Portrait of the Week— T HE RUMBLING of shell-fire has been
heard oft
the Chinese coast; a different kind of rumbling has come from Arkansas, with a nasty echo from Nottingham. And even the Lambeth Conference sent up a puff or two of smoke in its report. In France Algerian terrorists have been responsible for more death, injury and destruction, and in French West Africa General de Gaulle has had the unusual experience of being shouted down by a crowd he was attempting to address. It stopped raining.
UNTIL TIIE PREPARATIONS for the struggle between Governor Faubus of Arkansas and the Supreme Court thrust everything else off the foreign news Pages, the Chinese shelling of islands in the Quemoy group got most of the world's attention. Fifty thousand shells a day was the Communist delivery, though there was no sign of the bombard- ment being followed by invasion from the main- - land. The State Department muttered behind its hand that the Seventh Fleet was still very much on the qui vire, and the shelling went on. Mean- while, the Middle East was forgotten as the Supreme Court of the US broke its summer recess to consider pleas by the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People that integra- tion be continued (some say, started) at the Little Rock High School. For his part, Governor Faubus broke the Arkansas Legislature's summer recess to rush through emergency legislation designed to prevent any such thing happening. British reporters in Arkansas are now apt to have the local citizens murmur 'Nottingham' at them, for the Queen of the Midlands has now been the scene of a race- riot involving 200 white and coloured men; the Fire Brigades Union has objected to its members being called upon to help the police. In a week dominated by colour, the South African Prime Minister, Johannes Strydom, died after a long ill- ness. The struggle for the succession is expected to be hitter, and the prospects of the post going to anyone less rabid than the late incumbent are remote in the extreme.
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AT HOME, the Cohen Committee and the Lambeth Conference have both reported. The former body called for a still tighter rein on wage increases, declaring inflation to be an ever-present danger, whereupon the Midland Bank promptly an- nounced, with considerable and dramatic effect, that it was instituting a system of unsecured loans to its customers, old and new, for once-for-all expenditure. The shares of the large hire-purchase firms fell, and those of the manufacturers of wash- ing machines rose. The other big banks hastened to get aboard, or at any rate to make preparations for embarkation. The Lambeth Conference Report said some moderate and sensible thing's about family limitation and—it was as though nobody could get away from the subject during the week —racial problems, especially in Africa.
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THE BALT. WAS BACK in Mr. Khrushchev's court, this time with 'October 31' written on it. The suspension of nuclear tests from that date, follow- ing the conclusions reached by the scientific con- ference at Geneva (not to mention the UN Report on the radiation hazards), was proposed by the United States and Britain, though General de Gaulle said that France would go on testing her atomic bomb just as soon as it had been made. On his tour of French overseas possessions he ran into a hostile demonstration at Dakar; not, however, from Ntainists but from nationalists.
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LANDSLIDES AND PLOODS continued for a time, but eventually the sun came out. Britain's brightest musical sun was dimmed with the death at eighty- five of Ralph Vaughan Williams.
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