NEWS OF THE WEEK A IR FORCE Americas, The 402 Arab League .. 98 Argentina : " La Prensa", 298 ; meat agreement 542 Army New territorials, 167 ; rival 802 Australia :...

Very large forces of Chinese infantry, with a little support from artillery but none from armour or the air, have attacked the 8th Army, which has been allowed several weeks in...

Movement in negotiations with the Soviet Union has to be measured by inches, not feet or yards, and it is fortunate if it is movement forwards at all. The rejoinder to the...

E ARLIER meetings of Commonwealth Prime Ministers have proved so useful that there was in no quarter any reluctance to accept the expense of time and energy which the current...

The Government presumably wished to express in quantitative terms their concern with the fuel situation when they allocated no fewer than five Ministers to Wednesday's meeting...

The New Year faces the West German Federal Government with a number of difficult problems. The situation is confused and dan- gerous. The internal demand for unity is growing...

Prime Minister of Pakistan, not to attend the Commonwealth conference in London, while intelligible, is thoroughly unwise. Les absents ont toujours tort, and to leave the field...

It is presumably in his capacity as United States Commander-in- Chief in Japan, and no other, that General MacArthur, in the course of one of his periodical incursions into...

AL L thoughtful people have known for months that a new time of effort and hardship was at hand, but neither Government nor the governed have been quite ready to put the new...

as the official type of mind. Someone made the sensible suggestion that instead of one long queue for taxis behind one long barrier at Waterloo there should be several openings...

W ITH Australia's celebration of the first half-century of her existence as a federation, and New Zealand's of the centenary of the Canterbury settlement, it it perhaps relevant...

has, I am interested (but not surprised) to find, stimulated substantially the sales of a classic which has always been a steady seller. King George spoke of a book " much loved...

review, The Nineteenth Century and After has decided, in this first month of the second half of the twentieth century, to call itself—nothing less than The Twentieth Century. I...

And he didn't so much as mention cricket. JMus.

inter- university journal, which should at a reasonable price deal with the activities, aims and problems of undergraduates everywhere, I shall watch with interest the future of...

alarming " names to get themselves re-christened. As it happens, a few days before I read the Lancet's comments I was passing the Hospital for Incurables at Putney, as I...

may be gleaned information about King George and Queen Elizabeth which will (appropriately enough) be news to most of Their Majesties' subjects. The King, it seems, is a member...

M R. ATTLEE has been to America and returned ; General Wu Hsiu-chuan has been to America and returned to China ; but whatever object these journeys had, it is becoming plain...

By HAROLD ABRAHAMS A s. sit down on the last day of the first half of the twentieth century to write this article, I cannot help imagining . what I should have said fifty years...

By EDWARD HODGKIN T HE rebuilding of old towns on new sites is an activity usually associated with such names as Alexander the Great, the Caliph Mansur and Sir Edwin Lutyens....

By M. E. IAMPARD, M.D. N July 5th, 1948, the doctors were given a blank cheque to draw on the nation's bank-4ccount to any extent that they considered advisable in the...

By ROBERT WAITIIMAisl T WAS In receipt of a telegram the other day from my friend, Mr. C. V. R. Thompson, the eminent chief correspondent of the I London Daily Express. It was...

The Customer is Always Right By JOHN DAVY (Trinity College, Cambridge) HERE are two great festivals in December each year. The first is celebrated by the Christian world and is...

At home, the half century has greatly changed the aspect of society: where all was Tory suppression at the beginning, all is thrown open now. We have gained freedom, political....

By HAROLD NICOLSON I T is with self-reproach that, as year succeeds year, I notice that it becomes increasingly difficult to think out Christmas presents and increasingly easy...

Set by J. M. Cohen Riding over the plain of La Mancha, Don Quixote catches sight of a line of pylons in the distance. A prize of £5, which may be divided, is offered for a...

ALONG the green banks by the waterside the anglers sit and idle summer through, gazing at their floats that nod ,end ride above the gleaming cool where fishes slide elusive...

Report by Daniel Parson A prize of £5 was offered for the concluding paragraph of a amous novel, assuming that the hero or heroine has married the runner-up—e.g., June Eyre and...

THEATRE 44 Point or Departure." By Jean Anouilli. Translated by Kitty Black. (Duke of York's.) M. ANoulurs contemporary version of the Orpheus and Eurydice legend, now...

,, So Young and So Bad." (London Pavilion.)—"Born to be Bad." (Odeon, Marble Arch.) THE film-industry in America has of late become so aware of the world's callousness, notably...

