\ o' ,04s 4 , 44, p RESIDENT TRUMAN has decided that the United States shall manufacture hydrogen bombs. The one relevant comment on that takes the form of a question: What...

An international terminology in which Benelux and Finebel are already familiar is now further enriched by the addition of Uniscan. That is settled once for all by the agreement...

Minority rights are not the same thing as minority privileges. The distinction must be borne in mind in considering the claims Roman Catholics are putting forward with great...

The art of compromise is stretched to its limits in the plan for the city of Jerusalem submitted to the Trusteeship Council by its president, M. Garreau. The arrangement he...

Mr. Hoffman, the head of the European Co-operation Administra- tion, it was said, came to Paris last week determined to drive through a set of firm undertakings by the Marshall...

As a rule the cold war is waged within the framework of diplomatic convention, though the stresses to which it is put may frequently cause the framework to creak and shudder....

HE Liberals would seem to have reason to be satisfied with their Assembly in London last week-end. Reso - lutions were carried with acclamation (except one about guaranteed...

D ESPITE the enormous amount of space and time devoted by all parties to economiequestions it remains doubtful whether the heart of the matter . will be reached before election...

has spread to Canada, where the fact that the article which opened a long discussion in The Times recently was headed "Catholicism Today" is regarded as significant. It may or...

Germany is something of a novelty—but essentially one to be approved. The party was well chosen, coming from all three Western zones and from such centres as Berlin, Hamburg,...

Flight into Egypt." Most of them depicted, on conventional lines, the Holy Family, a donkey with Joseph walking beside it, and so on. One, however, struck a new note. His...

—Daily Express, Tuesday. BEVIN MEETS -POPE TODAY. —News Chronicle, Wednesday. Mr. Bevin was at one time a Baptist lay preacher. Two and

I referred last week. His advent in Canada, where German generals were credited by repute with a ferocious aspect, as a prisoner-of-war aroused high expectations. There was...

who was not meant to see them often create a wrong impression. The trouble about the Colonial Office letter on American oil is that somehow it got into the hands of the American...

of irresponsibility, which as a rule do no harm to anyone. But last week's Oxford debate, when a resolution, "that this House considers the Union of South Africa, under its...

By WILSON HARRIS A T twelve noon today, Friday, the third day of February, nineteen hundred and fifty, the gates of St. Stephen's clang remorselessly against me. Henceforward I...

of programme the Socialists are working to, and the doctrinal reasons why, have been set out plainly by the Labour I, Party in words of one syllable. The 1945 manifesto, Let us...

A continuance of the exchange of letters in which two well- known writers discuss the present plight of the middle classes D EAR JANE,—As I have been confined to my room for...

By J. P. W. MALLALIEU I T was a difficult decision. As I can never stay neutral at a soccer match, I usually back the most northerly of the two teams, and you can't get much...

This sabbath morning—all good folk in church— I watched beneath the innocence of the sky Two amorous butterflies flit blindly by ; And then, in the cold shadow of a tree,...

Teaching : by Trial and Error By G. H. HANTUSCH (St Catharine's College, Cambridge) I T is quarter to nine on a September morning. A young man steps off a tram-car, picks his...

By HAROLD NICOLSON I HAD determined not to mention on this page a single word of politics until after the decision has been given on February 23rd. Such delicacy of feeling, it...

THEATRE FOR all its dreamy elegance, this is a shot-gun wedding. For better or for worse, a poet subdues himself to prose ; for richer or for poorer, the English language takes...

THREE works written within three years of each other have turned my attention back forty years. Mahler's Song of the Earth, written in 1908, was played by the L.P.O. under van...

"The Miracle." (Academy.)--" Neptune's Daughter." (Empire.) The Miracle is Signor Roberto Rossellini's forty-minute tribute to Anna Magnani. This magnificent actress plays the...

already that there are two Kenneth Homes, and that he of Sidi Barrani has nothiag to do with the entertainment under review. There may be many more Kenneths of that ilk (note...

add from my own experience— have recently reached me of the queer confidence shown in man by animals of many sorts, both birds and mammals, when in extreme danger. Here is one...

during late frosts, are wont to wonder why a good many species, such as wrens, buntings, red- wings and tit-larks, some most vulnerable to the starvation of cold, will not be...

hedgehogs eat potatoes ? A gardener who suspected rats found a dead hedgehog, and thereafter no potatoes were eaten. It is one of the odder and least explicable super- stitions...

to the growing popularity of the annual carnations and of the newer pentstemons. To these may be added the later petunias. A magnificent variety has been " created " after years...

THERE is an old, trite Latin couplet (quoted by Sir Thomas Browne): "Si so! splendescat Maria purificante Major erit glacies post feswni quam fuit ante ; " and there is a...

FUSEL1 to me has always suggested the bogus clairvoyant who one day, without quite knowing how, managed to "get through." The posturing little Swiss—" capricious, vain and...

Report by Hilary Brett-Smith 4 prize is offered for nine lines to complete a poem beginning : "Some fifty years before These three had shared a bungalow In Bangalore. . . ."...

