The headlong descent of South Africa into totalitarianism continues. The Senate having passed the Bill setting up a " High Court of Parliament " to overrule the Supreme Court...

The net effect of the local government elections in central and southern Italy seems to have been to strengthen the forces of monarchy and neo-Fascism. These two in many cases...

about the con- ditions in the vast prisoner-of-war camps on Koje island it becomes clearer that the United Nations command has suffered a defeat there which is almost as...

It used to be fashionable, in the years immediately following the war, to refer to the so-called " crime wave." But the wave did not recede. Dr. C. K. Allen, in a striking...

Whatever may be thought of particular grounds for divorce or particular provisions in the divorce laws, the fact that divorce has increased and is increasing in this country at...

Incomparably the most sensible comment on the Govern- ment's decision allowing independent air transport companies new opportunities to develop overseas services came from Sir...

In the House of Lords, as in the columns of The Times, the impression is driven home that it takes a Peer to do justice to the B.B.C. The two-day debate that was opened by Lord...

T HE Whitsuntide adjournment finds both parties suffering from malaise. To say the Conservative Party is at sixes and sevens would be to exaggerate grossly, but there has been...

The parish churches of this country are an incomparable heritage, many of them more interesting historically and architecturally than many cathedrals. Their preservation is...

The report of the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy, in advocating a considerable increase in the supply of scientists from the universities, raises a number of important...

T HE HE signature of the Contractual Agreement with Ger- many and of the European Defence Community Treaty is an event to hail with satisfaction rather than exhilara- tion. The...

is both a literary and an ecclestiastical event. The prefaces are, I believe, by a different hand each year, and the well- informed on ecclesiastical matters take pleasure in...

preservation of parish churches in this country seem to me to have made a very good job of it. Their report brings out several interesting facts. It appears, for example, that...

W HY Lord Beaverbrook should have chosen to rake up 411 the deplorable controversy over King Edward VIII's abdication in his broadcast on Sunday night is known only to himself....

S. Forester will learn with greater interest—that the existence of a Horatio Nelson Hornblower, a real live one, has been discovered. It is perhaps not quite accurate to...

who traditionally throw their cox in the river at the end of Eights Week, are makino e an all out effort to drown him this year. The St. Peter's Hall cox is the only one on the...

been born. It springs from the brain of Mr. St. John Barbe Baker, Founder of the Men of the Trees (" a society of earth healers who are working to create a universal tree sense...

By HUdERT PHILLIPS W HEN, two years ago, I gave evidence before the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gutting, I did so with the sole object of exposing the true...

By ADRIAN LIDDELL HART* S INCE I returned to England at the beginning of the year, I have often been asked whether the Foreign Legion is " like P.C. Wren." There is a tendency...

always fed, And, now and then he'd bend and stroke my head, And I was always warm. There's nothing more. Though ... sometimes I'd be washing on the floor White he was at his...

By ROBERT POWELL Bonn. T HE convention signed here last Monday between the Foreign Ministers of U.S.A., the United Kingdom, France and the German Federal Republic marks a...

By LESLIE HOTSON E'S fat, and scant of breath." We have happily out- lived a dark age when sheepish scholars took this remark as evidence that Hamlet was corpulent, and were...

By JOHN HILLS (Headmaster of Eradficld) AVE you seen the window? What do you think of it?" These questions will be asked and answered by almost every Old Etonian next Wednesday...

By SIR HENRY BASHFORD LL village fetes are the same fête. Their objects may differ. They may be in aid of the Church or the Chapel or the village-hall or a, political party....

By HAROLD NICOLSON T HE best achievements of art or nature possess a quality which evokes ever-renewed surprise. However familiar we may be with any given site or picture, we...

CINEMA This Woman Is Dangerous. (Odeon, Marble Arch.)—When in Rome. (Empire.) IN This Woman is Dangerous Miss Joan Crawford, having lost none of her youth or good looks but,...

SADLER'S WELLS revival of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin is most welcome, and promises to be one of their major successes with the public. The work is probably Tchaikovsky's...

The Trial of Mr. Pickwick. By Stanley Young. (Westminster.) How quickly, when one reads Pickwick, the mind's eye discards Tupman, Snodgrass and Winkle ! Yet in any stage...

FOR all that a false ceiling of muslin dims and diffuses the London daylight in the New Burlington Galleries, where the Arts Council is showing a series of replicas of some of...

THE Paris Festival of Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century has been working up throughout the first two weeks of May to a week of music devoted almost entirely to the three...

