Portrait of the Week
THE silly season, they call it, and it has been a week of tragedies. More than two thousand people are known to have lost their lives in the rioting in French North Africa. In the floods which have followed the hurricane which swept across nine New England and mid-Atlantic States, 206 people are known to be dead (by drowning, landslides, elec- trocution and road accidents) and at least 100-are still missing. In the Equatoria Corps of the Sudan Defence Force there has been a mutiny. The Southern Sudanese have had most to fear from incorporation in an Egyptian-Sudan union, in which their voice would count for little. The threat to move the Equatoria Corps into Northern Sudan and replace it by a more reliable Corps, thus depriving its members of the chance to play a part in the destinies of the South, appears to have been the cause of the mutiny. The Sudanese Government has proposed that in- depence should be granted immediately, without plebiscite or election, and the mutiny further weakens the chances of the Egyptian Government of enforcing union with Egypt at sonic future date.
In India, the recent incidents in Goa have left behind prob- lems for Mr. Nehru. He has discovered, not for the first time, that his ambiguous words can have an inflammatory effect which he did not intend. He has therefore spent the week in trying to check the fire for which some, not unreasonably, hold him responsible. Rather belatedly he complains that re- sponsible policies cannot be directed from the market place. Rather belatedly, also, he has reproved those of his followers who assume that satyagraha should lead to military or police action, and therefore to bloodshed. The mood which he has aroused and now seeks to quieten is perhaps best summed up in the headline under which the Congress newspaper, the Hindustan Times, commented on the riots in Bihar, which caused the deaths of eight people: `Naughty Bihar.' Mr, Nehru has also decided that no new Christian missionaries shall be admitted to India and that no new branch or institution of a mission shall be opened. Also from the Far East comes the hint that an amnesty will be granted to the terrorists in Malaya early in September, although the Government of the Federa- tion has no intention of entering into any negotiations with the Communists. In the United States, the Fund for the Republic. set up by the trustees of the Ford Foundation four years ago. has commented severely in its first report on the continual flouting of civil rights, and especially of the Sixth Amendment, which is supposed to guarantee 'the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury.'
At home, Britain has sweltered in a heat-wave. The sea at Brighton has been hotter than for thirty years and bathing at night has become a normal practice instead of the hobby of a few freaks. To suit this weather, the home news has been suit- ably light, except for the accumulating evidence of the effects of Mr. Butler's demand for credit restrictions. (To judge by their different treatment of the subject, it seems that the readers of The Times are people with far more influence with their bank managers than readers of the Daily Express.) The second IRA raid (on an Army camp at Rhyl) was found to be a practical joke by serving officers. A protest has been made against the prac- tice of City firms of issuing their employees with meal tickets, on the grounds that it subsidises both the employing firms and the restaurants. A judge has conic to the conclusion that a bachelor means an unmarried man. The Edinburgh Festival has begun again, though there is evidence that throughout Europe the Festival fever is subsiding after' its post-war climax. British European Airways has returned its first net profit in eight years of full operation. The TUC has published its annual report, which The Times found `depressing.' The Sheldonian is to be restored, though whether to look as it does or as Christopher Wren intended is still not decided. Lastly, two records have been established : a Canberra has flown to New York and back again in fourteen hours, and Kent have allowed seventy-three extras in one county innings. The wicket-keeper (not Evans) complained of a pain in the neck. He probably was not the only one to do so.
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