Schuman debate on Tuesday he said, regarding the Labour Party's European Unity document " It raised a storm, especially with...

By ELIZABETH WISKEMANN p OLITICAL discussion in Western Germany during June has been dominated by the Schuman Plan on the one hand and on the other by the internal issues at...

By V. SACKVILLE-WEST T HERE came recently into my possession a little shabby manuscript book. On the fly-leaf was inscribed: THE • FLOWER GARD.EN or a discovery. shewing What...

By G. M. YOUNG T HERE are, I am told, certain gifted spirits who can stand in a snowstorm and call up all the sensations of a blazing August. I cannot. BUt it sometimes happens...

By JAMES BRIDIE G LOADIBS4he Happy Bourgeois Literary Man, was travail- ing with Ideas, and I saw that he must be rid of them and that I must be the cup into which he must...

By LORD DUNSANY ICTURESQUE though savage customs are, and savagely though they are loved by those addicted to them, 1 venture to lift my pen against one of them now, against a...

BODIES tensed against the rope, Strained symbols on an ancient frieze. Muscles stubborn, silent, still. They strive to please Some mock Mars in dynamic rest. Between two...

By ROSE MACAULAY « / DO like to look at ruins, ruins I love to scan," as Marie Lloyd used to sing. A common human sentiment enough: and one may assume that, like other human...

By J. P. W. MALLALIEU, M.P. I N sport a century ago there were probably more players than spectators ; and even habitual spectators were usually at least casual players...

THE Queen was the object of a personal outrage on Thursday, as she was entering her carriage from the house of the Duke of Cambridge. A considerable crowd had collected at the...

By HAROLD NICOLSON I T was inevitable, I suppose, that forAgn critics should have confused our prudent hesitation to commit ourselves blindly to the Schuman Plan with the...

BETWEEN the Ring at Covent Garden and " Intimate Opera " at the Mercury Theatre, between Brobdignag and Lilliput, lies the whole expanse of normal, pan-size opera The creation...

THEATRE Revudeville." (Windmill.) THERE being nothing new .upon the London stage this week, and the Spectator having,.as far as I. can make out, consistently ignored the...

gt Sands of Iwo Jima." (Carlton.)—" Annie Get Your Gun." (Empire.) — " Cairo Road." (Warner.) 'Sands of Iwo Jima is an American war`picture, and as far as war is concerned it is...

THE exhibition of modern Italian art at the Tate Gallery, held under the auspices of the Amici di Brera and the newly-formed Italian Institute in London, is strictly limited in...

WHEN I watched Miss Mollie Hide's team of women cricketers 'laying the men of Haslemere on June 18th, I thought how smart they looked in their white skirts and stockings and how...

Set by Martin Cooper The B.B.C. have recently appointed a new,Director of Music in 'accession to Sir Steuart Wilson. Suppose that any great character of the past were available...

FOR a short season from June 1st the small town of Prades in the foothills of the Pyrenees Orientales, which for many years has been the home " in exile " of the great Catalan...

Report by Gerard Fay Mr. T. S. Eliot has explained the form of The Cocktail Party in these words : " I want people to be able to forget that they are listening to a poetic...

( SUL—Much Government time has been spent discussing ways and % means to help the tourist industry, and much lip-service was paid to the importance of improving the standard of...

very important' question is surely opened up by the 'Food Minister's reply to the question as to why we are importing Czecho- slovakian chocolate, to which Janus draws attention...

SIR,—Does Mr. Nicolson really mean the aisle of Westminster Abbey and not the nave up which his corpse will no doubt one day proceed followed by his thirty grandchildren dressed...

SIR,—Janus will find a chapter on Charlotte Addison in 'my book, Background for Queen Anne, published shortly before the war. She could write, for a number of her letters...

In Russia and Outside itift,—Mr. Pearson is very naive if .he expects people to swallow what be implies in his letter about the Russian miners being able to leave their jobs...

SIR,—I am writing a history of Reuters, to commemorate their centenary, which they will celebrate next year. I should be most grateful if any of your readers who possess...

SIR,—I hesitate to correct the Spectator in general and Mr. Robert Waithman in particular, but surely the catfish story is primarily Henry W. Nevinson's, although Professor...

legislation. In the first place he should know that all Soviet workers are issued with Labour Books, which are lodged with the management at their place of work, and without...

SIR,—Buying your paper to renew an "old acquaintance," a few days ago, I confess I was greatly shocked, on turning to your competition page, to find that Regional Petroleum...

