Dirty Work at the Docks Whether the chief ingredient in the continuing dock strike is malignity or madness may be matter for argument. But all the odds arc on the former. The...

Western Defence Rehearsal All peace-time manoeuvres, particularly those at the end of a great war, suffer from a certain degree of unreality ; the air and naval exercises over...

New Broom in Syria Colonel Husni Zaim has now been in power in Syria for four months, and much the same energy which he showed in carrying out his coup d'itat has gone into the...

Blockade on the China Coast The twenty-eighth anniversary of the foundation of the Chinese Communist Party produced a restatement of its aims from its leader. Mao Tsc-tung...

MUSIC THE first week of the Cheltenham Festival brought a commendable selection of British contemporary music, not the high lights already familiar in the concert hall but more...

CONTEMPORARY ARTS THE THEATRE ,"This Walking Shadow." By Benedick ScotL (Playhouse.) LIVING as they do in a rabbit-warren, it is understandable that the slum-dwellers of...

THE CINEMA ' The Three Musketeers." (Empire).-,, Le Pore Tranquille." (Studio One.) I I ALWAYS shudder a little at the prospect of an American adaptation of a French story,...

" The Young and Fair." By N. Richard Nash. (St. Martin's.) WHEN Macbeth exclaims, " Is this a dagger that I see before me ? " the question, though not exactly rhetorical, is...

THE VEIL Item, an alpine lake with olive-green mountains. No, correct olive-green to a clouded pastel. Item, a boat coming in from a distant village, Her wake like an arrow, or...

RADIO ON the Third Programme's Hamlet week I find myself somewhat undecided. (These scattered notes on radio will be likely often to find me so.) There was never so...

FRANCE AND INDO CHINA SIR,-In the Spectator of Junc 17th, undcr tbc heading, " The Bao Dai Experiment," it is stated that the French, " who have not always been well served in...

SIR,-Your reviewer of Mr. Stephen Clissold's book, Whilmwind, says that "fairly soon in the Yugoslav struggle it became clear that the guerrilla leader Draza Mihailovich . . ....

TREE-FELLING IN GERMANY SIR,-The writers of the two lctters published in your issues dated Junc 24th and July 1st on the above subject show that the question has been...

THE LAST DAYS OF RUSKIN SIR,-While perusing the review of Derrick Leon's book on Ruskin I was reminded of an anecdote which may be of interest to your readers. I remember...

THE RECORD OF MIHAILOVICH SIR.-Mlay I be allowed to add a few words to Miss Elizabeth's Wiske- mann's review of Mr. Stephen Clissold's book Whirlwind ? Mr. Clissold refers to...

BOOKS OF THE DAY Mr. Berenson's Looking Glass Sketch for a Self Portrait. By Bernard Berennson. (Constable. 1Os.) IT is necessary to say at once that this is not an...

Siiews of War British War Economy. By W. K. Hancock and MK M. Gowing. (London H.M. Stationery Otice. 21s.) THE recent past is, many respects, the most remote of historical...

Cvrenaica and a Bedouin Order The Sanusi of Cyrenalca. By E. E. Evans-Pritchard. (Oxford University Press, Geoffrey Cumberlege. 25s.) PROFESSOR EVANS-PRITCHARD'S latest book...

The Natural Man The Journals of Antirt CGide. Volume Ill. 1928-1939. Translated from the French and annotatedby Justin O'Brien. (Secker and Warburg. 30s.) Tims third and...

In the Garden One spartium junccum-that almost broom-cut clean down by frost has just bcgun to flower and so madc thc broom season quitc continuowsIt will be in blossom when...

Melanistic Freaks Day after day in my garden we watched with interest and alarm the bold appearance of four pitch-black rabbits which, among other less desirable activities,...

MEALS IN HOTELS SIR,-At 6.30 on a Sunday evening I btooked a room at a main hotel in a finmous cathedral city. I went on to the cathedral servicc, 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. At 8.10 I...

Urban Nightingales Many comments have been made on the multiplicity of nightingales; and they have taken to entirely novel sites. One, for example, has disturbed the occupants...

Lifeless Waters 'The following is quoted from a "column written in anger" in the Express. " Thc stream meanders round the mill-pool to the orchard. Then it joins the mill-tail,...

COUNTRY LIFE IT is high time that one of the leading planners should tell us what a National Park is meant to be. The idea is popular, partly perhaps because the great...

LORD MILVERTON'S RESIGNATION SIK,-Lord Milverton's record as a colonial administrator iniy be all Janus claims (although the number of governorships held is a slightly...

FRED OR MISTER? SIR,-YoLir readers will have noticed howv differently the publicity given by the Daily Mail to Mr. Fred Titmus struck Janus on the one hand and Mr. Harold...

RHINOS BLACK AND WHITE By CLIELAND SCOTT Nairobi A MONG the big game of Africa the nuisance-value of the black rhinoceros is certainly highest. This is particularly true if...

Cornwall. By Claude Berry. (falc. 15s.) THIS volume, in the excellent County Book series, is no better than it should be-nor anything like as good. No county offers greater...

