It was, of course, part of General Eisenhower's duty as a soldier to place the , first emphasis on that major proportion of the task of defence that still remains to be done. He...

Some of the West German criticism of the Allied reply to the recent Soviet Note on a peace treaty with Germany is curiously perverse. (East German criticisms were too inevitable...

So far the Presidential election manoeuvres in the United States have produced of themselves a fair quota of the drama that the party managers usually like to inject into them....

French policy in Tunis will be justified only if it comes off. The gamble is that M. Baccouche will be able to sponsor reforms which will go at least part of the way to satisfy...

It is hardly surprising that the term " blackmail " has entered into Yugoslav cominent on moves for an extension of Italian control over the city of Trieste. Within a fortnight...

Mr. Arthur Deakin said last week that the Budget would give " a savage twist " to the spiral of wages and prices. The T.U.C. General Council, in its official statement on the...

There is a distinct air of the madhouse about the Minister of Transport's order for the withdrawal of the road service provided by Northern Roadways Ltd. from Edinburgh and...

As usual, it is, necessary to look beyond the question of steel prices, which the Commons were supposed to be debating on Monday night, to the question of the control of the...

HE House of Lords still keeps some of its fallen day about it. There are occasions—the debate on Seretse Khama was one—that fill the peeresses' gallery, with women of a grace,...

W HATEVER final conclusion may be reached on the action of the Government in deciding that Seretse Khama, the lawful chief of the Bamangwato, shall be deprived permanently of...

D ILIGENT and well-intentioned authors so often get much less than their,due that I am glad to be able to indicate how a gentleman from Dayton, Ohio, regards a recent article by...

Mail a little surprises me. The two final volumes of that notable publica- tion The History of the Times are to be published on April 23rd. Review copies were sent out about a...

by chicken-pox (with perhaps a little of Davidge thrown in). Mr. H. R. Rickett, as everyone knows, is a genius at tuning crews up to concert-pitch in the last fortnight before...

the B.B.C. News Department was acting on some hitherto undisclosed principle in refusing to call Dr. Adenauer anything but Herr Adenauer. I am glad to find it is so, for I am a...

Governor Stevenson of Illinois on Monday. This is a pronouncement of such profundity as to transcend my comprehension. I must leave it to better Latinists than myself to...

tions, if they are separate organisations, the Acaddmie et Universitd Internationale, " Founded 1880, Reorganised 1937, Chartered 1947, Affiliated with the Pacific International...

Anthem, I reproduce an extra verse devised for current con- ditions some 240 years ago. God grant that General Wade May by Thy mighty aid Victory bring. May he oppressors hush...

By MARY STOCKS * HE B.B.C. is in a most unhappy position and seldom if ever has a public service deserved its tribulations less. For close on two years it was probed and...

By. NEVILLE CARDUS C B. FRY will be eighty on April 25th, according to Wisden, a witness to which he will pay a certain • respect. But he is not likelier to count eighty years...

By D. W. BROGAN U NECONOMIC nylons are being dumped on New Zealand, and steps have been taken to secure that these necessities are profitably manufactured in that pair of...

By IAN NIALL TRACTOR pulled the mill into place, and in a little while, when they had thrown the thatch on one side, they began threshing the rick. I studied the situation. It...

Whirls now the wind with winter snow, And trout-sweet brook is hard as glass ; Old bones full well that rigour know ; They pine for the South, but—let it pass. " Why this...

By WILFRID BLUNT HE librarkan of one of the Bavarian municipal libraries (I quote from a German newspaper), distressed at the trash that the public demanded, decided to make a...

By PETER FLEMING I RECEIVED last week an invitation to become president of a local society devoted to the sport of archery, and as I sat down to write a suitable letter of...

.HIS seems to be a moment when observers of the American Presidential elections, both those at home and those abroad, cannot do better than remind themselves that they are in...

By J. P. W. MALLALIEU, M.P. E VERY Saturday afternoon during the season a million or so men and women watch professional football. Many more, perhaps with one eye on their...

Oh, ye Muses nine defend us In a noisy age benighted, Your lost grace and beauty lend us, • Whom hexameters delighted, Who set thought with metre blending, Matching truth with...

Tim period at which the incorporating act of the East India Company falls to be renewed is almost close at hand, and the prospect of a satisfactory preliminary inquiry grows...

By HAROLD NICOLSON FRIEND of mine has passed on to me a strange little object presented to her, a year before his death, by the well-known mathematician and writer Mr. Charles...

of the English Jersey Cattle Society. He draws attention to a note of mine on the hardy breeds of cattle found on the hilly farms of North Wales, and points out that Jersey...

As I went along the footpath, I over-looked the rickyard, and noticed a collie pup trotting around a chicken coop in a very deliberate way. I stopped and watched him. A...

suitable fertiliser, such as wood ash, tread the bed fairly solid and put in your autumn- sown onions. Plant in rows ab.put sixteen inches apart. Make sure that the young plant...

deserted before the new year, it is far from it now. The clamour that goes on all day must weary the birds themselves. The young are hungry. The parents go to and fro in search...

TIM farm was once the dower-house of the estate, and consequently it has features that neighbouring places have not. Twb fine yew trees stand before the farmHouse itself. The...

Uncle Vanya. By Anton Chekhov. (Arts Theatre.) UNEMPHATIC plays like this one defy all but the most emphatic productions. Vanya is unmanageable, and much given to sprawling :...

CINEMA Five Fingers. (Leicester Square.)—Tall Headlines. (Gaumont.)--- Singin' In the Rain. (Empire.) Operation Cicero, Mr. L. C. Moyzisch's book relating the incredible but as...

