T HE announcement which Lord Pakenham foreshadowed a little ebulliently at the week-end as opening up a new era for Germany has not yet been made, but enough has been said to...

President Roosevelt once said that "perfectionism no less than isolationism or power politics may obstruct the paths of international peace." In this generalisation there was...

The tension over controls which began to tighten a fortnight ago when the Rassemblement des Gauches, one of the constituent groups of the present governing coalition, voiced its...

The latest document on the planning of Greater London bears a formidable title. It is a Memorandum by the Minister of Town and Country Planning on the Report of the Advisory...

All that can be said about India at this moment is that uncertainty about the future may or may not be ended in time to avert worse trouble than has been seen yet. Nothing,...

United States Secretary of Agriculture, proposed to the International Emer- gency Food Council at Washington on Tuesday that there should be another world food conference in...

The arguments which have been used during the past week to ex- cuse the inexcusable Robertson Bill, which proposes to raise the United States wool tarilf by so per cent., have...

The Survey of Sickness issued on Thursday by the Ministry of Health is yet another example of this age's abandonment of laissez- faire, its desire to work on an orderly basis of...

T HE allocation of the last day before a Parliamentary Recess to a series of debates taken on the motion for the Adjournment is a unique and admirable practice. It is an...

The annual nuisance of Communist Party applications for affilia- tion to the Labour Party having been scotched last year, new methods are being tried. Mr. Arthur Homer, speaking...

T HE chief feature of the Labour Party Conference so far—the discussion on foreign affairs has not taken place as this is written—has been the contrast between the...

that, for they start With Hitler's Chancellorship in 1933—which the Daily Telegraph is to publish serially in this country and Life and the New York Times in America, promise...

done about it, in my view, is to give definite and increased priority to educational books. I know the difficulties. It means nice decisions as to what books are educational and...

and then how events of considerable importance or gravity in some remote corner of the earth can escape notice here altogether. There has been hardly a mention, if any men- tion...

I have mentioned at least once before in this column my personal view, which I know many readers do not share, that nothing could be much more banal than the words of our...

just reached me, is more topical than its authors realised it would be when they wrote it, and it breathes a very different spirit in regard to the south bank of the Thames at...

Q UEEN MARY has succeeded, and most worthily, to the place held in the hearts of her countrymen by Queen Alexandra after the death of King Edward. The tributes paid to her this...

By WILSON HARRIS, M.P. T HE Government has declared finally, in the face of appeals by all persons and all public bodies best entitled to make appeal, that the Bankside...

By JOHN A.. STEVENSON Ottawa. N recommending Congress, on May 26th, to legislate for fuller military co-operation with the Latin American countries in the interest of...

By FRANK SYKES O VER the past twenty-five years great advances have been made in the theory and practice of feeding farm animals. Years ago stock were fed by rule of thumb. For...

By RICHARD CHANCELLOR I T is an interesting sign of the times that far more attention is paid to the activities of Communist parties throughout the world than to the present...

By CANON ROGER LLOYD T HE French Christian Workers' Unions are now making history. In the recent strike in the Paris automobile factories they succeeded in forcing the...

By BERNARD J. FARMER T HE public may imagine a policeman's job to be a healthy one. He works largely in the open air ; his income is sufficient for him to afford good meals, or...

By HAROLD NICOLSON T HOMAS MANN—a "good German" if ever there was one, and the greatest living master of German prose—has been passing through London on his way to Zurich....

On May 21st the Bach Choir and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Dr. Reginald Jacques, celebrated the ,fiftieth anniversary of the death of Brahms by giving a...

- THE THEATRE "Tess of the D'Urbervilles." Adapted by Ronald Gow. (Piccadilly.) LITERARY men are apt to wince when they see some immortal novel reissued in a gaudy...

Two weeks ago I had hard things to say about films which can find no better story subject than death or murder. I still insist there are better subjects, but Take My Life, in...

IT has been said before that Ben Nicholson's sterilised and hygienic theorems echo in some measure the exquisite felicities of his father. I do not think that he has sprung any...

IN dreams we cast our fetters, freely range, escape the insistent ticking and the change that disappoints and violates our nature forced in the mask of conscience-moulded...

No regular listener to B.B.C. programmes can have failed to notice the paucity of original features and plays. There is, it seems, a serious shortage of script-writers—or, at...

Snt,—In The Spectator of May 9th Janus refers to the Government's decision to proceed with the building of a power station on Bankside as an issue between democracy and...

Sta,—I would like to thank you for your valuable article on Hunger in Germany. Unless it is more fully realised that hunger is "at the root of almost all Germany's present...

