SIR HERBERT WARREN SIR,-In your issue of June 25th, the 6,oooth, it is stated that in the 4,oooth number there was a translation from the Greek by Mr. Warren, "the future...

COUNTRY LIFE How odd and unexpected the influences of the season on particular planes and animals. We have enjoyed-*n the South-a warmer and sunnier spring and early summer...

A CENTRE FOR YOUTH SIR,-An International Youth Centre has just been opened at 30 Pont Street, S.W. I. It will be managed by the International Youth Council in Britain to which...

I N view of the figures published at Moscow, there can be no question of the magnitude of the battle now raging on the Kursk- NEWS OF THE WEEK Bielgorod front, and though in...

The Sequel to Hot Springs - The preliminary step to ensure by co-operation freedom from want of food was successfully taken by the United Nations conference at Hot Springs, and...

I The Poles' Dead Leader The loss Poland has suffered by the tragic death of General Sikorski, at once Prime Minister and Commander-in-Chief, is impossible to estimate; some...

Charles Wright. Shorter Notice By C. Ernest Fayle. (Allen and Unwin. Ss. 6d.) CHARLES WRIGHT, born in 1855, died in 1940, was the best type of good citizen. More might be...

FiNANCE AND INVESTMENT By CUSTOS ON the threshold of great events in the military field, markets are behaving remarkably well. While the general attitude of investors is still...

To Publish or not to Publish The Italian Minister of Propaganda has been at some pains to explain why Mussolini's speech to the Fascist Party directorate was held back for...

A Banned Paper The fact that the French weekly La Marseillaise will no longer ,be published, at any rate in this country, is by no means to be regretted. It was an...

War-Time Earnings The large increases in the earning power of labour in the manufacturing industries are dac to harder or longer work and not to increases in wage rates. That...

Progress in the Colonies A valuable report which the Colonial Office has issued this week on Labour Supervision in the Colonial Empire, 19371943, contains facts which should be...

Timber in Britain No one who has recently travelled about the countryside can fail to have noticed how it has been shorn of its best timber owing to war-time felling. Much of...

PLAN AND MAN CAN Man Plan? Man of lands, Midlandian, Lands-Endian, Shetlandian; Man Cambrian and Cumbrian, Northumbrian and Anglian; Romantic Ruritanian and Transatlantic...

"I Russian Guerillas." THE CINEMA At the Tatler MR. HERBERT MARSHALL ("not the actor," as The Times so acidly reports) has fallen foul of my fellow critics. Faced by the...

TIME AND THE HEART SITTING in the park She sees The air grow dark And stars Circle the trees. Before her pass In Time's enchanted never Lovers of every season Seeking in love's...

MUSIC Some Works from Soviet Russia How fundamentally old-fashioned and unsophisticated are the composers of Soviet Russia. There is nothing alarming or revolutionary about...

" The Fur Coat." THE THEATRE At the Comedy-" The Knight Was Bold." At the Piccad ily. THE comedy by the late A. G. Macdonell, author of Autobiography of a Cad, is also about...

THE DOCTOR'S PAY SIR,-It is much to be regretted that the only contribution so many laymen make to this very important question of a comprehensive medical service should take...

ELECTORAL REFORM SIR,-In your issue of July 2nd you state that "the country will require to be satisfied that the next Parliament is really representative, and it cannot be...

JOHN HAMPDEN SIR,-Dr. Barker can take care of himself. but it seems to me that Mr. Esme Wingfield-Stratford's letter on Hampden, with its odd analeg cs and parallels, confuses...

SIR,-Your correspondent "Layman's " strictures on the medical profes- sion are grossly unfair. I am not going to enter into a mud-throwing competition with him, though I could...

WAVELL'S OPPORTUNITY SIR,-At the risk of repeating what I have said already in your columns, may I point out a few of the factual errors in Mr. Mackay-Mure's letter?' I. We...

SIR,-Doctor Maclean's article contains the amazing statement that Quebec has replaced Paris as the capital of the most civilised race in the worrd.. In no respect whatsoever is...

WLADYSLAW SIKORSKI By W. J. ROSE, IGHTNING out of a clear sky. That is the only way of describing the terrible news that reached us from Gibraltar on Monday. Sikorski had...

Lytton Strachey. " The Incomparable Max " By Max Beerbohm. (Cambridge Univers!ty PressI is. 6d.) THIS remarkable essay, which was delivered as the Rede Lecture for 1943 at...

War and Politics in China. BOOKS OF THE DAY Guilt and Innocence in China By Sir John Pratt. (Jonathan Cape. 12S. 6d.) THIS is a didactic wvork, written, as all such books if...

SIR,-IShave never read a less convincing and more woolly- argument I than that put forward by Dr. Norman Maclean for increasing the birthrate. Times have changed since New...

SIR,-Not content with political and moral pleas for an increased birth- rate, Dr. Norman Maclean adds a biological argument which is far from conclusive in our present state of...

A NEW BRITISH COMMONWEALTH LETTERS TO THE EDITOR SIR,-Don Salvador de Madariaga's letter on " Factors of Cohesion " in last week's Spectator emboldens me to publish a proposal...

THE UNBORN MILLIONS SIR,-It would have been interesting if Dr. Maclean hail compared not only the physical but the mental creativeness of France and French Canada during the...

DR. INGE ON BOMBING SIR.-" I believe when the war is over we shall be very sorry for what we have done," writes Dr. Inge in his article on the bombing of German and Italian...

The River of Life. Fiction By Alexander Kuprin. (Allen and Unwin. 7s. 6d.) I The Alphabet. By Annabel Farjeon. ((Cape. 8s. 6d.) They Came to London. By Paul Tabori. (Hodder...

England's Service. Economics of the Future By Sarpedon. (Macmillan. 6s.) The New Economic Warfare. By Antonin Basch. (Routledge. 7s. 6d.) ENGLAND'S service in the nineteenth...

MARGINAL COMMENT By HAROLD NICOLSON HE British citizen, viewing recent political events in North Africa, is much bewildered. Even those who have followed developments from...

HITLER LOSES PATIENCE By STRATEGICUS SHORT time ago General Dietmar informed the world that Ludendorff's offensive in x918 was a symptom of weakness, and suggested that...

The Picts and the Martyrs. For the Young By Arthur Ransome. (Cape. 8s. 6d.) The Mystery of Obadiah. By Richard Armstrong. (Dent. 7s. 6d.) To Sea! To Sea! By Elinor Mordaunt....

The MSan Born to be King. According to Miss Sayers By Dorothy L. Sayers. (Gollancz. ios. 6d.) Miss DOROTHY SAYERS is one of the few living writers whom I should have expected...

TO CONQUER UNEMPLOYMENT HE Government has not yet turned Sir William Beveridge, the stormy petrel of Social Security, on to the yet more important problem of unemployment. But...

A HAPPY NEUTRAL By ROSE MACAULAY OU cannot go about Portugal without being aware that the sympathies of most Portuguese are with the British in the present struggle. With the...

ANGLI IN ORIENTE By 'MAJOR J. M. COLLARD HE renunciation of extra-territoriality in China, the abolition of capitulations in Egypt, and the probable independence of India...

MERCHANTMEN AT WAR By J. L. HODSON UR merchantmen have been in the war from the beginning The war was not a day old when the Donaldsori liner 'Athenia' was torpedoed and sunk...

A SPECTATOR'S -NOTEBOOK HE Tory Reform Committee, the group of Conservative members recently formed under the chairmanship of Lord Hinchingbrooke, is carrying increasing...