— Portrait of the Week
MR. MACLEOD MADE PUBLIC the Government's plan for a new Northern Rhodesian constitution, and Sir Roy Welensky, announcing his 'total rejection' of it, sprang to arms—or, at any rate, called up a couple of battalions of Territorials. There was mobilisation in Katanga, too, where President Tshombe denounced as 'a declaration of war' the Security Council's resolution empowering United Nations troops in the Congo to use force to prevent a full-scale conflict there. Seven Lumum- hists were executed in South Kasai, and there were reports of the capture and murder of Congo- lese judges. Whatever Sir Roy Welensky may think .about the Commonwealth, President Makarios (who might have been thought to have yore to complain about) brought the Republic of Cyprus into it.
THE UNITED STATES made a successful test shot with a space-ship, and named three men from whom one will be chosen to make a man-into- space flight within the next three months. The United States made another long shot in propos- ing that all its future aid to the Royal Laotian Government should be submitted to and approved by a committee of neutral nations. There were prospects of a meeting between President de Gaulle and President Bourguiba of Tunisia to discuss Algerian negotiations, and Dr. Adenauer and Mr. Macmillan met to talk about the dead- lock between the Common Market and the seven outsiders.
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1111: DAILY MIRROR group increased its bid for shares in Odhams Press, and the shares went up five shillings apiece on 'Change, adding £3 million to their total value. About 4,000 people—among them Bertrand Russell—sat down outside the Ministry of Defence as a protest against the Polaris missile agreement and British bomb policy. None of them was arrested, but the police picked up twenty-nine demonstrators protesting outside the Belgiari Embassy against the killing of laimumba. The House of Commons had a num- ber of late sittings, in consequence of the Opposi- tion having decided to do a bit of opposing: some of the women in the catering department were on their feet for twenty-one hours at a time, in spite of having Mrs. Slater (Lab., Stoke North) and Mrs. Castle (Lab., Blackburn) to help with the washing-up.
LORD JAMES OF RUSHOLME, High Master of Man- chester Grammar School, was named as first Vice- Chancellor of the new University of York, and Mr. Robert Graves, a practising poet, defeated three critics in the election to the Chair of Poetry at Oxford, his victory being greeted with a placard, 'Oxford Digs Graves.'
IT Was widely reported that Mr. Bill Pratt, winner of £22,000 on a football pool, was unable to read; this proved to be unfounded when Mr. Pratt revealed that he could, in fact, read the names of virtually all League football teams, ex- cept for a certain understandable dubiety between Chester and Chesterfield. In the House of Lords, Lord Chorley was persuaded to withdraw an amendment that would have substituted for the term, 'pleasure boats,' in the text of the Public Health Bill, the phrase, 'water craft when adapted and used for purposes of pleasure.' An unem- ployed cook who walked into a bank, and said, 'Excuse mc, gentlemen, this a bank raid,' was put on probation thus demonstrating that polite- ness sometimes pays. A man who escaped from Leeds Prison hurt his ankle and dialled 999 for help, this, giving the prison the first news of his escape.
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