The most significant factors in Canadian politics are seldom discussed in this country, partly through lack of information and partly through the extreme delicacy of the issues....

As the crisis of the Korean fighting draws nearer it becomes more difficult for the public at large to turn its attention from the Pusan pocket to the larger diplomatic aspects...

Mr. Nehru's policy towards the Korean war last week received the support of the Indian Parliament. Although lively criticism was heard in the course of the two-day debate,...

Some of the additional millions which the British Government is proposing to spend on the armed forces in the next three years will, quite rightly, find its way into the pockets...

When Marshal Rokossovsky was made military Commander-in- Chief and Minister of War in Poland it was at once made clear that his object was to make the Polish Government and...

The importance of the revision of teachers' salaries, on which the Burnham Committee is , now engaged, can hardly be exaggerated, for it affects the whole field of education of...

The proposals of the British Conservative Party for the control of the European coal and steel industries may well put new life into both the Schuman Plan and the Council of...

T HE Council of Europe, created tp give expression to a universal desire for some effective form of Western Union, has begun its second session at Strasbourg, with a variety of...

good management, I have never myself been actually adjudicated bank- rupt, but I can still feel a lively, and sympathetic, interest in people who are. Facts-contained in an...

but beverages are a subject on which every Frenchman holds strong views. France produces a vast quantity of wine, and yin ordinaire at 2s. a bottle or less is good encugh for a...

at Cambridge thought, it seems, that Mr. Dingle Foot in demanding, in his address there, freedom for all, included Communists. There is nothing new about that question, but it...

about the last of the long and remarkable line of Quaker bankers, or rather perhaps of bankers" of Quaker descent. The name—Pease- which he bore before his elevation to the...

By D. IL GILLIE Parts E NGLISHMEN are again asking " Will the French fight ? " The French are again asking " Will our allies make possible the defence of the Rhine ? " This is...

By PETER FLEMING A LTHOUGH the news coming in as thii article goes to press is reassuring, it looks very much as if Taegu will be lost before long. The North Koreans are across...

THE SPECTATOR readers are urged to place a firm order with their newsagent or to take out a subscription. Newsagents cannot afford to take the risk of carrying stock, as unsold...

By WILSON HARRIS Vaison-la-Romaine, Vaucluse T HE road from Carcassonne to Montpellier at a certain point touches the shore. Almost sooner than it takes to say thalatta (if it...

people are now vaguely aware that the Church needs more men for its ministry. But the true facts are not widely known, and the whole situation is often mis- interpreted. That...

D IN1 YA MSAMBWA, the cult of the ancestral spirits, is one of those storms, or perhaps a mere shower, of fanaticism —partly social, partly religious, partly nationalistic—...

By J. STUART MACLURE 44 T AS your cow calved yet " There was no immediate answer to this important question, because just after it had been asked, by one farmer's wife of...

No Duels, No Beer By J. A. THOMPSON (Brasenose College, Oxford) F OR my first week at a German university I lived in a hostel for international students. I wasn't quite sure...

By HAROLD NICOLSON 0 N those occasions (and of late they have been not infre- quent) when 1 allow my imagination to play around the hydrogen bomb, I am apt to recall a happy...

THE number of candidates who appeared on the hustings at Lambeth on Monday, the nomination-day, was three—Mr. William Williams, Sir Charles Napier, and Mr. Hinde Palmer ; all of...

,, New York City Ballet." (Covent Garden.) The Prodigal Son, created by M. George Balanchine for Diaghilev in 1929, raises the interesting question whether or not " easel "...

CINEMA The Gunfighter is a Western with a difference inasmuch as its protagonist, played by Mr. Gregory' Peck, is a very tired, very disillusioned gunman. We see him, the...

July thunderstorms—by the downpour, not the electricity — are held to be the cardinal enemy of the partridge coveys ; but the cutting of the oats, now nearly completed, has...

Are we justified in calling the' ordinary border of the sort " herba- ceous " ? The word, I take it, means a plant that disappears from the surface in winter, and most of us...

TROUBLED with influenza, a politician said The men that died for India came floating round my bed, The dead from Chillianwallah, the watchers of Mardan, The ones who held the...

some old local beliefs. One is that there is no place so dangerous as half-way up an open slope. It seems unlikely that there is truth in this ; but it so happens that my only...

On the subject of harvests the Rural Reconstruction Association (which always talks good sense and touches essentials) reports that our tillage acreage is virtually stationary,...

At Wisley, where the gardens grow more gorgeous and suggestive every year, there is to be seen just inside the gate a flowering patch that bears the absurd name Ceratostigma...

