— Portrait of the Week- IZVESTIA SUMMED IT tip: 'It was
as if a mad film projectionist mixed up cans of film, interlacing the bitter tragedy of the great American nation with a cheap Texas thriller, a detective story and comics.' So the paper commented on the first occasion Russian television made use of Telstar. Messages from Mr. and Mrs. Khrushchev indeed were among the most moving tributes to the assassinated President. The world's statesmen flocked to his funeral and the world mourned his loss. Only the Chinese were out of tune: the trade union Workers' Daily printed a cartoon 'President Kennedy biting the dust' with the dis- torted President lying in a pool of blood, his tie covered with dollar signs.
THE PRESIDENT DIED in Parkland Hospital, Dallas, thirty-five minutes after he had been shot as he travelled through the town with the Texan Governor, Mr. John Connally. Mr. Connally him- self was seriously wounded and a bullet narrowly missed Vice-President Lyndon Johnson. Specula- tion as to the killer and his motives was immed- iate: there was widespread relief that he was white, then general astonishment that the man arrested was a twenty-four-year-old former marine and marksman known to be of the far left and a Cuban sympathiser. Forty-eight hours after his arrest and before he had confessed Mr. Lee Harvey Oswald was himself shot in the full view of television cameras as he was being trans- ferred from police headquarters to the county gaol. He too died in Parkland Hospital. The Dal- las police declared the case closed but three pos- sible inquiries are pending and Mr. Jack Ruby, a Dallas strip club owner, is being charged for murder with malice of Oswald. 'I did it,' he said, 'for Jacqueline Kennedy.'
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MR. JOHNSON TOOK OVER the Presidency with dig- nity. He announced that his main aim would be to continue the .late President's policies, and had meetings with Sir Alec Douglas-Home, President de Gaulle and Dr. Erhard, all in Washington for the funeral. There is to be a further gathering early in the new year, and the meeting with Mr. Mikoyan was also said to be encouraging.
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AT HOME THE STRUGGLE for modernisation con- tinued: Labour won Dundee West with a majority increase of almost 5,000, MPs' pay claiths made progress and Mr. Henry Brooke almost won over the Opposition with the second reading of the Police Bill. The Buchanan Com- mittee produced its plans to take us by car into the twenty-first century; Professor Buchanan was promised a grant of £45,000 by the Nuffield Foundation to continue his studies; and Lord Franks advised the setting up of two £1,000,000 national business schools. Sir Giles Guthrie's appointment to do a Beeching with BOAC was confirmed and any member of the public who has anything to say to the committee on busmen's pay and conditions should get in touch with the Ministry of Labour.
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NOVEMBER ROSES bloomed along the Rhine; the authorities of Lloret de Mar attempted to wipe out stray dogs by scattering poisoned lumps of meat along the street and the Spanish Minister of Information came to London. Aldous Huxley and Professor C. S. Lewis died and Dr. F. R. Leavis was not re-elected to the board of Cam- bridge English Faculty. Glasgow policewomen won the right to wear trousers in cold weather, the architect for the new Foreign Office is to be chosen without a competition, the British Un- identified Flying Objects Association held its first annual conference and a solitary seasonal re- minder comes from the man who threw a brick through a High Wycombe window in order to get back inside for Christmas.
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