— Portrait of the Week— CHRISTMAS CAME but once a
year, and while 'twas here it brought good cheer. Roughly nine hundred million Christmas cards were sent in Britain, and at least thirty people were killed on the roads. Messages of peace and goodwill were exchanged in all quarters, and immediately after the holiday the United States Government announced that it felt free to resume the testing of nuclear weapons as from Thursday, when the agreed moratorium period ran out.
111E TRADES UNION CONGRESS, meeting just before Christmas, decided to support the month's boycott of South African goods which begins in February. The Congress announced that it would urge all its merinbers and affiliated organisations to join the boycott in order to express their 'personal revul- sion against the racial policies being pursued by the Government of South Africa in the political, social and industrial fields.' When, however, it came to doing something about the boycott, as opposed to talking about it, the Trades Union Congress became more diffident, and the possi- bility of an industrial boycott, in which affiliated trades unions would refuse to handle or unload imports from South Africa, was referred for further study. The Transport and General Workers' Union, which would have to play the biggest role in any such action, apparently re- inforced on this occasion the magnificent stand on behalf of international brotherhood that it took When the danger arose of having coloured bus- conductors in West Bromwich, and the danger of making the boycott effective appeared to have been averted. Meanwhile, the last members of the IvIonckton Commission, which is to examine 'such aspects of the Central African Federation as Sir Roy Welensky does not object to its examining, were named. Negotiations between the Prime Minister and Mr. Gaitskell having broken down. Partly over Mr. Macmillan's insistence that the last members of the Commission must be Privy Councillors, many persons found it odd that two
of the last three were not Privy Councillors after all.
MORE PROGRESS, if that is the right word, was made towards the Summit. The whole thing having been turned into a benefit night for President de Gaulle (from whose Cabihet the Minister of Education has just resigned in protest against concessions to clerical opinion on the question of Roman Catho- lich se-0010, informed quarters were speculating
Whether it would not be best to start the conference on July 14 and have done with it. May 16 was subsequently fixed, however, Mr. Khrushchev accepting within twenty-four hours.
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AS 11ILIR CONTRIBUTION to Christmas, some Ger-
mans painted swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans on the Cologne synagogue, while others, who appeared to have got their theological calendar hopelessly mixed up, threatened an aged German Jew with crucifixion; a major row began to brew throughout Germany about the wave of Nazi echoes of which these were the latest examples.
IN THE UNITED STATES Mr. Rockefeller announced that he would not be a candidate for the Republi- can nomination for President, thus leaving the field Clear for Mr. Nixon. Most Democrats were of the opinion that this would make it easier for them
win the election, but the contest for their own nomination was as open as before.
LORD HALIFAX died at the age of seventy-eight, and Mr. Bevan was taken to hospital for a major Abdominal operation at the age of sixty-two.
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