W HATEVER be the outcome of the San Francisco Conference, in many ways the most momentous gathering since the end of the war in view of its possibilities, it was auspiciously...

Dr. Moussadek's motives in suddenly announcing an ultimatum to Great Britain on the oil question can only be conjectured. The imminence of a General Election and the criticisms...

Millions of housewives and thousands of growers of fruit and vegetables will await the details of the Government's plan for decentralised marketing with hope and eagerness. This...

Apart from the President, General Peron, and his wife, Sabra Eva Peron, the two major forces in the politics of Argentina are the General Confederation of Labour and the Army....

Far from complying with the Security Council's resolution calling for an end of the blockade on shipping bound for Israel through the Suez Canal, the Egyptian Government has...

How far events at Kaesong are linked with events at San Francisco is a matter of pure speculation. The theory that they are would provide some sort of explanation , of the...

T HE present Chancellor of the Exchequer is not a typical product of the Labour movement. Like the other Wykehamist who was the second post-war Socialist Chancellor and the...

fight in 1951 is by no means negligible either. The Roundheads, led by Mr. Isaac Foot, have had 'their field-day, but there is no lack of Royalists in Worcester, and one of...

C OVENTRY has been torn by an issue which over- shadowed even the controversy over its new cathedral— the question whether an American actress who is a member of the Variety...

is being had isr Mr. Cox. You may not conceivably know all you should about Mr. Cox. If not, it is because, through either impecuniosity or unwisdom, you are not . a member of...

Worker, I watch with interest (as I think I have said before) that journal's strenuous, and by no means unsuccessful, efforts to raise £3,750 a month from its readers towards...

I took down a copy of his now notorious book, Dinner at the White House, in which Mr. Adamic, invited to dine with Presi- dent Roosevelt on an occasion when Mr. Churchill was...

I gather that the future of at least two is problematic. It is the usual story. A drop in circulation means a drop in advertisements—either in the number or the rates or...

in the Tory Press—the most prostituted in the world ? Aneurin Bevan at Scarborough, May 16th, 1948. " The Rt. Hon. Aneurin Bevan, M.P., is to write a series of articles...

By A. E. MORGAN* HE Berlin Rally has posed a question which must be answered, even though British youth is not prone to swallow Communist doctrine. Perhaps the greatest danger...

When at the beginning of last May most of the daily papers and many weeklies increased their prices, in some cases substantially, it was stated that the Spectator would continue...

By the REV. MERVYN STOCKWOOD T HE country is faced with a large-scale closure of churches. The effects are already noticeable in rural areas and some industrial cities....

By SETON GORDON OCKALL the sea area is known to all who listen on R their wireless sets to the forecasts for shipping ; Rockall the island is known to very few. Rising no more...

By H. WARNER ALLEN tt F you had sold your armagnac, you would no longer have it." My inane remark set the wrinkles of Joseph's weather-beaten face expanding in a radiant...

Oxford and Cambridge ByNORMAN ST. JOHN-STEVAS (Christ Church, Oxford). I NEVER realised when I first decided to go to Oxford and Cambridge the seriousness of the step I was...

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...

By HAROLD NICO1SON I N last week ' s Spectator my colleague, Mr. M. H. Middleton, wrote about two Festival Exhibitions that illustrate the mutability of taste. The first,...

THEATRE "Ardele." By Jean Anouilh. (Vaudeville Theatre.) MERETRICIOUS worldlings, casually conspiring to destroy love . . . I remember a friend saying to me: " I can never...

(Liecester S q uare.) WHEN, in what I considered a laudatory manner, I described the new war film Decision Before Dawn to a friend of mine this week, she asked me why anybody...

Tim work of reaction in the larger half of Europe is complete. Or rather, the ebb of the spring-tide of Liberalism of 1848 leaves exposed to view a g reater extent of s hoals...

sunshine and the circling chairs. Scarlet was always their colour, geranium-like in their painted stand. His white gloves led them in jigs and conventional airs, those quiet...

Tint Institute of British Photographers is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary with an impressive exhibition, " British Achievement in Photography," which will - be on view at...

A CHANCE discovery a few days ago that the mother of the Marx Brothers was née Minnie Schonberg filled me with what I at first took to be a quite illogical satisfaction....

VOCAL: Elisabeth Schwarzkopf's singing of Swiss folk-songs (Columbia) is wholly delightful. For H.M.V. Fedora Barbieri records very well, but not superlatively, Azucena's arias...

not the flawless pleasure that everyone expected, but there are many things—the whole of Cloches d'fravers les feuilles, for instance—that could hardly be better done. For Decca...

Report by R. S. Stanier How strong my heart! I shall not plead. Unwilling love I do not need. And who will pity her ?: Ah, who indeed Will heal her smart, Or hold her to His...