THE broad, kind countryside: The grown trees, and the tangled hedges,' The quiet brook ; the pool, with sedges Knee-deep in water: and the stucco'd pride Of a great mansion ;...

Report by N. IC. Boot A prize was offered for not more than twenty lines of verse bringing up to date the story of one of the characters in Mr. &noes Cautionary Tales or More...

Set by Peter Townsend A prize of 13, which may be divided, is offered for a publicity blurb, in not more than 200 words, designed to attract foreign tourists to one of our...

THE EDITOR The Enugu Report SIR,—Your readers may remember that the Commission of Enquiry into the disorders at Enugu in Nigeria criticised the Chief Commissioner of the...

S1R,—The letter from the headmaster of Harrow is a most welcome state- ment of what is felt in many, and probably in a majority, of the schools in the country. The new a la...

Harrow (August 4th) have one disturbing feature in common. The former writes: " A scientist, for example, who might have been able to take a valuable non-specialist course will...

exquisite article What is it Like to be Old ? by Mr. Theodore Taylor who celebrated his hundredth birthday last week? If so, you are to be doubly congratulated.—Yours...

SIR,—R. D. (barques, in his remarks on Janko Lavrin's "approach" to Ibsen, notes that this author labels Ibsen a schizophrenic " like Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard...

SIR.—Mr. Cole has chosen population as a standard for assessing the adequacy of the military strength of a nation, and on this basis be proceeds to show that " the figures of...

SIR, I was much interested in the article in the Spectator of July 21st which dealt with the work of Professor George Saintsbury. In this article the writer says, " I am curious...

SIR, May another pilgrim this summer to the cave at Lascaux add an unscientific but very simple suggestion of its original use? The ordinary visitor goes to see these...

SUBSCRIPTION RATES ORDINARY EDITION by post to any part of the World AIR MAIL (World-wide distribution by Air) To all countries in Europe except P and .- ... 2 7 6 Aden,...

SIB. —You have done us all a service by publishing Mr. Theodore Taylor's charming essay on old age. Mr. Taylor writes with decent restraint, and slips naturally into the third...

Sm.—"Social Student," too, is right to begin with. Most people do abhor the habits of " biological aberrationals " (though I hope this monstrous phrase won't find its way into...

Stir,—Reading the review of English Cathedrals in your Issue of July 28th, I was indeed surprised at your reviewer's remarks. Surely English publications on the great cathedrals...

T HE difference between the early and the later poems of W. B. Yeats—sometimes used by critics to praise the one at the expense of the other—is a cause more of admiration that...

Lying Awake. By Catherine Carswell. (Secker and Warburg. us.) WHEN Mrs. Catherine Carswell died in 1946 she had written the first part of an autobiography and some notes for...

The Influence of Bismarck • Wrrnour me," Otto von Bismarck observed once, " three great wars would not have happened and 80,000 men would not have perished." But, as Dr. Erich...

The Concept of Deity: a Comparative and Historical Study. B y E. 0. James. (Hutchinson's University Library. i 8s.) " FOR good or ill, most, if not all, of the great...

THE Americans and the British share the same good fortune in that they can enjoy two literatures without having to learn a foreign language or accept the devalued currency of...

The Complete Work of Paolo Uccello. By John Pope-Heunc,.. (Phaidon Press. 3os.) The Complete Work of Paolo Uccello. By John Pope-Heunc,.. (Phaidon Press. 3os.) THE Phaidon Press...

Diary of a Film. By Jean Cocteau. Translated by Ronald Duncan. (Dobson. cos. 6d.) " AFTER a year of preparation and difficulties, the moment has now come to grapple with a...

t 2s. 6d.) The Asphalt Jungle. By W. R. Burnett. (Macdonald. 8s. 6d.) IN Stranger in the Land, a first novel by Ward Thomas, we return to the American war between the sexes....

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IA Book Token for one guinea will be awarded ro the sender of the first correct A id i o n of this week's crossword to be opened after noon on Tuesday week, t u gust 22nd....

The Annual Register is already indispensable to a great many people, and would be indispensable to more if they knew of it. As an abstract and brief chronicle of the time it...

Tins book is boring, irritating and rather dishonest. The major part of it consists of a rather boastful but uninspired jecord of the achievements of individuals of Jewish...

By CUSTOS IN the light of the successive increases in defence appropriatio in the United States and the enlarged defence programme prop° for the United Kingdom it is now...

The Cornhill Magazine. Summer, z9so. (John Murray. 2s. 6d.) As the Cornhill is now our leading literary magazine, anyone interested in good writing is concerned that it should...

Stephen Spender and Frances Cornford. Illustrated by Marc Chagall. (Trianon Press: Faber. 3 2s. 6d.) MANY of the poems in this book were written during the German occupation of...