Set by Vernon Bartlett State in 200 words how any one of the following would be likely to vote at the forthcoming General Election and why: Florence Nightingale, John Wilkes,...

most, perhaps all, Nonconformists the Holy Communion is little more than a memorial feast of love, it is difficult to see, with one of your correspondents, any conceivable...

SIR,—I am not an important person, nor ordinarily concerned with surtax, but chanced to emerge from retirement to do a salaried Government job, by request, for the fatal year of...

Young comments adversely on the fact that Field-Marshal Montgomery was not among those who contributed to an appreciation of Rommel. It is a fact that Field-Marshal Montgomery...

SIR,—It is indeed true, as Mr. Boycott.claims, that •" different people believe different things about the Holy Communion." It is also obvious to any honest observer that there...

SIR,—Mr. Woodhouse, in his admirable article on Enosis, suggests that Greek political parties will soon have to divide for or against it. But surely, as far as Cyprus is...

General Rommel SIR,—After reading Mr. Desmond Young's Rommel, I have been much interested in Leading your review of the book in the Spectator of January 27th by Sir James...

SIR—NO doubt there are many people who, like Robert Auld, d9 not know "what a shop steward's work is—or who pays him." The duties of a shop steward are laid down in rule, and...

Sut,—Your correspondent Mr. Reed has done nothing to correct or complete the two main points of my article. No one with a practical knowledge of teaching in Egypt would claim...

Mr. D. Willott ? I am a university graduate, a trained teacher, now a housewife with one son of eight. I have voluntarily undertaken a part-time teaching post (and both my...

SIR—May I use your columns to answer Mr. Cole's letter on a subject of which I fear your readers may be tiring ? When discussing the extent to which one firm is a monopoly,...

SIR,—The main reason why I did not see Mr. Frank Taylor, of Tayloi Woodrow Construction, Ltd., is that the primary responsibility for dealing with contractors is that of my...

Sitt—Mr. Harold Nicolson's essay on snobs raises a point that has troubled me for some time. Many years ago, at a pleasant London club dinner, I was seated next to an elderly...

SIR.—Your correspondent, Mr. Joseph Sharpe, says: "Any truly inde- pendent and non-party journal should primarily consider whether any particular party's programme and policy...

SIR.—I like the one who said to me: "Would you like me to turn on the radio—or shall I just talk? "—Yours truly, GRAHAM WATSON. 38 Eaton Terrace. S.W.!.

THE opening of Queen Victoria's third Parliament, on Thurs- day, if slackly attended in the day-time, because Royalty was absent,* was signalised by good musters in the evening....

Essays and Lectures on Music. By Donald Francis Tovey. (Oxford University Press. i 8s.) "IN this volume ... are gathered the larger part of Donald Tovey's writings that have not...

"Do You Hear the Children Weeping?" Children of Europe. By Dorothy Macardle. (Gollancz. 2 is.) I HAD expected that reading this book would overwhelm me with pity. Instead, the...

Jane Welsh Carlyle. A New Edition of Her Letters. Arranged by Trudy Bliss. (Gollancz.ass.) THERE are characters in the past more familiar than any in fiction, people who in...

IT is unfortunate, but significant in more respects than one, that the only Soviet sailor whose likeness appears in this book should be the Admiral of the Fleet who was tried in...

As Edward Sackville-West notes in his essay on Delacroix's Journal, very few musicians have taken the trouble to record them- selves on paper, whereas painters have often shown...

BETWEEN the attitude of mind of those w:to queue to see a murder trial and that of the crowd which queues each morning for admis- sion to London's police-courts the difference...

Pope and his Contemporaries. Essays Presented to George Sherburn. (Oxford University Press. 3os.) THE strange eddies of literary criticism and the vagaries of bio- graphical...

Clarence House. By Christopher Hussey. (Country Life. 2 is.) THIS sumptuously produced and beautifully illustrated volume contains "all ye need to know" about the home of...

The Boat. By L. P. Hartley. (Putnam. 12s. 6d.) Paul: 9s. 6d.) I HAVE so often sat at the feet of Mr. Hartley the novelist and Mr. Hartley the critic, that I may perhaps be...

Stories from Holy Writ. By Helen Waddell. (Constable. 8s. 6d.) DR. WADDELL is richly endowed with the gift, rarely conferred on historians of her great erudition and...

[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, February 14th....

AIM E A LA A or, 5 etROW8 E A s 14 F N § AT US R c II PIE 41711113 A N . 410 A ST C 0 E R A Plc 0 Alt SCHI 1 - c - z" ZIE , 1111 , kr, 111 MI P SOLUTION ON The winner...

By CUSTOS As February 23 approaches there is no real expansion of business in the stock markets, either on the buying or selling side. The explanation is the simple one that...

Press. los. 6d.) IGOR MARKEVITCH, the Russian-born conductor of the Florence orchestra, has written this book after living in Tuscany for eight years. He has seen the country...