Interlaken has gone one better than The Hague. Plans have been drafted for providing Europe with a Prime Minister, a Parliament of two Chambers, an Executive, a Judiciary, with...

In spite of the good intentions which lay behind its constitution- making, the Fourth French ,Republic seems unable to avoid the political calamities which brought the Third...

E VENTS in Berlin in the past week come near compelling the conclusion that Russia has no serious intention of reaching a settlement on anything and is determined to force the...

Last week-end's admission from Warsaw of heresy in high places is described in the Communist Press as an object lesson in political- self-criticism. In fact it is the...

An agreement was reported to have been reached on Monday between the Burmese Government and the Karen insurgents who seized control of Moulmein last week. What lay behind thiS...

It is unfortunate that the Organisation for European Economic Co- operation has not been able to decide how to divide among the recipients the resources that are due under the...

It may be doubted whether the announcement by Mr. Costello, the Prime Minister of Eire, that his country is about to break its last link with the British Commonwealth was...

I N face of the spectacle presented by the attitude of organised Labour in France, the attitude of organised Labour in this country, as revealed at the Trades Union Congress at...

in view of the admitted inadequacy of our existing universities it is highly encouraging to learn of the continued manifestations of activity by a propitious partnership between...

J. Brown, but I cannot feel that his attack on the Foreign Secretary in his last Evening Standard article was well-conceived. What are the charges against Mr. Bevin? First that...

but a glance at its annual report (that for 1947-8 is just issued) reveals an astonish- ing amount of little-known activity. When the Far Eastern service alone broadcasts...

in Pentonville he was well questioned by his audience after his address. So—si parva licet componere magnis—was I when I was once at Pentonville on a like errand. What is more,...

steadily growing that the Conservatives will win the next General Election they have still to score a gain at a single by-election. Nor have they any immediate prospect of that....

W HAT needs—and deserves—to be said of Dr. Benes has, I know, been said elsewhere in this issue. Here I can only pay the briefest personal tribute. I had known Benes for not far...

and talked more sense, than most men, wrote once: " In this next ten years the Empire will have to federate or dissolve." That was in 19r0 ; the ten years expired in 192o. The...

1 1 HE tragedy of the present situation in France is less that two Governments have fallen in six weeks and a third has been formed with no obvious inherent factor of durability...

By DR. JULIAN HUXLEY I THINK it desirable to say a word about the " World Congress of Intellectuals for Peace " which has just taken place at Wroclaw (Breslau). Everyone came...

By CECIL NORTHCOTT I N this city gay and gracious with the enthronement festivities of Queen Juliana the first Assembly of the World Council of Churches has ended as soberly as...

By RAWLE KNOX I FEEL that if there is a limit to the number of English tourists Eire can contain it will be set not by the rising wall of hoteliers' and landladies'...

By WILSON HARRIS TT was Leslie Stephen who christened Switzerland " the play- ground ground of Europe." It is indeed that, for which many jaded toilers from this and other lands...

By JAMES POPE-HENNESSY WTI HE French ? " said a rich American lady at Cap Ferrat, " Why I the French just make me tired. Let me tell you there's nothing wrong with this country....

By JOHN BROWN T 0 an ex-worker like me a good deal of the stuff written about the " proletariat " or " the working class " reads hollow. " Working class " is really an attitude...

By HAROLD NICOLSON I T has been interesting this week to read the several obituary notices which have been devoted to the late President Benes. There would seem to be three...

"Antoine et Antoinette." (Railto.)—" Life With Father." (Warner.) —" The Birds and the Bees." (Empire.)—" The Glory of Sport." (Gaumont and Marble Arch Pavilion.) A...

THE THEATRE "Rain on the Just" By Peter Wading. (Aldwych.) THE central idea of Mr. Watling's play is serious, interesting and topical. The Carbels have lived at Cleves for...

from the French of Sacha Guitry. (St. James's.) MISOGYNIST is hardly the word for the elderly, successful and almost involuntary amorist around whom this frothy and agreeable...

SIR.—Mr. Aubrey Buxton is to be congratulated on his letter in your issue of September 3rd about the Karens, which deserves the widest publicity. Not everyone, however, will...

THE TEACHING PROFESSION SIR,—Sir Ernest Graham-Little, in his letter in The Spectator of September 3rd, contrasts the generosity of the Government's offer to teachers with the...

recent letter on " Conscript Service." An example was quoted of a young man, called up only eleven months ago, who " having long since finished his naval training, is as good a...

SIR,—I do not care where Dr. Cook turned up after staking his claim to the North Pole. When I mentioned " a despatch " of Cook's in my first letter, I didn't say it concerned...

Sta,—I have been interested in the letters to your paper on this subject, but it seems to me that as yet very little of it has been covered, and the views expressed appear, in...

Chaldecott is going too far in asserting that " it is the plain duty of _Christians and responsible citizens of the West to remove this [Communism] and any other scourge from...

Mr. Cyril Ray uses in his review of General Patton's book is something that the General himself (a professor of " picturesque profanity ") might well have envied. Accord- . ing...

you allude to the " persecuted minorities " in East Central Europe: I think it is rather from habit that the word " minorities " was used in this case, by analogy with the...

