25 AUGUST 1950, Page 5

One swallow does not make a summer, nor fourteen Channel

swimmers a Silly Season. The world has become such an alarming place (or perhaps our capacity for being alarmed has so much increased) that the Press no longer allows itself this interlude of licensed inanity. But the old tradition dies hard, the gay August growths of irrelevance and fatuity still flourish here and there below the stern, embattled headlines. So, at least, 1 reflected when I noted that the Daily Worker is quoting from Martin Chuzzlewit in order to prove how beastly the Americans are.

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