Set by Lewis Petrie Science, as Mr. Aldous Huxley once observed, has been strangely backward in inventing the devices which the ordinary person really wants in this modern age....

similar reports in the daily Press, rightly point to the need for " the proclamation of some ideal more effective to command support than Communism." Does not this touch the...

you on the subject of German youth. I realised very early the serious- ness of the problem, and during my editorship of the-British Zone Review, the chief organ of publicity of...

What Way for Youth ? SSA,—Col. J. S. Wilson's discriminating survey of the contribution of Scouting to world citizenship suggests points for further self-examination by...

Sut,—A Welfare State is one in which the Government deliberately sets out to make available for all the people a minhpum but high standard of well-being, and uses to this end...

SIR, —As I so often find myself in agreement with Janus, it is almost a joy to question the logic of his observations in regard to residential or birth qualifications for county...

S1R,—Your correspondent's letter of August 24th gives an excellent por- trayal of the evils which follow the present excessive rates of income- tax and sur-tax.. These would be...

SIR,—I cannot confirm or deny " Observer's - observations on the regime in Portugal. I do know that Portugal is not a democracy. She is also a signatory of the Atlantic Pact,...

SK—The blocking of the Suez Canal to our tankers has, for months past, been the subject of speeches in and out of both Houses of Parlia- ment and reports and comments in the...

SIR, —May I be allowed the courtesy of your columns to reply to certain criticisms of my letter on the subject of Conservatism and Liberty con- tained in correspondence...

ONE last brief memory of East Devon. Up in the hills above Colyton on the Coly, an affluent of the Axe; a tilted village in pastel shades with the solidest weathervane of a Cock...

How often gardens profit by and transcend an awkward or unfavour- able geographical environment! I know one on the bank of the Middle Nye overlooking one of its reaches whose...

The Vale of Marshwood lies over the Dorset border, and is a seques- tered countryside of the laughing hills of the Lias. A wild jocose anarchic diversity of shape makes a...

to the 6} - acre holding of Vice-Admiral Vivian at Northmoor (Oxon.). The peculiarity . of its husbandry is not its four-year rotation of , crops, nor even that it is run...

Auden : An Introductory Essay. By Richard Hoggart. (Chatto & Windus. t 2s. 6d.) BEFORE the war, when New Verse devoted a double number to W. H. Auden, someone wrote in to...

The Fortunes of 64 Kicky " IF George du Maurier, like his friends Millais and Keene, had been accorded a conventional " Life and Letters " soon after his death, then no doubt...

most distinguished living repre- sentatives of that unsual species of Scholar—the human geographer —met with more frequently in France than in the British Isles. The true human...

book, obviously the perfect Christmas present for 1951. I can think of hardly anybody who won't find something to like about it. One could give it—with equal propriety—to one's...

cos. 6d.) LErnrm ELIZABETH LANDON (1802-1838) earned during her short life a transient reputation as a poetess, novelist and marginal member of the sham-smart literary set of...

In His True Centre. An Interim Autobiography. By Arnold Haskell. (Black. 2 Is.) ARNOLD HASKELL'S story is simple. The son of a wealthy materialistic father and a cultured mother...

Religion and the Cure of Souls in Jung's Psychology. By Hans Schaer, translated by R. F. C. Hull. (Routledge. tbsi.) The I Ching or-Book of Changes. The Richard- Wilhelm -...

9s. 6d.) THERE are two fundamentally different kinds of plot passing as detective fiction. In one an initially inexplicable situation gradually becomes comprehensible, the...

The End of the Affair. By Graham Greene. (Heinemann. ios. 6d.) Rosie Hogarth. By Alexander Baton. (Cape. les. ... - LOVE, like religion, involves the whole range of human...

(Faber. 8s. 6d. each.) How well we know Arles and St. Remy Nothing, it seems, will ever oust Van Gogh from his place as favourite when it comes to reproduction in colour. The...

Paul. i cs.) AT a time when books about sport and, in particular, about cricket, are being published in large numbers, it is refreshing to be able to look at past events from...

*the Sudan is a subject which has been unusually well served by English writers. The actors most concerned in the drama (on the English side)—Cromer and Gordon—have left their...

6d.) Tins is the first issue of the Cornhill for a number of years to appear without Mr. Peter Qtwnnell's name on the title-page, but it sho - ws no falling-off from the high...

The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh. Edited by Agnes M. C. Latham. (Routledge. The Muses' Library. 'as. 6d.) IN reprinting the poems of Raleigh—or Ralegh as she prefers to call...

[A Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution opened after noon on Tuesday week, September 18th, addressed Crossword, 99 Gower Street,...

elonivonren ilEIEIINERI El El n EI El a MEIINEIEIEUEVIE1111 inuirwri nonn 53 mica in © ei OrIEIIESEHTLII:1 El Fl iill11111CHEZIKIEI El tlE111E3 ii1HEIFIEIME11110E1 11 El Ell HMI...

By CUSTOS IN face of the threatening balance of pay- ments problem, to say nothing of the difficulties looming up on the fuel and power and transport fronts, markets are...