( Nil draft of a treaty for the defence of South East Asia bearing some marks of authenticity, has already appeared in the Philippine press. Yet the countries that are to sign...

N o. 6 5 8 4 FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1954 PRICE 7d.

Shortage of active troops may not be the main reason for American reluctance to be committed on the mainland of Asia, but it is certainly a powerful one. In this context, the...

The names of the persons who have accepted invitations te serve on the committee of enquiry into homosexual offence! have at last been announced, after a delay which suggests...

The final agenda for the fifty-third Annual Conference of the Labour Party, which will open at the Spa Grand Hotel Scarborough on Monday, September 27, is not exciting reading...

Our Paris Correspondent writes : The French Assembly after being told for months if not years that it must make up its mind about EDC has done so in the least dignified manner...

After having eaten his Chinese chicken with bamboo shoots, after having seen a Chinese prison where a Chinese prisoner had , just been shot for persisting in his heresies, after...

I NDIGNATION was one of the more obvious components of the extremely complex Western reaction to the killing by the French Assembly of the proposal for a European Defence...

Far too much fuss is made about prurient novels. Not hale enough fuss is made about books of strip cartoons which incite the young and illiterate to crime. A person who can...

T HE subject of the 'rebuilding of the City seems never to end. Meanwhile, thank goodness, many acres of that romantic and beautiful mediaeval square mile remain unbuilt. One...

The .Grange is saved, though we learn that hooligans, possibly incensed by memories of the sort of strip cartoons I have &scribed in the last paragraph, are doing their best to...

that increasing class of people which eats only on expense accounts. You find some cheap foreign restaurant where the food is good and where the customers are simple guzzlers...

We suffer very much from hubris. That is to say, we like to pretend there are two sides to every question and that a strongly expressed opinion should never go unchallenged. We...

BY COMMANDER ANTHONY COURTNEY AST week the Commissioners for executing the Office of Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom made one of their rare departures from precedent by...

By THOMAS HODGKIN ETURNING to the Sudan after six years I was glad to find the Sudanese as friendly and full of vitality as I had remembered them. It was pleasant to travel on a...

• TAMBIMUTTU HAT year the crêpe-flowers in my Bombay garden reflected my rosy mood. A year's putting my best foot forward had produced a great crop of MSS ready for the presses...

PART of the orchestral policy, as far as there is any, at Edinburgh this year has been an emphasis on radio groups. All three foreign orchestras invited belong to this category—...

THE Festival continues. This week on the dramatic side we have had A Midsummer Night's Dream performed with a lavish use of accessories, of ballet and the Mendelssohn music....

The High and the Mighty. (Warner.)—The Green Scarf. (Plaza.) IT is a fine old idea to gather up a handful of incongruous persons, stick them in a place from which they cannot...

THE menace which the competition of tele- vision offers to the live theatre is far more- real than the now distant and all but for- gotten fear that the broadcasting of concerts...

SHOULD CHURCHES BE SAVED ? SIR,—Mr. John Betjeman unfortunately mis- represented the facts when he wrote last week of 'the Bishop of Ripon's determination• to pull down the...

who states that he was on the platform at the Protestant meeting, denies that the cauliflower which Sir Compton Mackenzie alleges that he threw at the platform and struck...

$115, —Is it entirely accurate to describe the events in the Soviet cultural world of just under a year ago as a 'perceptible loosening of the ideological shackles,' to use your...

Sia,—Recent correspondence has confirmed my impression that many even well-educated people are unaware of the legality of con- fessions in the Church of England. The law of the...

Spectator's Notebook last week. I do not know the Rector of Sandwich, who has charge of all three of Sandwich's churches. I do not know if the other two are full of devout...

' Poets of the Fifties,' raises more issues than he perhaps realises. Certainly the ' new movement' in poetry has its roots in the Thirties, inasmuch as Empson and Auden were...

sm,—Your Canadian correspondent, Mr, W. R. Hibbard, (Spectator, July 23) appears to be unaware of the fact that the snake he encountered in Quebec Province and calls a 'spotted...

on this subject perplexing. May I quote ? . . . even if,' wrote Mr. R. E. Muirhead in his letter in your issue of August 20, ' the whole 71 Scots MPs were returned as Scottish...