How is it possible to write about Schubert's music ? Words—the right words, if they exist—have failed even the most eloquent writers. We have mostly technical analyses of his...

IT is always rash to speak of national characteristics in art, especially in Europe where the strands are inextricably woven. One thinks of the " elegance " of the French, or...

Bone idle, Idyllically bone, I shall mock the fidelity Of the angels in stone That watch the dead. Bone idle, soon Too lazy to turn in my grave, To get up at twelve, To go down...

Report. by Guy Kendall A prize of £5 was offered for an extract from a poem called " The IT ew Town," in the manner and metre of Goldsmith's " The Deserted Nage," by one who...

Set by Richard Usborne A prize of £5, which may be divided, is offered for a ten-line love- lyric, of which the last. three lines arc In the wailing-room Of the branch-line On...

A Member's Allegiance SIR— Professor D. W. Brogan, in his article The New Pocket Boroughs. builds up his case on an inifial misconception. He speaks of the Railway Review as"...

Stit,—The fiftieth anniversary of the peace treaty which closed the Boer War falls on May 31st, 1952. Within a week or so of that historic event a service of thanksgiving was...

March 28th has given pleasure and encouragement to the staff of the British Council. I write to express our !thanks for such generous recognition of the service which wo try to...

National Anthem, and how much 1 agree with each adjective applied to " Land of Hope and Glory." My present object is to say a good word for the second verse of " God Save the...

SIR,—In your issue of March 28th Mr. D. C. Somervell writes: " The National Anthem is very good music. It is not great music nor beauti- ful music, but strictly good " ; and...

Snt,—A short while ago I too received a parcel of old deeds, and I was therefore most interested to read Mr. C. Henry Warren's article on this subject. My oldest deed was...

SIR,—In the Sunday Press a claim was recently made by " a consulting physician " who dogmatically said, " Let it be known once and for all that the proper way of addressing a...

Sm, —I have read with great interest the comments by M. Cohen on my previous letter. M. Cohen is entirely correct in his description of the French income-tax system as applied...

SIR,—My attention has been drawn to Ian Niall's comments in " Country Life," in your issue of March 7th. It ft quite obvious that Mr. Niall has little or no knowledge of the...

In Place of Fear. By Aneurin Bevan. (Heinemann. 10s. 6d.) WHEN Mr. Aneurin Bevan complains of the excessive interest taken by the popular Press in his private life he obviously...

The World of Robert Ross Robert Ross, Friend of Friends. Edited by Margery Ross. (Cape. 30s.) To those who were friends of Robbie Ross this book is tenuous and tantalising. The...

INTEREST in the seventeenth century continues to grow, the more it is realised that here was the turning point of our civilisation, more important, certainly for this country,...

The Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Selected and with an Introduction by Kathleen Raine. (Grey Walls Press. 12s. 6d.) IN 1895 E. H. Coleridgeedited many of his celebrated...

English Women's Clothing in the Present Century. By C. Willett Cunnington. (Faber. 31 guineas.) PARADOXICALLY enough the student of fashion finds it easier to inform himself...

THE need of a completely new flora of the British Isles has for long humiliated botanists, who have had to resort to Continental hand- books. For many years we have told both...

Conspiracy of Silence. By Alex Weissberg. (Hamish Hamilton. 21s.) I BELIEVE it is the duty of every COmmunist to subordinate himself to the necessities of the political...

The Highlands of Scotland. By Seton Gordon. (Robert Hale. County Books Series. 18s.) IT may be wondered why a series which assigns two separate volumes to the Inner and Outer...

IT is a pity that the B.B.C. has, intentionally or wantonly, surrounded the Reith Memorial Lectures with so portentous an atmosphere. The enterprise of commissioning each year a...

In an Age of Revolution. By Cyril Garbett, Archbishop of York. (Hodder and Stoughton. 20s.) In an Age of Revolution. By Cyril Garbett, Archbishop of York. (Hodder and Stoughton....

The Submerged Village. By James Kirkup. (Oxford University Press. 7s. 6d.) MR. KIRKUP holds a poetry fellowship—the only one in the country— et Leeds University. That it should...

" IF the British come with four divisions, I shall fire on them ; if with twenty, I shall welcome them." This epigram of General Weygand on his policy as Delegate-General of...

Dr. Balston at Eton. By Thomas Balston. (Macmillan. 12s. 6d.) ALTHOUGH there is not very much that is actually new in this short life of Edward Balston compiled by his...

Poems of Francois Villon. Translated to the original verse-forms by Norman Cameron. (Cape. 10s. 6d.) AT a moment when the translation of verse into prose—or alter- natively into...

Edward Lear's Journals. A Selection Edited by Herbert van Thal. (Barker. 21s.) EDWARD LEAR'S reputation as a versifier is secure ; his place as a water-colourist in the great...

A Step to Silence. By P. H. Newby. (Cape. 12s. 6d.) A Place to Live. By George Buchanan. (Faber. 10s. 6d.) Now Barabbas, one might say, was a cipher. He is described variously...

" THE superb details of workmanship in the compositions of 1610 have been fined down to a more schematic ` blanc-et-noir ' style of buoyant tutti—and concertante ' solo...

As in other years the spring's book-list contains much biographical material, most of it concerned with the present or immediate past. Biographies are often written before the...

By CUSTOS IN face of the bleak provisions of the Finance Bill markets are putting up a brave show. Under the lead of gilt-edged stocks prices appear to have acquired some...

guinea will be awarded to the sender of the fi rst correct solution opened alter noon on Tuesday week. April 151h. Envelopes must be received not later than first post that day...

Gardens, Solution on April 18 The winner of Crossword No. 670 is: Mss. M. E. RILEY, 23, Daleham London. N.W.3.