WE are blessed with singers here. The village inn closes and the singing begins. Two farm labourers were leaning against each other by way of saying goodnight. Instead of...

Seeing several water-birds on the fringe of ,the lake, I thought the swirl on the surface was caused by .one of their young. I hurried along the shore, hoping to intercept it...

Years ago, when I first read Izaak Walton, I was fascinated by his account of fishing with a fly. The desire to learn the art never left me, and, although I have fished many...

secrets and guard them jealously. Half the battle is to have a rich bed upon which to grow the plants. Lawn-clippings provide heat and compost. A mixture of cut grass and rich...

At Sadler's Wells, Svetlana Beriosova has been dancing Coppelia. Her Swanildk is charming in mood and particularly well danced in Act II. Stanley Holden's Dr. Coppelius was also...

The cowslips have just passed - and the dandelions are nearly over, but soon the clover will be up at its best and the elderfiower covering the tree. Years ago- the old...

His ambition was to be always seen, Handsome under floodlights or in white, Graceful on the summer's fluting green : White flash and crack, creating frantic flight Of ball to...

DERBY OMENS So ominous a conjunction as that of Wednesday last could not have done less than bring a gloomy sky—it was the Derby Day at Epsom, it was Opening Night at...

In April Come he will. In May, He sings all day Competitors are invited, for a prize of £5, which may be divided, to compose a similar doggerel, using any five consecutive...

Report by R. S. Stanier A prize of £5 was offered fpr a fragment from the preliminary discussion between a group or Hardy's rustics who are thinking of visiting London this...

SIR,—Mr. Walter Elliot has done well in discussing the important problem of the health services outside Parliament. His conclusion regarding the alternative methods by which...

Displaced Persons Sit, —My attention has been drawn to a letter from Mr. H. W. Rothschild which appeared in the Spectator of May 9th, 1952, expres- sing concern about the...

SIR, —Can you allow me space for a few lines of comment on the article by the Rev. J.- Stafford Wright in your issue of May 23rd, under the title Ascended into Heai.en. I do...

article on the Ascension, omits all reference to the account given at the close of St. Matthew's Gospel. This speaks of a mountain in Galilee, and not Bethany, as the scene of...

Sia,—In his article The Two Americas Mr. George Brinsmead is probably correct in saying that Communism is not regarded as a serious danger in most parts of Latin America. But...

to the Public Schools Appointment Bureau. One wrote to say that he had been found .exactly the post he wanted; the second that he had been found an opening with prospects that...

Sta,—The N.H.I. scheme was no doubt intended to benefit not exclusively the working classes but also middle-class folk who com- plied with its regulations and paid their...

Sut,—Mr. Nigel Birch has pointed out, in reply to criticisms of this bomb in the House of Commons, that it is essentially a tactical weapon for use against military targets....

SIR, —As a Rhodesian not far removed from residence and upbringing in the old country, I feel obliged to comment on the standard of workmanship evident in many and varied...

SIR,—Mr. Harold Nicolson remarks in his Marginal Comment on The Essays of Elia that he no longer finds the same pleasure in Elia as he found in his youth. It would be...

Sta,—Your anonymous correspondent in commenting on my article, Industry and the Public Schools, makes two statements which I am forced to refute. In the first place, basing...

sut,—It is with some apprehension that I take issue with such A undoubted expert as Professor Brogan on the subject of American politics. It is my impression, however, from...

S1R.—Mr. Harold Nicolson's lyrical approval of the way in which the Zionists have established themselves " by blood and iron" m Palestine is typical of the reasoning which...

S1R,—Janus has been led to understand that only those with doctorates in divinity and medicine were to be given the title of " Doctor " by the B.B.C.; hence the Federal German...

to visit the Egyptian Rooms of the British Museum. I found that these galleries, together with a number of others, are closed to the public on alternate days, in the interests...

Marcus James for deprecating comment, and permitted himself the suggestion that " no doubt the gospel was preached much more than was reported." The implied opposition between...

Russell in the Spectator of May 16th lamented that Lord Russell's only account of the events of his own life has appeared in a symposium called The Philosophy of Bertrand...

enough to remember having worked in a laboratory, I have never been so irreverent as to believe Matthew Arnold guilty of a false rhyme. I have therefore always imagined that in...

published this week, I referred to " the North Western Railway with its special Frontier responsibilities "—using a capital " F." I was sorry to note that,, in publication,...

on the occasion of his 80th birthday than the presentation of his portrait to be hung in the National Portrait Gallery and the execution of his bust to be presented to the...

has made those comments about St. Paul's. There seem to have been some rather strange happenings there in recent times. First we have a clergyman who is a strong supporter of...

high speed and death. The young motor-cycle rider greets with dismay the suggestion that he would benefit the community if he used an engine-silencer because he states that this...

