The reciprocal arrangement for the repatriation of displaced persons concluded between France and the Soviet Union in June, 1945, has worked about as well, or as badly, as most...

Officially the French strikes are finished. "The battle has been fought, and the battle, I am able to tell you, has been won," said France's Foreign Minister, speaking at a...

T HE conversations between the four Foreign Ministers continue to oscillate between apparent deadlock and a few steps of jolting progress, enlivened at intervals by propaganda...

For a month now the news about production has been almost uniformly good. Coal leads the way, steel and cotton textiles follow, exports remain buoyant, a succession of week-ends...

Anxious though the situation in India must long continue to be, the sky has in some respects lightened in the last few days as a result of the talks between the Indian and...

In normal times Canada imports heavily from the United States. A good proportion of the dollars required to pay for these imports was formerly acquired indirectly through sales...

The forces which, for better or for worse, are going to shape the future of Palestine are coming into play one by one. The anger and disgust of the Arabs at the decision on...

The decision that the centenary of the Great Exhibition of 1851 shall not go unnoticed will be generally welcomed, and it remains now to see to it that the celebration is worthy...

Food is permanently in the news. After the skirmish on potato- rationing, with the Government energetically defending its position, further announcements indicate that at least...

I HAVE referred before to the capacity of Parliament for spring- ." ing surprises. Some of these surprises are none too pleasant ; but Monday's was right in the Santa Claus...

E PSOM has added its voice to the chorus of by-election verdicts (each, wherever a Liberal stood, with its melancholy tale of forfeited deposit) and Mr. Churchill has...

new book Peace or Power casts, as single sentences often do, a flood of light on one aspect of international relationships. "The first Russian university," he writes, "was not...

Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler was an institution, both in his own country and in all Anglo-American circles here. He was the public man par excellence. President of Columbia...

C AMBRIDGE in one week has won the rugger match, won the soccer match and decided to admit women to full membership of degrees. All of which leaves the balance heavily weighted...

regarding the future of King Edward's Hospital Fund will reassure a number of people who have been wondering what scope there will be for voluntary effort under the new National...

be an honest doctor. Every medical man is beset by patients seeking, and confidently ex- pecting, a certificate for priority milk, or to buttress a claim for supplementary ....

By ROY HARROD W E now have a partial picture of what the Government is intending for the redress of our balance of trade, and it is urgently necessary to consider what more has...

By BRIGADIER DESMOND YOUNG J OBBING backwards, the exercise of what the Americans call "hindsight," is not often a profitable occupation. But since many people in Britain have...

By BERNARD HOLLOWOOD T HE recent rumpus over Mr. Dalton's proposal for a tax on advertising (subsequently dropped by Sir Stafford Cripps) showed afresh how little is know.n...

By CANON ROGER LLOYD T HE title is deliberate—the railway, not the railways, for of co,urse there will only be one. The public debates on this change have concentrated on such...

By NORMAN KIRBY A BARE two months have passed since the Comintern, immolated on the funeral pyre of Stalingrad, rose as the Cominform phoenix from the ashes of Warsaw. There...

By RUFUS BUXTON N OTHING is more intriguing to the imagination than the work being carried out by the London Roman and Mediaeval Excava- tion Council—the work of bringing to...

By HAROLD NICOLSON F IFTEEN years ago I wrote a novel in which I sought to prove that the atomic bomb would introduce an era of universal peace. The book was written at a time...

"It Always Rains on Sunday." (Odeon)—" Saigon." (Plaza.) ALTHOUGH it is true that it does nearly always rain on a Sunday, it is equally true that Mondays are often quite fine,...

NORMAN DEL Max and the Central London Orchestra chose a very ambitious and excellently original programme for their concert at the Chelsea Town Hall on December znd. Chabrier's...

THE THEATRE "Saint Joan." By Bernard Shaw. (New.) Tins moving performance of the finest play of our greatest living dramatist should most certainly be seen. Mr. Shaw claims...