Sue,—Mr. Townsend in his letter to you last week headed The Road to Heaven,' has produced perhaps unconsciously a very neat commentary on conditions today. ' The poor man in...

SIR,—Fuller treatment of the Cockney Renaissance could not be expected in so short an essay as Mr. Chilworth's: but one cannot but feel that he might have mentioned Leigh Unt's...

At daybreak the village street belongs to the prowling cats, the stray dog and all the birds that come boldly down to scavenge in the gutter. On my way to fish the other morning...

IT surprises some people that with all the rain we have had the corn still ripens as it does. It ripens, bleaches and sheds its ears unless it can be cut. If the rain does not...

Why does a cormorant pose like an emble- matic eagle or vulture between spells of diving for fish ? Before it sets its wings in the spread position it usually beats them to and...

form of the following sonnet by Jacques Grdvin: Nous disons que le Rois ne demandant que guerre, Qu'ils y prennent plaisir, et que nous ce pendant, Comme pauvres vassaux, en...

Rambler roses should be pruned immedi- ately after flowering. Cut out the old wood as near the ground as possible, thus re- ,,directing growth to the young shoots which will...

are invited, for a prize of £5, to submit sets of three clerihews whosil rhymes are eye-rhymes and whose subjects are any writers, living or dead. For example) The late W. T....

F OR some reason or other every time I have been going to see a performance at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon I have been prevented, but last week by...

Family Golfing Holidays By BERNARD DARWIN T the end of July a great peace ostensibly descends on the golfing world. The championships are over; the professional circus has for...

Blithe in the sun the rabbits play About the field this sparkling day : Beyond the hedge, sleek in the sun Stalks, on gaitered legs, a gun.

The Signs of the Air Show BY OLIVER STEWART VALUATION' is the American term : the Americans ' evaluate' new aircraft and new engines, they do not assess their merits, and in...

By JOHN PUDNEY This, one of the few concessions to sentiment which Farn- borough allows itself, is a happy reminder of that rip-roaring cowboy, actor (like his celebrated and...

By REX WARNER HOUGH at the present time not all educated people are even slightly familiar with Roman literature and very few indeed are familiar with it in its whole extent,...

My Gandhi. By John Haynes Holmes. (Allen 8‘ .. Unwin. 10s. 6d.) WHO was it who declared that the world must choose between Ford and Gandhi? And what if Ford himself had chosen...

Swamp Angel. By Ethel Wilson. (Macmillan. 10s. 6d.) MR. ABSE'S first novel is written from the heart, and many will respond to it. One need not have read his poems to know...

Menace in Malaya. By Harry Miller. (Harrap. 15s.) THE book is not nearly as lurid as its title and dust-cover would suggest. It is, in fact, a singularly temperate and...

AMONG current reprints the most notable is The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, edited by Eugene Vinaver (O.U.P. 21s.). This makes generally available Professor Vinaver's definitive...

Scenes and Portraits. By Van Wyck Brooks. (Dent. 25s.) Wrrn a New Jersey background and New England susceptibilities in the pre-war years of this century, a writer has a very...

R. E. Enthoven. (Country Life. 18s.) THIS is, in a sense very nearly literal, an entrancing book, a creator of potent day dreams. This may be because it is a book of daY dreams...

worth several historical novels. Colonel Carew has, with a light touch and leaving most of the talking to the characters themselves, recorded - his family's history from the...

Greece, Crete and Syria. By Gavin Long. (Angus and Robertson. 25s.) This book is one of the official series of Australia In the War of1939-45. It covers the difficult period in...

Charles Black. 18s.) THE British Political Tradition Series, of which this book is the latest example, seeks to give original texts, in various fields of British political...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT IT is a characteristic of the film business that it over-advertises itself. Many a film has been killed by the silly superlatives with which it has been...

By CUSTOS THE strong recovery on the Stock Exchange was halted on Tuesday not so much because EDC had ended but because the account had ended with another heavy settlement The...

Two prizes are awarded each week - a copy of the De Luxe edition of Chambers's wentieth Cen- tury Dictionary and a book token for one 'y utn e a. These will be awaided to the...