T HE war has been slow in gathering momentum in the West. When people went to church on Sunday morning, if they did, we were at peace; when they came out the country was at war....

The decision of the German Government to begin the war with an exhibition of that form of frightfulness which concentrated the execration of the world on Germany twenty-five...

in the first days of the war have considerably clarified the general outlook, though it must always be remembered that neutrality is a condition which can be abandoned at any...

On Tuesday President Roosevelt, taking the only course that was open to him under existing American law, signed a general proclamation of American neutrality. The consequences...

The victory of General Smuts over General Hertzog in the House of Assembly at Capetown by 8o votes to 67 brings South Africa into line with the rest of the Dominions, for it...

of the Government's Control of Employment Bill is reassuring. The many adjustments which had to be improvised in the last war to secure the dilution and proper distribution of...

The closing of all theatres and other places of public entertainment at the beginning of the war was perhaps a necessary precautionary measure, and in London and other...

On Saturday the Government introduced a comprehensive measure of military conscription—the Nationa Service (Armed Forces) Bill—extending liability t■ service to all men between...

The speeches made in Moscow on the occasion of the r..;ification of the Russo-German Pact seem already to !,:long almost to a past era, but since they may have a i-earing on...

The creation of a War Cabinet is discussed in a leading article on a later page, and comment here may therefore be confined to the few Ministerial changes outside that...

The eleventh-hour attempt of Signor Mussolini to avert the war -calls for some examination in view of the terms in which the official announcement issued from Rome is couched....

The statement made by Sir John Anderson in the House of Commons on Monday regarding the treatment of refugees will be generally welcomed. The two cardinal facts regarding them...

EIRE'S declaration of neutrality, regrettable though it is both for political and stratepi.: reasons, will havc surprised no one at all in touch with Irish politics. It may be...

H ERR HITLER has chosen war. Perhaps the most tragic feature of the whole vast tragedy is the readiness of a great people to leave that fatal arbitrament in the hands of one...

When the tension became acute and war certain, all internal differences were put aside; no word was spoken in the House of Commons that did not reveal a just sense of the...

Most of us, I suppose, who remember the opening of what we shall no doubt still call for some time the Great War, have already been comparing or contrasting the way in which the...

By CENTURIO r )R Germany's attack on Poland preparations had heen going on for months, and the whole scheme of ,ttategical and tactical operations was planned down to the last...

By SIR EVELYN WRENCH R ETURN1NG to Moscow after an absence of forty years is a never-to-be-forgotten experience. Three visits to Tsarist Russia, from Helsingfors and Warsaw to...

By R. C. K. ENSOR THE evacuation of school-children, mothers with young children, and expectant mothers, from the most endangered British cities, has in its planning and...

By WARREN POSTBRIDGE T HE village has adjusted itself quickly to the war. The evacuees began to arrive on Friday, and they are already part and parcel of us. There will be...

By HAROLD NICOLSON H AVING devoted much study to the causes of the First German War, I have always been perplexed by the importance attached by serious historians to the events...

By D. W. BROGAN THE publication at this moment of a book bearing the title The RI e of European Civilized/on is a challenge; for to many of us the rise is not an u..i.iterrupted...

INCOMES, MEANS TESTS AND PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. By P. Ford. (King.5s.) EARNING AND SPENDING. By William A. Morris. (Nelson. 2S.) ECONOMICS FOR DEMOCRATS. By Geoffrey Crowther....

WHEN NERO Was DICTATOR. By Geraldine Cummins. (Frederick Muller. los. 6d.) I DID not like the rather catchpenny title of this book, but I read it because I was interested in the...

By FORREST REID BLOSSONI LIKE THE ROSE. By Norah Lofts. (Gollancz. 7s. 6d.) THE MIDDLE PASSAGE. By Roland Barker and Willisun Doerilinger. (Macmillan. 8s. 6d.) MR. CINDERELLA....

Early in the autumn, just twenty-four years ago, I flushed a very large and strong covey of partridges from a deserted gun-carriage in a field between the Marne and the Aisne....

An Oxfordshire farmer was asked the other day by a learned person whether he had ever noticed in his cows or bulls a dislike of red. Is a red rag offensive to a bull? His reply...

I had been noting not without surprise, for there were none last year, that the sole visitor to a particular Buddleia bush was the Peacock butterfly, when a letter from a friend...

It is a pretty and useful habit of the organisers of Kew Gardens to put up at the gates a list of the flowers best worth a visit each week. • A list for the year would be...

It is an ill wind—how many thousands of young partridges and their parents will be longer on the wing for the end of the weapon-still-stand in another field than the stubble!...

Wm remarkable smoothness the nation's financial organisation has passed from preparedness to defence, and the regulations necessary for the prosecution of war. That the...