IN J. M. Robertson's New Essays Towards a Critical Method there is a suggestion that " the perfect scientific critic, the critic of the future perhaps, might be conceived as...

During two weeks of almost unbroken black frost (that horrible, greasy kind of cold which kaves clots of ice like stale mutton-dripping about the ground) 1 have found that a row...

to be his swan-song, and these records will provide a fitting memorial for a pianist who, though young, was already in the very front rank of his profession. Backhaus records...

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, most beautiful singing only marred by very few feature.; of questionable taste. Mascia Predit's Mussorgsky songs 1 found disappointing,...

ORCHESTRAL—Heifetz's playing of the Elgar violin concerto with the L.S.O. is quite magnificent, outstanding in interpretation and breath- taking in technical finish. Bantock's...

This half-mystical approach to the country scene 'may enrage many contemporaries, who are impatient of any discussion, or any activity, that does not further the urgent need of...

WHEREVER one may be, and in whatever circumstances, the few minutes during which both hands of the clock pass from the old year into the new are awe-inspiring. When this...

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 copies are...

Solitude has no greater revelation. To hear from across meadows, over hills or through valleys, the bells of a village church, chiming muffled, then at the stroke of midnight,...

Sta.—There is no need to resurrect, as Mr. Thompson does, the vision of a Yellow Peril to explain China's recent intervention in Korea. It may safely be said that China acted in...

The Birth of Christ Snt,—We gratefully acknowledge the valuable contribution which Mr. Wilson Harris is making to theological discussion in the Spectator. More particularly we...

was interested to read Janus's comments about the biographies of our Prime Ministers, and was particularly glad to learn that the life of Lord Baldwin will soon be published....

Sta.—Perhaps you will allow me to apologise for my fellow-countrymen, must of whom, as you seem to be well aware, are at one in deploring this outrage. The Earl of Mansfield is....

Sia,—Your correspondent, Miss Dorothy Shepherd, has, in common with certain " professional " observers—so-called—fallen into the error of making either unjustified or completely...

SIR,—The Report of the Representatives points out that differences on the questions of the ministry and of the administration of the sacraments, while they are the main causes...

SIR,—Janus finds in the recently published volume of Bishop Hensley Henson's letters the same characteristics as were prominent in the Bishop's Retrospect—" pungent...

W HEN a version of Don Quixote was performed by the Vic-Wells Ballet one or two critics complained that it was not funny. The idea that the story is a comic strip goes back to...

Selected Poems of Swinburne. Edited with an introduction by Edward Shanks. (Macmillan. Is. 6d.) Swinburne. Selected Poems. Arranged by Humphrey Hare, with an introduction....

What Is Wrong With London ? Royal Borough. By Rachel Ferguson. (Cape. I cs.) Beautiful London. Photographs by H.Gernsheim.(Phaidon Press. t7s.6d.) THERE is a nostalgic,...

Letters of Herbert Hensley Henson. Chosen and Edited by Canon E. F. Braley. (S.P.G.K. 155.) AFTER three substantial volumes of Bishop Henson's own reminis- cences it might well...

The Face of Spain. By Gerald Brenan. (Turnstile Press. 155.) Mit. BRENAN, who lived in Spain before the civil war, returned there in 1949 for a two months' visit, and has made...

OF the many exhibitions held in Italy in the years immediately before the war, by far the most impressive was the Titian exhibi- tion organised at Venice in 1935. There arc some...

Oddly Enough. By Paul Jennings. (Reinhardt and Evans. Is. 6d.) MR. PAUL JENNINGS is one of those rare, delightful and nearly extinct human beings, a thoroughly English humorist....

English Interior Decoration isoo-1830. By Margaret Jourdain. (Batsford. L3 35. od.) English Interior Decoration isoo-1830. By Margaret Jourdain. (Batsford. L3 35. od.) MESSRS....

We are living in a Victorian revival. There is a suspicion of interest in our grandfathers' architecture, an eager collecting of their bric-a-brac, and a flood of Victorian...

The Story of StratfordLttpcin-Avon. By J. C. Trewin. (Staples. 8s. 6d.) SOMETHING like a million people now visit the Birthplace during every decade. This slender book,...

A Woman of Means. By Peter Taylor. (Routledge. 7s. 6d.) LEFT over from the weeks before Christmas are several novels each of which is worth somebody's reading. None deserves to...

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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, Prudery 16th. Envelopes must be...

By CUSTOS IN face of the disappointing war news from Korea and the growing seriousness of the fuel position at home the New Year has opened in the stock markets on a...