SIR,—You say under More Building Concessions: " Persons who wish to enlarge their houses by about 10 per cent. will be able to do so without development charge." This has,...

Sta,—Having read your film critic's review of . Ruy Bias and noted her 1' untamable personal prejudice " against M. Jean Marais, I feel prompted to ask what may, I fear, be...

SIR, —Can any ardent Janine annotate the italicised word in the follow- ing quotation from the first chapter of Northanger Abbey? " His father was a clergyman and a very...

That blessed word "mulching" is much in vogue ; and according to some of its votaries it enables the gardener to grow plants, especially bush-fruit, in much more serried...

SIR,—Recently a sandy cat was introduced to me as " she." " But he's a tom," I exclaimed. ", Far from it," was the reply, "She's already produced three families." Some fifty...

AT a date when much of the population meditates a visit to the coast, the facts of pollution by oil become almost domestic. The clothes of children are in danger of suffering as...

The chemists, I am told, are busy at the jot of discovering what is the use of the sweet (or sour) smell of flowers, and to this end are investigating the essential oils. These...

The comparative absence of gamekeepers is being deplored in unexpected quarters. They greatly reduced the numbers of thp birds of prey ; and one of the most active of these, the...

As grim an alternative as the German "guns or bunter" must be faced in England. No fewer than seventeen counties in England are threatened with large-scale surface mining of...

spite of its good writing, falls down. He tells us in a dedicatdry preface that he was persuaded to it by John Buchan, who assured him 'that " writing a shocker " was twenty...

I N the language of the day it is customary, to describe a certain sort of book as " escapist " literature. As I understand it, the adjective implies, a little condescendingly,...

our shelves; From the author of the Iliad to the author of Hamlet, from Defoe to pumas, from Anthony Hope to. Agatha Christie, they have all taken us out of our Own' experience...

mast people today they are divided into detective stories and undetective stories. Ars, as we have been told too often, est celare artem, which means that good craftsmanship...

enjoys a detective-story for the opportunity it gives the reader to match his own intelligence against that of the detective. To know beforehand that a Roman Catholic is safe...

to recommend it, among them one which I value highly—the absence of a serious love affair. Love affairs are not only a waste of time when one is on the scent, but they spoil the...

thriller,t and one feels that she has enjoyed .the writing of them as greatly as others have enjoyed the reading of them. On looking through the list I find that I have read no...

The Beauty of Flowers The Art of Botanical Illustration. By Wilfrid Blunt. (Collins. uts.) To someone living, as I do, in an old house deep in the country six or seven miles...

At. t- political movements are the better for self-criticism ; and the Labour Party is in partipular need of criticism from within, for even after five years of power it is...

The Country Companion: A Practical Dictionary of Rural Life and Work. By F. D. Smith and Barbara Wilcox. (Black. 1189.) CAN any book surpass a dictionary in reflecting the...

Reading and Criticism. By Raymond Williams. (Muller. 6s.) IT is a pity that so gallant an attempt to dear the approaches to literature should be so uninvitingly phrased. For Mr....

MESSRS. HUTCHINSON have published, at fifteen shillings, a new edition, revised and reset, of Mr. Frank Swinnerton's The Georgian Literary Scene: 1910-1935, running to four...

Betrayal in India. By D. F. Karaka. ' (Gollancz, I as. 6d.) t THE title of Mr. Karaka's book may well cause surprise among people in Britain, who are aware of the good start...

" IT is never too early to insist on the constant seeking for what is truly musical " (p. 22). Had Professor Piston kept these, his own words, before him, he might have written...

BRANDEL has achieved the unusual feat of following a very good first novel with an even better second. The Barriers Between is more ambitious than The Ides of Summer, more...

THIS is a story of the childhood of a girl member of 'a great Hindu family in the Punjab. Having come to London at the age of eighteen to study medicine—and incidentally broken...

wallpapers and watercolours (among the finest being those, executed as a war artist), Bawden's work has become known to a wide and varied public during the twenty-odd years of...

By CUSTOS AFTER their brief spell of cheerfulness—it had not quite blossomed out into confidence—markets are back once more on the treadmill of uncertainty. The behaviour of...

A Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution of this week's crossword to be opened after noon on Tuesday week, 9uly 11th. Envelopes...

winner of Crossword No. 586 is MRS. L. E. DAVIS, Tamarisk, Bycullah Avenue, Enfield.