Portrait of the Week
'NEVER SPOIL WHAT YOU HAVE by seeking to have also what you had.' The Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference this week developed into anything but a formal exercise in consultation. With Sir Roy Welensky as the not always wel- come ally of Lord Home, Katanga and the British handling of the Commonwealth Committee at the UN were unexpectedly thrown in the path of the scheduled communiqué. The literal treat- ment of previous British assurances and promises made the preparing of the present document a Particularly tricky matter. Now Mr. Nehru and Mr. Holyoake are to follow President Ayub Khan to President de Gaulle, and though the Six looked unimpressed by the Conference, the Community application to join the Coal and Steel Lummunity was accepted.
.„}"RM) UPON THE FIRST anniversary of Dag tiammarskjitild's death, the seventeenth General Assembly of the UN opened in New York. It was i heralded by the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth in the current series of Soviet high-altitude nuclear tests, and the hotting-up of the segregation issue in America. Also meeting were the World Batik the International Monetary Fund which Showed some concern at the current British trade figures, but warned Mr. Maudling not to offer any Wild
. suggestions. The US Defence Department graciously
approved of the current British ex- penditure on defence, now seven per cent. of the national product, and, having heard it so often, is coming to believe that we could double our forces IA, Germany in seven days; the extent of aid to French nuclear ambitions is still obscure. Nine 111, en are now charged with taking part in the attempt to assassinate President de Gaulle, but, stripped of his tie, belt and bootlaces, the leader tore his shirt into pieces and hung himself in prison. The Belgian Office for Economic Affairs collapsed, killing sixteen people, though the cracks had been seen in the walls the previous Week, and the tremors were felt in the overlook- ing British Embassy. Renault cut' their prices; a record-size party tunnelled their way under the Berlin Wall but a thirteen-year-old boy who had climbed over for fun was reported homesick and
sent in the next day, and in Sweden the Social- ists, power for thirty years, made gains in the
town elections. Danilo Dolci won his fast in Sicily With a day to spare, while in Massachusetts Teddy Kennedy Y won the Democratic nomination to fight 'r the Senate by an overwhelming majority.
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AT HOME AMID A FLURRY of special reports (on education, taxation, housing and transport) the liberal Party Assembly opened in Llandudno. ,'ne Conservative Central Office put out optimis- le forecasts for the coming by-elections at the same time as meteorologists were promising to give reliable long-term weather predictions
i
r. Ian Aird, the surgeon who specialised n rlarating Siamese twins, was found dead in bed; Mr. e. Marples is to introduce compulsory one-year ar tests; to create an impression of strength Petrol truck drivers are going on strike while their 1: aY claim is awaiting arbitration, and the first now since April was recorded on Ben Nevis. 14F- WEEK'S CONFERENCES were rivalled by some e(1;1.ttallY hard-fought sport. At the European rimes the sum of the Common Market's gold Common including Britain (and on a possible new ,clarliMon Market voting pattern?) beat the Rus- h'i-ils, by IS to 13, but the West Germans Ina-,I.,"nYay accused the Russians of using drugs. `ue European Bridge Championships Britain "Was outbid and outplayed by the French and in ehowever chess lost to Cuba. A British driver, rwever, won the Italian Grand Prix and in the _st .round of the European Cup Ipswich beat Floriana of Malta 4-1.
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