Portrait of the Week— THE TORY GOVERNMENT made a couple
of mag- naminous gestures towards the lesser breeds: some of the Lane pictures—all of which had long been claimed as the property of the Republic of Ireland —are to be released, and so are some of the Africans detained in Kenya. Mr. Butler promised legislation to ensure that in future appeals from the Court of Criminal Appeal to the Lords would not 'depend on the fiat of the Attorney-General.
GENERAL DE GAULLE continued to set tbe pace (a slow one) for the climb to the summit; he an- nounced that Mr. Khrushchcv would be his guest through the latter half of March; implied that there cannot be a full East-West summit meeting until April or May, perhaps June; asked for a second Western sub-summit meeting in the spring; and refused to suspend French nuclear-weapons tests, even if 'the Anglo-Saxons and the Russians' agreed to stop theirs. Mr. Selwyn Lloyd's visit to Paris did nothing to elicit softer words or milder man- ners from le General. Mr. Chou En-lai's proposal of a buffer zone in the Himalayas was described by Mr. Nehru as being 'not bad'; Mr. Khrushchev made mediatory motions. The United Nations team came back from Laos with no evidence to support the Laotian Government's allegation of 'direct aggression' by Communist North Vietnam.
SOUTH AFRICAN POLICE charged the. African crowds that demonstrated their disgust at the banishment of Mrs. Mafekeng. The police had armoured cars, searchlights, sten guns, rifles and revolvers; the Africans had sticks and stones. A white couple in South Africa who had adopted an abandoned coloured baby were kicked out of the Union. By sixty-seven votes to three, a special committee of the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution solemnly calling on member States to fulfil their obligations under the Charter, and regretting the South African Government's racial policy. One of the three votes cast against the resolution was Britain's. After clashes in the Congo, the Belgian Government hastened to pub- lish a programme of democratic reform for their trusteeship territory of Ruanda-Urundi, which will remain under the kingships of the Mwami of Ruanda and the Mwami Mwambutsi of Urundi.
MR. PHILIP NOEL-BAKER was defeated in the elec- tions for the Labour Shadow Cabinet, but was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Dr. Edith Sum- merskill was defeated, too, and wasn't awarded anything. Mr. Gerald Nabarro asked the House of Commons to 'whack the thugs,' and a group of his fellow Conservatives. submitted a motion de- manding the reintrOduction of the bitch and the cane. The Duke of Norfolk announced that owing to 'the heavy costs of living,' he, the duchess and their four daughters would have to move out of Arundel Castle and into a twelve-bedroom house still being built on the estate. Not only the Nor- folks felt the pinch : the scarcity of butter sent up the price to twice what it was in the spring of last year, and the dismissal of the London Library's claim for rate exemption confronted it with a bill for £20,000 arrears and £5,000 more to find each year.
THERE were more fatal crashes on M (for Marples) 1, and a Royal Marine decided to walk it-110 miles in 36+ hours, a record. Unanimously, according to the Daily Herald, and by five votes to four, according to the other popular papers, Miss Ccirine Rottschafer, of the Netherlands, was elected Miss World, a title which. has to do with personability. But Jodrell Bank got in touch with Venus, all the same.
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