I know, but I really cannot let Mr. Sloan get away with it. The whole of Chapter II (of which I cited Section Et: is entitled " The Evidence " ; that is to say, it deals with...

Ste,—Since the report of the Watson Commission of Enquiry was pub- lished, a number of people have eitr praised or condemned sections of it. The sections most criticised by...

SIR, —Mr. Arwyn Thomas is to be congratulated on his letter of Septem- ber 3rd. To concentrate so much hatred and abuse into eleven lines of The Spectator was something of an...

Ste,—Our present ill-fortune in the matter of space is doubtless the reason why the death of Alec Wyatt Tilby, at 68, in a Glasgow hospital, has passed almost without notice in...

of as a superior luxury ; but how many of those who use the description know what it means. Honey from bell heather has no particular likeness to honey from ling, which is the...

MANY people must have noticed the comparative absence of sparrows from the harvest fields. At one time there was a huge emigration of sparrows from the towns—especially, I...

Sin,—After reading Mr. Nicolson's Marginal Comment of August 27th I have been rather mystified by his enumeration of modem farm implements ; so much so that much time has been...

SIR,—Janus is wrong. To say " I was sent a gold watch " is not perfectly correct, but very bad English, as he will find if he tries to parse the word " watch "—or imagine a...

are usually hard to explain. In recent years quite a number of species of sea-bird have multiplied conspicuously. One is the Oyster-catcher, which has been seen even in inland...

SIR,—May I point out that few of our butterflies have " cocoons," as mentioned in Country Life column • of August 27th. They nearly all have pupae, with a silk band of...

Snt,—Mr. R. H. Cecil in his excellent article Fun Factory in your issue of August 27th falls into the common error of attributing to King Canute a belief that he possessed...

It is still difficult for your friends abroad to obtain THE SPECTATOR owing to currency restrictions. Why not take out a subscription for them? Rates : Ordinary edition to any...

SIR, —De gustibus—I suspect Janus's taste is not purely pedantic. "Britisher " is a North-Americanism. In whatever sense it may have been used by the United States originally,...

The spate of garden catalogues continues, and it is worth noticing how many new and small firms are taking up the business, and how they all compete in the same class of plant....

An example of the urbanized mind is to be seen in a booklet issued at the price of a shilling for the Ministry of Health, with a preface by Mr. Bevan. It opens with a photograph...

Edith Sitwell. By C. M. Bowra. (The Lyrebird Press. 5s. 6d.) DR. BowRA's essay on Miss Sitwell, printed in Monaco, has a cosmopolitan look. One imagines it being read by people...

Austria—Roman or German ? ' How is it that Austrians longed to be Germans in 1918 and in 1938, while in 1934 or in 5946 the air of Vienna was heavy with indignant protests...

Gandhi and Stalin. By Louis Fischer. (Gollancz. 10s. 6d.) MR. LOUIS FISCHER is a better journalist and narrative historian than philosopher. His monumental work, The Soviets in...

Jan Vermeer van Delft. By A. B. de Vries. (Elmsford. 42s.) IF one thing is clear about Johannes Vermeer it is that we have to deal with a very curious case. Few artists have...

Euripides and Dionysus : An Interpretation of the Bacchae. By R. P. Winnington-Ingram. (Cambridge University Press. 15s.) THE Bacchae stands out among Greek plays as a...

The Oxford Junior Encyclopaedia : Vol. 1. Mankind. (Oxford University Press. 30s.) IT is three centuries all but ten years since Comenius published his Orbis Pictus (hoc est...

MR. LEO WALMSLEY'S narrative manner is like a grandfather clock. It takes a long time to gather itself up, and, when it does strike, the note is clear and warm and innocent....

Ibo Village Affairs. By M. M. Green. (Sidgwick & Jackson. 10s. 6d.) THE village of Umueke is placed in a densely populated area of Southern Nigeria relatively free of European...

The English Theatre. By J. C. Trewin. (Paul Elek. 6s.) MR. TREWIN is one of our most engaging dramatic critics, and in this book he has accomplished a miracle of useful...

Tuts is a courageous and imaginative attempt to do two things for Greece which professional students are inclined to neglect. One is to trace the roots of the Attic contribution...

children sent in to The Nursery World, with Dr. Isaacs's answers to them. They necessarily make desultory reading, but Dr. Isaacs has grouped them under themes—Jealousy,...

.Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct- solution of this week's crossword to be opened after noon on Tuesday week September 21st. Envelopes...

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By CUSTOS FOR what it is worth, Sir Stafford Cripps's lesson in elementary economics to the Trade Union Congress will be welcomed by investors. It is all to the good that the...

W. Dickes and Arnold Bender. (Gollancz. 7s. 6d.) " WE are told," the dust-jacket admits frankly, " that ' nobody wants to read' a book of this type in 1948." "A book of this...

30s.) Jr is difficult to write a dull book about Britain's achievements at sea. In spite of the gravest mistakes and misdemeanours, it is essentially a " success story," robust,...