President Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill recognised quickly that a closely co-ordinated programme was indispensable to iettipg good results from Allied action. But the task of...

T HE focal point of the war throughout this week has been at Singapore, where the defending garrison has been putting up a dogged but disheartening defence against overwhelming...

Not the least interesting, and conceivably not the least important, feature of General Chiang Kai-shek's visit to New Delhi is the conversation he has had with the Nationalist...

We are to have a Ministry of Production with Lord Beaver- brook as its head. All the existing services remain under their separate responsible Ministers—those of the Admiralty,...

The food situation in Greece has been going from bad to worse, and has now become so acute that hundreds of thousands of people are on the verge of starvation. In Greece, as in...

The announcement that Lord Reith is henceforward to be known as the Minister of Works and Planning, with all that that implies, is singularly welcome. Responsibility for...

The Cabinet crisis in Egypt was quickly brought to an end by the wise decision of King Farouk to send for Nahas Pasha, the leader of the Wafd. The resignation of Sirry Pasha was...

Since it appears not to have been reported elsewhere, a striking and disturbing speech on the Tank situation made by Mr. S. S. Hammersley in the Vote of Confidence debate still...

T HAT there should be steadily growing in the public mind a conviction of the dominating importance of air-power and an increasing uneasiness about the use being made of British...

to the University Libraries at Oxford and Cambridge, the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales (not, as I erroneously said last week, the University of Wales), and to Trinity...

should enable Members to try to spoil the market for competent broadcasters. It was stated in the House on Wednesday that per- formers (if I may so term them) in the Brains...

T HE Prime Minister's stock is not high at the moment. It is a pity, but there is no doubt about it. The reasons are various, and the course military operations are taking is...

restaurant." Damn affixed ; where there is only one of the kind there can be no more or most about it. " The Government have . . ." Damn withheld. Collective nouns, can be...

Archibald Sinclair, Sir Arthur Street, Permanent Secretary of the Air It so happens, I believe, that the sons of Sir Archibald Sinclair, Sir Arthur Street, Permanent Secretary...

Press publishes at sixpence, I find one quotation of unexpected relevance. The booklet contains a foreword by Mr. Isaac Foot, chairman (and, I believe, chief founder) of the...

This corner is becoming a grave responsibility. A critic who defends " reportedly " (not without plausibility, I admit) on the analogy of " confessedly " and " avowedly "...

By STRATEGICUS T is obvious that the war in the Far East is working up to a I climax. The island of Singapore is invaded and, instead of the swift and crushing counter-attack...

By OSCAR R.HOBSON H OW often do we not hear people say : " We shall be ruined after the war ; we shall have no money at all." But the trouble after the war will be just the...

By SIR STEPHEN TALLENTS M Y first experience as a tree-owner, now some fifteen years ago, was to find three great elms one morning uprooted by a gale in front of my house. They...

By PROFESSOR C. M. YONGE A MONG our national possessions are included some half million acres of shore, alternately covered and uncovered by the sea. This is a region of great...

How marvellous it seems, you young Announcers, that each place should have its Name spoken trippingly on the tongue- Rzhev, or Mal') Yaroslavetz. Polysyllabic be the siege,...

old civilisations are prone need not be mortal diseases. China has been born again, and it may well be our privilege, as Mr. Collis suggests, to assist in her regeneration. The...

By HAROLD N1COLSON FF RIDAY, Februa 13th, 1942, is scarcely an auspicious date ry for which to write an article, yet I am consoled by the thought that tomorrow will be the...

century a warm admiration for the principles of gentlemanlike conduct which Confucius had for two thousand years and more been able to impose. Yet he regrets bitterly that,...

which I have read this week is Henry Torres's flaming indictment of Pierre Laval. Here again we have an illustration of what happens when the ostensible system of a country...

spring festival, although we may feel sad that the word " Valentine " should now suggest to us a tank rather than a nosegay ; yet it must be admitted that the British public...

Goodnight Children." At the New Theatre. THE curtain rises on a stage setting for which the designer, Mr. Michael Relph, deserves a special round of applause. It repre- sents a...

The B.B.C. and British Music AFTER a long period of almost exclusive fidelity to the classics, the B.B.C. Orchestra has lately shown a revived interest in con- temporary...

" L'Esclave Blanche:" At Studio One. L'Esclave Blanche is ingeniously dedicated to Kemal Ataturk on the ground that he succeeded in abolishing from Turkey the national evils...

Where the Foreign Office Fails " and your own leading article cover- ing the same subject of the relation between diplomatic and economic policy, I would like to ask a question...

