Portrait of the Week
ALL the ordinary noises of a usually uproarious news season have of course been drowned this week by the much-recorded radio voice of the Russian earth satellite launched last Friday, and the babel of congratulation, recrimination and dispute which has followed it. Scientists have,. on the whole, been too busy tracking the course of the 'red moon' and caletilating when it will disintegrate through contact *with the atmosphere to worry too much about the repercussions, but the Americans, probably the most space-educated nation in the world, have been understandably mortified that the Russians have won the race to launeh the first satellite and have apparently succeeded on a scale which the first American launching now planned for December must try to emulate. They have been somewhat comforted by the fact that the height achieved by the contrap- tion does not appear to be as great as the Russians claimed and it has even been whispered that the weight is ten times as small, but it has been impossible to conceal that it is a famous victory. The sinister possibility that the huge rocket which must have been used in the launching might come in useful for intercontinental purposes has not been overlooked by either side; Mr. Khrushchev rubbed it in with his usual ebullience (though he offered to bring the conquest of outer space under international control) and Congressmen who were a short while ago clipping President Eisenhower's defence budget have been rushing to the flag. Mr. Khrushchev's offer was promptly refused by the State Department and not quite so promptly con- sidered favourably by Mr. Dulles. The RSPCA has sent a protest to Russia against the proposal to use animals in the next launching, and the Red Dean has said that it all proves what he has been saying for years about Russian education as compared with British. The three nuclear powers have all demonstrated their prowess with large- scale explosions. President Eisenhower has denied rebuffing Marshal Zhukov's project of a visit to Washington.
The Labour Party in conference at .Brighton missed these excitements by several days, but it
had its own explosions to light the sky, notably Mr. Bevan's refusal to commit the next Labour Government to renouncing the H-bomb irrespec- tive of the actions of anyone else, and the painless passage of the 'Shareholder State' proposals and the new pensions scheme. Mr. Harold Wilson, apart from recording for the benefit of the Con- ference his disapproval of MI. Thorneycroft and the new Bank rate, has also been harrying Mr. Macmillan with the information that he has some evidence to suggest that the news of the new rate had been leaked beforehand through a political channel. This information has now been laid be- fore the Lord Chancellor, who is to decide whether or not there is a case for an official inquiry.
Other outstanding crises are pursuing- their expected courses. Riots in Warsaw over the sup- pression of a student newspaper which had deviated from the party line led to some rough police work. The rioters, mostly students, showed a strongly anti-Russian temper and had to be dispersed by the hated militia; a delegation to Mr. Gomulka was arrested and will later be tried. The blockade of San Marino by the Italian Govern- ment seems to be having the desired effect of forcing the Communists to relinquish power in favour of the Democrats but at the cost of stirring up great resentment. M. Mollet failed in his attempt to form a new French government, and the task was handed to M. Pleven. In Norway two British generals have been stoned at Oslo airport by a crowd who took them for General Speidel.
In Yugoslavia Mr. Djilas, the ex-Vice-President, was condemned to another seven years in prison for his book The New Class, which is regarded there as 'vulgar and anti-Socialist.' James R. Hoffa, accused by the Industrial Organisations Federation of corruption and due for trial on a charge of telephone tapping, has been elected President of the American Teamsters' Union by an overwhelming majority. A Peronist plot has been hatched and unmasked in the Argentine. Britain won the Ryder Cup for the first time since .1933. The Finance Minister of Ghana has been refused service by a cafd in the State of Delaware.
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