U.N.E.S.C.O.'S FUTURE By KENNETH LINDSAY, M.P. LAST autumn in Mexico City the second annual conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation...

FINANCE AND INVESTMENT By CUSTOS THE further outlook is unsettled. Those familiar words sum up the investment prospect today as accurately as any I can think of. While it is...

Shorter Notice How Heathen is Britain ? Bv B. G. Sandhurst. (Collins. 3s. 6d.) THIS is a deeply disquieting book. Its author has had experience with well over five thousand...

BOOKS OF THE DAY Music Teacher on Music Teacher The Great Dr. Burney. By Percy A. Scholes. (Oxford University Press. Two volumes. Three guineas.) WHY Dr. Scholes should...

Glubb and the Arabs Story of the Arab Legion. By Brigadier J. B. Glubb. (Hodder and Stoughton. 25s.) BRIGADIER GLUBB calls his book the story of the Arab Legion, and so it...

Finland's Verdict The Communists were expected to lose votes in the Finnish general election, and the final results show that they have lost severely. The People's Democratic...

Communism in Malaya The seriousness of the situation in Malaya is sufficiently indicated by the statement in the House of Commons on Wednesday that in the last two months the...

The Hanging Question Next week the House of Commons will have returned to it from another place the Criminal Justice Bill, from which their lordships have excised the clause,...

Straight Words to Miners Some singularly sound advice was given to the miners by the secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers, Mr. Arthur Horner, at the union's annual...

II Draft Eisenhower " The Democratic anti-Truman section in the United States refuse flatly to accept General Eisenhower's refusal to stand for the Presidency. There is much to...

Verminous Politics It is a great pity that the Minister of Health cannot decide whether he wants to be a constructive statesman or a street-corner tub-thumper. He quite...

Commonwealth Citizens The British Nationality Bill, which secured its second reading without a division in the House of Commons on Wednesday, after the Lords had drastically...

AT WESTMINSTER THE daily newspapers had suggested that the debate on the Anglo-American Agreement would be lively, and several Members who had engagements in their...

Brains Trust Philosophy Essays in Philosophy. By Prof. A. D. Ritchie. (Longmans. 12s. 6d.) THEsE reprinted essays were originally written at various dates between 1927 and...

England's Government English Constitutional History. By S. B. Chrimes. (Oxford Uni- versity Press: Home University Library. 5s.) SEVEN hundred years of incessant strife went...

SLOW POST SIR,-Your correspondence on the subject of slow post suggests that this inconvenience exists only in London. May I offer a recent example from the outer darkness of...

An Old Mill That always excellent local paper, the Eastern Daily Press, describes the conversion of one of the many derelict windmills into a dwelling-house. What particularly...

THE ABYSSINIAN CASE SIR,-The Four-Power commission of investigation will shortly present its report on the future of the ex-Italian colonies to the Council of Foreign...

In the Garden Gardeners perhaps are too shy of using wild flowers. Coming to a region where the plant flourishes I have thought that few flowers in the border excel viper's...

Restored Gardens The other day in the West Country I found the land-owner of very wide acres ploughing his garden with one of the newer ingenious garden motorploughs, which...

COUNTRY LIFE A NUMBER of queer appearances have resulted from the contrasts of this England's weather. Some apple trees, for example, are rather fuller of belated blossom than...

SLEEPERS FOLDED in sleep where feathery dreams are setting The mind's raw nerve at ease and utterly Removed from life, unmoving, all-forgetting, In attitudes of private peace...

MUSIC THE fourth Cheltenham Festival was largely a festival of British music, and it was very proper that the new B.B.C. Director of Music, speaking at the festival luncheon on...

ART THE summer anthologies are beginning to burgeon, reflecting, perhaps unconsciously, the tastes and prejudices of those who display them. The more they are sifted by a...

THE CINEMA "L'Idiot." (La Continentale.)-"i La Ferme du Pendu." (Academy.) "1 Metropolis." (Everyman, Hampstead.)-" It Had To Be You." (London Pavilion.) DOSTOIEVSKY tempts...

"King Henry IV." (Part I.) By William Shakespeare. At the Greek l heatre, Bradfield College. This year's production at Bradfield is creditable without being distinguished. The...

CONTEMPORARY ARTS THE THEATRE "Ambassador Extraordinary." By William Douglas Home. (Ald- wych.) "AND so can any man," Hotspur pointed out when Glendower said he could summon...