Adventure Lit Their Star. By Kenneth Allsop. (Latimer House. 8s. 6d.) TIIE little ringed plover has shown signs in recent years of establishing itself in this country, where...

FINANCE AND INVESTMENT I By CUSTOS I I AFTER last week's debacle markets have now succeeded in recovering some sort of poise. It seems unlikely, however, that there can be I a...

The English Mediaeval Style Late Saxon and Viking Art. By T. D. Kendrick. (Methucn. 32s. 6d.) MR. KENDRIcK'S Anglo-Saxon Art to A.D. go0 was published in I938, and was at...

Watteau and Others French Drawings of the Eighteenth Century. By Denys Sutton. IPkeiades Books. 30s.) IN this most scholarly book the many drawings are beautifully reproduced,...

A Company of Anglers Fishingt for Sea-Trout. By H. P. Hcnzell. (A. and C. Black. 15s.) Fishing Fantasy. Bv J. Hughes-Parry. (Eyre and Spottiswoodc. 1Os. 6d.) I lgt Lines....

A New Romantic Anthology. Edited by Stefan Schimanski and Hcnri I Trcece. (Grey Walls. 10s. 6d.) SINCE the " New Romantic Movement " was, to quote the publisher's blurb, " the...

Fiction The Harder They Fall. By Budd Schulberg. (The Bodley HIead. 12s. 6d.) The Woman of Rome. By Alberto Moravia. (Secker and Warburg. 12s. 6d.) Conversation in...

Shorter Notices The Life of Reason. i By D. G. James. (Longmans. 18s.) THIS is the first of four proposed volumes dealing with the English Augustans, in which Professor...

TRANSLATING THE BIBLE SIR,-Likc your correspondent, Sir Howard Kelly, I have not had Monsignor Ronald Knox's version of the Bible in my hands. But if the example he gives from...

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR THE IMPORTANCE OF SORGHUM Sm,--What about sorghum? The question was prompted by Mr. St. George Cooper's interesting article British Guiana Develops in...

NAZI OFFICIALS IN GERMANY SIRt-I have read the article in the Spectator of June 4th, A K.R.O.'s' Retrospect, and would like to make a few comments. I myself was in a...

The Festival of Britain may be all very well, but the amount of money to be spent on it is getting alarming. And when it comes to the conversion of Battersea Park into Festival...

It is a pity that the general public should hear so little of the occasional acidities which contribute astringency to the debate in the House of Commons. There are points...

A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK R ARELY has a Ministerial statement been looked forward to with more anxious anticipation than that made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on Wednesday...

Books arc clearly a matter of individual taste, and probably every- one who reads the list of the best twenty-three books in the English language (down to I9oo), to be...

The Varsity cricket match is, I believe, dealt with on a later page of this issue, and by a much more talented pen than mine. I will therefore confine myself here to a mere...

NEWS OF THE WEEK T HE trouble about debates on housing is that the statistics with which the air rapidly grows thick are either inc herently incomparable with one another or...

The Men Who Could Help Wednesday morning's papers contained reports of an admirable speech in which Mr. Herbert Morrison, addressing the National Union of Mineworkers' annual...

Priorities in Education It is not often that the House of Commons permits itself a debatt. on education, and when it does it usually-perhaps inevitablyhappens that the...

MARGINAL COMMENT By HAROLD NICOLSON M R. ROBERT BIRLEY, speaking last week to an assembly of faculties at University College, expressed regret that we no longer conceived of...

DON'T SHOOT THE PIANISTS BY ROBERT 'AITHMAN Washington O FTEN enough in the last few weeks Mr. Truman has been offered an opportunity to damn the dilatory Congress, which is...

AT WESTMINSTER TF~HE week has been dominated by speculations as to and commcnts upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer's longexpected statement on the dollar crisis. He made it...

Drought Today, Floods Tomorrow Colonel Chinstrap himself could hardly show a more studied indifference to water than has been exhibited by the rulers of this country throughout...

Nitionalised Nonsense Among the nationaliszd industries British Electricity has managed to remain fairly free from criticism, except when it has broken the convenient obscurity...

THE DOCTORS' REAL WORK By DR. MIARGARET' NELSON JACKSON D URING a hot week at Harrogate the doctors have been discussing a year's experience of the National Health Service-a...

Undergraduate Page COLLEGE AND INDUSTRY By B. R. 0. BELL (Kebic College, Oxford) T HE autumn of 1946 saw the main influx of war-service undergraduates into our universities;...

THE VARSITY MATCH Bly J. 1P. lW. MALLALIEU, M1.1'. O XE ORD had beaten the New Zcalanders. They had cven beaten Yorkshire. Cambridge, after a slow start, had run I into top...

OUR VISITORS By PROFESSOR D. W. BROGAN IT is nearly a hundred years since the great Boston wit, Tom Appleton, said that "good Americans, when they die, go to Paris." They...

THE CRISIS AS BEFORE W EDNESDAY'S statement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on thc dollar position certainly did something to produce reassurance. The dollar drain has not...