STATELY, noiseless, unswerving and obsolete, like a paddle-steamer with her engines stopped, the venerable butler glides into Sir John Dering's study, carrying a tray and...

Greek messenger, striding Sun, Rise in my heart, whose morning Knows what the night has done In spite of your western warning Deliver your lines as if You were truly short of...

GIMPEL Fus are showing sculpture by Robert Adams and drawings by Ern Brooks, both strangers to London. Mr. Brooks's pen draw- ings are some of them clever and all of them...

Si,—Mr. Hurlstone-Jones's article and Mr. Gill's letter on the shortage of teachers are complementary. Mr. Hurlstone-Jones points out that 1,340 men left the staffs of some 700...

Snt,—It may interest your readers to know, in connection with Mr. Walker- Smith's comment on the Adjournment debate on December 1st, that the British Legion (of which Sir Ian...

BRITISH INFORMATION IN BERLIN Sta,—In your issue of November 21st you publish a letter from a German schoolboy, named Werner Fielits, under the heading, Tell Germany. In this...

Ste,—The celebrated masterpieces of nineteenth-century French painting which Mr. Samuel Courtauld presented to the nation place one in his permanent debt as a member of the...

Sta,—In your issue of November 27th, in connection with a site for the statue of James II, you mention his merits as a Lord High Admiral. May one add that he was not only a...

interest is not being shown in the suggestion for a world conference of Christians. As a matter of fact the rank and file of the Church of England appear to look upon the...

hovering over Covent Garden —an event that should go down in the records. At the same time the hawk tribe in general, though not the kestrel in particular, is attracted to urban...

Sm,—In your issue of December 5th you say, on recent troubles in India, that "if the prime offenders were the Sikhs, then a reasonable under- standing between Muslims and Hindus...

It is a general theory .throughout rural England that hard weather in November portends an open winter, and it is embalmed, as I am reminded, in a doggerel couplet of wide...

A good many urban spaces have been improved to the general gaze by the removal of the iron railings during the war ; and most of them are not to be replaced. Nevertheless, they...

The acquisitive habits of some of the winterers has been quaintly emphasised in a country house in Oxfordshire. A store of broad beans kept for seed was raided by mice, which...

Sm,—Mr. Douglas Barrett is, of course, entitled to say that Gandhara sculpture makes no appeal to him. But "dreary echoes of the work of the Roman provincial mason," and 'dull...

and more requests for advice in turning private gardens into semi-commercial ventures. One friend of mine, who drew considerable profit from his very lovely garden, made most of...

Two Biographies : American IT may be supposed that we read biographies for two reasons ; i one reason s that we want to enjoy a good book, the other is that we want to "know...

THE Nuba Mountains occupy roughly the south-east quarter of the present administrative province of Kordofan in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The block of country in which Nuba hills...

POPULAR histories of science are few in number, and the news that the late Sir James Jeans had left the corrected proofs of such a work raised hopes that a valuable addition to...

Poems of Sleep. Chosen by Carol Stewart. (Muller. 10s. 6d.) An Anthology of the Home Counties. By John D. Mortimer, with and Spottiswoode. 16s.) To read anthologies—especially...

Music in the Romantic Era. By Alfred Einstein. (Dent. 30s.) Ti-us is a volume in the American Norton History of Music, but it will not strike the reader as a history so much as...

The Legend of the Master. Edited by Simon Nowell-Smith. (Constable. 12s. 6d.) Tilts is the most intimate of the recent books about James, for the subject is his character and...

Jenny Villiers. By J. B. Priestley. (Heinemann. Ws. 6d.) A House in the Uplands. By Erskine Caldwell. (Falcon Press. 8s. 6d.) DECEMBER being upon us, up rise the tried and...

[A Book '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 December 23rd....

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By CUSTOS Two developments, neither of great significance in relation to the underlying trend, but both of interest to large groups of investors, have pulled markets out of the...