The obligation laid on companies by the new Company Act to state the remuneration paid to their directors has led to some interesting disclosures. Mr. Oscar Hobson has very...

With an unobtrusiveness as engaging as it is unusual in these raucous days Who's Who for 1948 is content to inscribe inconspicuously on its title page the intimation, "Our...

A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK HISTORY, even the history of events as recent as forty or fifty years ago, has been so amply recorded both by professional his- torians and by more...

I have rarely come across a better shillingsworth than the Summer Number of the University of Edinburgh Journal, which by a fortunate chance I happened to pick out from a...

No one, whether Christian or infidel, who cares for English litera- ture, English calligraphy and English printing should miss the " Bible in English Life" exhibition at the...

MARGINAL COMMENT By HAROLD NICOLSON AT Bristol last week I attended a public dinner given by the local branch of the English-Speaking Union. It was an auspicious occasion....

Introduction to the Film The Art of the Film. By Ernest Lindgren. (Allen and Unwin. 16s.) FILM-MAKERS, film critics and some film-goers, at any rate, are already in Mr....

Fiction Portrait in Two Colours. By Stuart B. Jackman. (Faber. 8s. 6d.) Stranger in the Valley. By Dorothy Clewes. (Harrap. 8s. 6d.) Mathilde. Bv Leonhard Frank. (Peter...

A NEW HEALTH ERA By LORD MORAN THE Act which came into force on Monday is only the last phase of the work on the health services that has gone on for generations. But it was...

HYDERABAD AND INDIA SIR,-I note that Mr. Churchill's belated expression of shame and regret at the shocking treatment meted out to the Nizam of Hyderabad was ignored by most...

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR FROM THE RUSSIAN ZONE SIR,-In view of the difficulty of obtaining in this country reliable informa. tion about conditions in the Russian Zone of Germany,...

THE WRONG KIND OF HAT By PHILIP WOODRUFF THE children were playing Oranges and Lemons in a grove of tamarisk trees on the banks of a lake. We had driven out sixteen miles from...

WOMEN IN THE PRIESTHOOD SIR,-Your many readers who listened with such great appreciation to your broadcast on the Lambeth Conference may be interested to know about a proposed...

RECORDS OF PATIENTS SIR,-May I support Dr. Lyle's contention in your issue of June 25th that the " strict professional secrecy formerly observed between doctor and patient will...

THE LOGIC OF NATIONALISATION SIR,-To the detached onlooker at our contemporary politics nothing is more astonishing than the apparent blindness of British Socialists to the...

SIR,-Efforts that are being made to relieve the Russian blockade of Berlin deserve the greatest measure of praise. The high-handedness with which the Soviet Command is...

Stalin and Tito It is still difficult to assess the value of Yugoslavia's defiance ot the Cominform with any confidence. The reactions which might have been expected have not...

War and Peace in Palestine The terms for a permanent peace in Palestine which Count Bernadotte offered to the Jews and Arabs were a skilful attempt to juggle the conflicting...

NEWS OF THE WEEK NEARLY all the news about Berlin gives a heartening impression N of determination and forethought on the part of the Western occupying Powers. The air lift...

Aspects of Gardening The English Landscape Garden. By H. F. Clark. (Pleiades Books. 12s. 6d.) Reclaimino Your Garden. By Stanley B. Whitehead. (Faber. 18s.) FlowerinO...

Two Views of the Orchestra The Conductor Raises His Baton. By William J. Finn. (Dennis Dobson. 12s. 6d.) A Seat at the Proms. By J. Raymond Tobin. (Eivans Bros. 8s. 6cl.)...

THE REAL OLYMPIC GAMES By R. L. HOWLAND SPORT is very much in the news just now. We have had Wimbledon and Henley and the golf " Open "; the Australians are still here, and...

WHITHER TITO? By G. B. THOMAS IT would be a profound mistake to think that the Western Powers have anything to gain from the quarrel between Moscow and Belgrade. No doubt it...

REALITIES OF RECOVERY HE signature of the Economic Co-operation Agreement beT tween Britain and the United States was postponed literally until the eleventh hour in order to...

HUMANER WHALING By DAVID GUNSTON FEW of the many millions who nowadays eat margarine and Fcooking fat made from whale oil or whale meat in one or other of its thinly-disguised...