THE SPECTATOR readers are urged to place a firm order with their newsagent or to take out a subscription. Newsagents cannot afford to take the risk of carrying stock, as unsold...

Stit,-1 do not wish to discuss Mr. Peterson's line of argument in his article on The Cog of Indo-China and his views on the effect of a Communist victory in Indo-China on morale...

Fabian Ghosts THIS book starts with the formidable advantage embodied in the word " Fabian." No part of the Socialist movement inspires more interest and respect among the...

American Foreign Policy. By Hans J. Morgenthau. (Methuen. 18s.) PROFESSOR MORGENTHAU is the Director of the Centre for the Study of American Foreign Policy at Chicago, and his...

The Wisdom of the Sands. By Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Trans- lated by Stuart Gilbert (Hollisand Carter. 21s.) THIS is a valuable book, sensitively translated. One feels the...

DOES life exist anywhere else in the universe than on earth ? That is one of those questions that man must always have asked himself. The question arises more insistently and...

Frederick Delius. By Peter Warlock. Reprinted with additions, anno- tations and comments by Hubert Foss. (Bodley Head. 15s.) THIS new edition of Peter Warlock's study comes at a...

New Poems 1952: A P.E.N. Anthology. Edited by Clifford Dyment, Roy Fuller and Montagu Slater. (Michael Joseph. 10s. 6d.) POETS are in difficulties today, and there is a...

The Best of Saki. Selected and with an introduction by Graham Greene. (Bodley Head. 6s.) HECTOR HUGH MUNRO, who was born in 1870 and died fighting in France in 1916, enjoyed...

Survey of International Affairs, 1939-1946: The World in March, 1939. Edited by Arnold Toynbee and Frank T. Ashton- Gwatkin. (Oxford University Press, for the Royal Institute of...

Stalin. By Nikolaus Basseches. (Staples. 18s. 6d.) IN his preface to Stalin Herr Basseches has set out frankly many of the difficulties which confront an intending biographer...

yictorian Furniture. By F. Gordon Roe. (Phoenix House. 21s.) WHEN the war ended, like many hundreds of others who could not afford period antiques and did not want Utility, I...

Be Kind to the Killer. By Henry Wade. (Constable. 12s. 6d.) Murder by the Book. By Rex Stout. (Collins, The Crime Club. • 9s. 6d.) Death Darkens Council. By Vicars Bell....

the Civil Service in 1904, working with seventy clerks in South Kensington under an elderly, silent Victorian chief-clerk. He finished his career in 1944 in the West Indies as...

Sebttish Verse (1851-1951). Selected by Douglas Young. • (Nelson. 18s.) MR. YOUNG believes that Scottish verse has improved since 1851—as it well might ; a glance at the...

introduction by T. S. Eliot (Faber. 10s. 6d.) THESE two short essays by a contemporary German philosopher go a long way towards a lucid explanation of the present crisis in...

the van Daans were lucky un- fortunates. When Jews in Holland were being rounded up by the Gestapo, these two families were hidden by Dutch friends in a " secret annexe " behind...

an introduc- tion by Mark Van Doren. (Gollancz. 21s.) EMILY DICKINSON was born at Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830. She died there, eccentric and wholly withdrawn from the...

Unwin. 16s.) WHAT is the purpose of literature and art, and to what extent should writers and artists be guided in their work by considerations of the good of society as a...

of Philosophy. By R. G. Mayor. (Routledge & Kegan Paul. 35s.) FIF - ry years ago, when the intelligent reader had more leisure, and credit was given to a writer rather for...

SHAW, who was not given to hyperbole in describing his contemporaries, once referred to Chesterton as " a man of colossal genius." Public curiosity about those so described has...

By CUSTOS THESE are trying days for investors. One by one industrial reports are confirming the impression that sellers' markets are dis- appearing and buyers' markets—which...

[A Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution opened alter noon on Tuesday week. June 10th, addressed Crossword. 99 Gower Street,...

In% Gig ra c I D 1E I T E t. A A A 0 rl.ftE 5 T S M 12 A I w A EIGICY 3 IR I D M0312113 IGI- D k L. Solution on The winner of Crossword No. 678 is: Miss RHODA...