Spectator's Notebook

MR.DAVID FROST did well to turn the search- light of his highly competent television programme on the charity show being held this weekend at the Royal Court Theatre by the organisation known as Medical Aid for Viet- nam. Those responsible for running this charity are no doubt prompted by exclusively humani- tarian motives, but they can hardly be accused of frankness. Even if the performers had been told in advance what would be done with the money raised, the public, who were (and are) being invited to subscribe anything up to ten guineas apiece for tickets, can have had no idea that the intention was to send the entire pro- ceeds to the Vietcong. Thanks to Frost, the proceeds will now be sent to the International Red Cross to be distributed to the two sides in South Vietnam on a population basis—which, interpreted strictly, ought to mean about three-quarters to the area controlled by the Saigon government and a quarter to that held by the Vietcong.

But I am afraid the matter can hardly be allowed to end there. Indeed, in a sense Mr Frost has missed the real point altogether. For it doesn't really matter which side gets medical aid, provided the public is told where the money it subscribes is going to. The Medical Aid for Viet- nam Committee are no doubt right in their belief that the shortage is greatest in those areas con- trolled by the Vietcong—although they are wrong in their contention that the vast bulk of the Inter- national Red Cross's Vietnam funds go to the Saigon administration: in fact, as the SPECTATOR revealed a year ago, this eminent body habitually sends one-third of the money it receives to the South, one-third to the North, and one-third to the Vietcong.

Unobserved The real point is what happens to the money for the Vietcong, for whose succour the Medical Aid for Vietnam organisation exists. For all such aid is sent directly to the official National Liberation Front representative in Moscow. He is then supposed to send it to Hanoi, which in turn is supposed to hand it over to the Red Cross Committee of the National Liberation Front, for use in the Vietcong-held areas of South Vietnam. But so far as anyone knows the supplies provided might just as well be sold by the NLF man in Moscow and the proceeds used to buy gold, or weapons of war or anything under the sun. Not only have the activities of the NLF Red Cross at no time been open to in- spection or observation, but it is a staggering fact that not a single representative of this alleged organisation has even so much as been seen either by the International Red Cross or by anyone else. Those contemplating buying tickets for Sunday's charity show would not, I think, be unreasonable if they sought first some greater assurance that both the charity and the show were more than a (no doubt unwitting) facade.

Stirling Area

From Tuesday's Financial Times:

Lord Fraser had interests in farming at Aviemore, Inverness-shire. . . . There is also his mansion at Milngavie, Sterlingshire. But his other farming interests in Sterlingshire have already been handed over to his son, Mr Hugh Fraser.

One man, at least, as the FT would no doubt put it, who believed in investing in the Stirling Area.

Foot Fault

I was particularly struck the other day by two photographs in the Daily Mirror, both of Miss Firyal Jelal. Now Miss Jelal—lest there are any of my readers not yet acquainted with the lady —has just been unanimously elected Miss Syria, which entitles her to represent her country in the Miss World contest soon to be held here in Lon- don. The first photograph showed her clothed as she was when she won her national title: blanketed in black virtually from head to foot. I say 'virtually' because all we could see of Miss Jelal herself was, in fact, the best part of her head and a pair of rather pretty bare feet. The second photograph displayed her as she will be appear- ing in London, all oriental mystery gone, wear- ing nothing but a bikini . . . and a pair of those hideous high-heeled sandals that appear to be de rigueur at all British beauty competitions. I'm quite sure that even if our beauty queens were persuaded to compete topless or bottomless or ' even both, there is one thing about which they would put their (decently clad) foot down: they would not appear shoeless. But why? Have we become a nation of shoe-fetishists? And if so, what is Mr Roy Jenkins going to do about that?

News from Beirut

Further pursuing my researches into the Levant, I see that Lord Thomson is reported to have informed the citizens of Beirut that he is in favour of The Times's writers ending their con- ventional anonymity, and that he has 'no doubt' that his acquisition of a controlling interest in that newspaper will be approved by the Mono- polies Commission. I have no doubt of this either, although it might perhaps have been more tactful of Lord Thomson to have allowed the Commis- sion to go through the motions of investigating the deal first.

No doubt, too, the Commission has already learned that there is more to the merger than the public has yet been told : that Lord Thomson has acquired not just The Times (as the press re- lease made out) but also the Times Literary Sup- plement, the highly profitable Times Educational Supplement. and even (indirectly) the great new building at Printing House Square itself. But have the monopoly boys yet discovered, I wonder, that the takeover that Sir William Haley called in his leading article 'a natural marriage' was in fact considered by Sir William such an unnatural mis- fortune that he single-handedly tried to avert it by arranging a merger with the Guardian in- stead? I wonder, too, how fully the Commission will investigate the frustrated attempt of the Financial Times to buy The Times, and the im-

portant role played by Mr Kenneth Keith, the well-known merchant banker, in all these com- plicated comings and goings. I should add that, for my part, I believe the Thomson deal should certainly go through. But I hope, too, that the Monopolies Commission take the trouble to write a full report about it all.

A Fatter Fish

Certainly, no one will read what it has to say, especially the chapter at the end headed 'con- clusions,' with greater interest than Sir Max Aitken and Lord Rothermere. For there are other press mergers in the air—and don't believe any- thing anyone says to the contrary. Sir Max is well aware how much easier it would be for his Daily Express to strike back at the booming Mirror if he could incorporate in it the Daily Mail, nor has it eluded Lord Rothermere that his Mail is, on its own, a somewhat unremunerative property. And I would be surprised if it hasn't already occurred to both proprietors that the financial gains to be had from the monopoly situation of a single London evening paper—in place of Lord R's appalling but lucrative Evening News and Sir Max's excellent but struggling Evening Standard—could be fantastic. With Lord Beaverbrook now able to talk to his Maker with- out the assistance of the long-distance telephone, the only remaining potential obstacle to this consummation is the Monopolies Commission. And I suspect that this may prove, a harder net for that fat fish to wriggle through than it will for Lord Thomson's top people's tiddler.

Let Us Pay Never, surely, can so plain a city have con- tained so many beautiful things as Florence. The only architectural merit it ever had lay in one (or perhaps two) bridges destroyed during the war. The Ponte Vecchio, which alone remains, is distinguished only by its antiquity; and as for the dreadful cathedral and campanile, they resemble nothing so much as two grotesquely large slabs of nougat. It was well said (1 think by Mr Osbert Lancaster) that the best building in Florence is the railway station (even if Mussolini couldn't make the trains run on time, at least he built fine stations to wait in). But, alas, the dreadful Arno floods seem to have left the buildings un- scathed and damaged only the sublime objects within them.

Fortunately, so far as I can discover, it seems that, except for the Cimabue Crucifixion, nothing in the first division has suffered. The Masaccio frescoes in the Brancacci chapel at the Chiesa del Carmine—which, taking historic importance and rarity as well as aesthetic worth into account, must surely be the greatest single work of the entire Renaissance—appear to be all right, while Michel- angelo Buonarotti, Uccello and the other all-time greats also seem to have emerged unscathed. But the full extent of this terrible loss is still unknown, and although all too little can be done in the way of restoration I'm surprised at the Italian govern- ment's decision to exempt tourists from the new petrol tax imposed to pay for the flood damage. Visitors to Italy, I'm sure, would be only too happy to help pay to repair these incomparable works of which they, through the centuries, have been among the greatest beneficiaries.

Headline of the Week From the front page of Wednesday's Sun:

JOHNSON TRIUMPHS AT THE POLLS

I hope somebody remembered to tell LBJ.

NIGEL LAWSON