A NEW WAY WITH LAWS Sta,—In your issue of May 16th, Mr. R. S. Jenkinson asks if there is any precedent for the public decision that we, normally law-abiding citizens, are...

SiR,—Mr. Hunt's figures show that barely one-third of the open scholar- ships at Oxford and Cambridge colleges in 1946-47 were won by boy§ in schools maintained or aided by...

Sra,—With the new approach to the Warsaw administration by the British Government, would it not be useful to draw the attention of the British public to the fact that about...

Sm,—How comes it that the B.B.C. thinks fit to broadcast (see Radio Times of May 24th) a running commentary on a bull-fight--a sport illegal in this country? \ They will have...

SIR,—The touring season is upon us, and, in the interests of intending holiday-makers, I feel that a disturbing circumstance should be given publicity. All hotels belonging to...

SIR,—The "Director of Foreign Affairs" of the American magazine Newsweek is concerned in a recent issue about the growing hostility of British public opinion against America....

SIR,—Alan Ross in his article Books in Germany speaks of "the throiring open, of the gates to European influences" as being accomplished in Germany at present by the...

necessary labours inform their superiors whence comes what they see before them, their immediate knowledge is apt to be scant. Bishop Neill is evidently under a wrong impression...

Srx,—It is interesting to read today sorne words from Hitler's Mein Kampf. "I remember well the childish and incomprehensible hopes which arose suddenly in nationalist circles...

Sm,—I have just finished reading with much interest and admiration The Rise of Christianity, by Bishop Barnes, which was recently reviewed in The Spectator by Canon Raven. To...

IN the villages no worker is so popular or does more good than the village nurse. She is at hand—and great is juxtaposition—always ready to give her most efficient help to...

of moles, to which earlier reference was made, is doubtless on the negative side the result of the new contempt for their skins. One old farm-hand (as reported from Gloucester)...

protest were made against bureaucratic interference with sport? Recently, both football and dog- racing have, by Government order, been confined to Saturdays. The pony-racing...

yearly record of the Norfolk Naturalists' Trust, Major Anthony Buxton describes the obvious pleasure taken by one of his pheasants in the playing of the piano, and the question...

SIR,—Jungle English is by no means a monopoly of the English. It is also international. I take the following, at random and as a specimen of the whole, from the draft Charter...

Are there no naturalists in the House of Commons, which was once famous for its debates on the protection of birds? A question concerning birds which apparently were conspicuous...

Snt,—I read with interest janos's remarks on the training of the French conscript. Now that National Service in this country is to be cut from eighteen to twelve months, may I...

which seems to have rejoiced in the frost is Viburnum Rhitidophyllum. While the hardy V. Tinus has lost all its flowers and some of its younger shoots, this Viburnum is now a...

Advice from the Mountain MR. HUXLEY'S pamphlet is apt, able and a little irritating. It is apt because of its theme ; it is able because of Mr. Huxley's powers of putting an...

DEMETRIOS CAPETANAKIS was ' born in Smyrna on January 22nd, 1912. He took his degree in political science and economics at Athens University, and later became a doctor of...

Charles Keene. By Derek Hudson. (Pleiades. 18s.) THESE books by M. Roger Marx and Mr. Hudson appear side by side with a peculiar appropriateness. Not only are their respective...

Philadelphia : Holy Experiment. By Struthers Burt. (Rich and Cowan. 25s.) AFTER visiting Philadelphia King Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, is said to have remarked : " I met...

addition to a famous series is well up to standard. Like several other volumes in that series—Mr. D. H. Robertson's Money, for instance—it combines a clear and un- ambi g...

Sir Erskine May's Parliamentary Practice as edited by the present Clerk to the House of Commons, Sir Gilbert Campion. Second to it—e q ual in- deed in authority, thou g h...

Bing Cotton. By Thomas Armstrong. (Collins. 12s. 6d.) READERS who approach The Tables of the Law expecting to find a novel of the order of pseph and His Brethren will be...

THOSE of us who failed in childhood to acquire a taste for cautionary tales need not be discouraged by the title given the collection of four seventeenth-century Chinese stories...

THIS is a useful and pleasant little collection of short stories for sixth-form and university students of Italian and for the "general reader." Although a fourteenth-century...

problem of coal production is to be .solved it must be under- stood not only by those directly engaged in the industry but by the whole community. And if the community is to...

ALTHOUGH Norman Marshall has been the producer of a number of successes on the London stage — Victoria Regina, Of Mice and Men, The First Gentleman, are three which will be...

[A Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solutam of this week's crossword to be opened after noon on Tuesday week rune 10th. Envelopes...

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By CUSTOS QUIET markets were to be expected after the holiday break and although the optimists profess to some disappointment at the volume of business, I see no reason for...