DIPLOMACY AND ECONOMICS SK—Having read with the greatest interest both Sir Watford Selby's article and your leader in last week's Spectator, in which you have mentioned my...

appear to be much exercised as to the future of the Public School; they apparently fail to realise the social and economic revolution which has occurred during the past thirty...

whose boys have lived in a school-boarding house for nearly two years, be allowed to re-echo Mr. M. L. Jacks' strong plea for the regular establishment of boarding departments...

Sin,—Generalisations about human beings are always boring, even when they spring from the accomplished pen of Harold Nicolson. When Mr. Nicolson urges me to realise " that of...

Sra,—Granting tnat the Public Schools of this country are guardians of a great tradition and their products men of a high order of character and intelligence, and that the...

of February 6th are a valuable addition to Mr. Jacks' interesting pro- posals about the future of the educational ideals which the Public Schools enshrine, and the types of...

it useful to criticise our religious brotherhood because of the flagrant miscon- duct of a small percentage of its number. I u:11 leave to experts the task of correcting Mr....

Snt,—We are all agreed that the cancer of unemployment must not be allowed to fasten on the nation after this war. as it did after the last. To avoid such a disaster, a vast...

Sut,—Mr. J. H. Mallon is seriously mistaken in supposing that the re- corded conviction for breaches of the Defence Regulations represent the true state of affairs, as only a...

Six,—I was very pleased with the title of your review of Professor Crane Brinton's book on Nietzsche : " The Anti-Nazi Nietzsche." Nietzsche, as your able reviewer Mr. W. J....

Trappers of another destructive animal, the rabbit, lately pleaded in court that they were catching not game, but vermin. Their argument was not accepted in law, but perhaps the...

SIR,—The B.B.C.'s worst sin against music is the execrable singing they encourage in the young person, male and female! I have no words bad enough to describe it. Yours faithfully,

SIR,—One reason why Eire is neutral is because its people dislike the thought that they might be killed in hundreds when their cities were bombed or set on fire.—Yours...

SIR,—You published the letter from E. P. Evans " for the instruction of any who had supposed the spirit of religious intolerance was dead." Did you publish the letter of Cecil...

is a painful lesson that one must always be prepared for unpleasant trends in the people one admires most. But I must confess I did not expect the note of petty bitterness...

THE cohorts of immigrant woodpigeons, gleaming in white and fawn, have at last come down upon our fields and gardens in devastating force. They have specialised on Brussels...

made a special study of rural housing) is singularly well-fitted for his job; and this is rare in the annals of the Ministry ; yet he, too, has learned the " delicate and gentle...

SIR,—Miss Rose Nlacaulay, in your issue of December t2th, expresses her surprise that the B.B.C. broadcasters pronounce " cumbut " as if it were spelt " combat." Would it not be...

value of pruning in summer rather than in winter ; but such advice is largely Ills' regarded ; and the present prospects of a late spring give an unusual opportunity both for...

SIR,—The shades of Horace's father, if not of Horace, call for an answer to Mr. Nicolson's libel in Marginal Comment. The good collector scorned the provincial school, took his...

How dark the days and brief ; But they grow longer! In the green corn we do foretaste the sheaf, And hope springs stronger; And those bare boughs, our faith endows With panoply...

President and Press The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1937-1940. Four vols. (Macmillan. £6 6s.) THE Americans have a spacious way with their Presidents,...

Curtain Up. By Lennox Robinson. (Michael Joseph. • los. 6d.) This' autobiography is full of the disorderly charm which is characteristic of its author. He disdains dates, and...

MISS OMAN'S book would be good reading at any time, and is particularly good reading today. The book is a record, on a less universal plane than War and Peace or The Dynasts, of...

THE best books on the West Highlands and Hebrides have a firm foundation of narrative, like the records of Hebridean journeys made by Martin Martin and Samuel Johnson. In our...

Delilah. By Marcus Goodrich. (Dent. 9s. 6d.) The God in the Gutter. By Reyner Barton. (Chapman and Hall. 8s.) The Countess to Boot. By Jack lams. (Rich and Cowan. 7s. 6d. FROM...

UT , 0000 0 m • 0 A At _Dana= UOROOMu0Am R 0 000110M00 N UO0000 m 190 ammo _coma Nnia00 WOURRM 00M13130 W UM0RUMUU UROOMR M 0 M UMUMMN I T 0 P =MORO O 0 M000M00000 SOLUTION...

[.4 prize of a Book Token for one guinea will be given to the sender of the first c orrect solution of this week's crossword puzzle to be opened. Envelopes should be marked with...

By CUSTOS NEWS from Singapore has forced markets back on the defensive. It is not so much that investors are anxious to sell—the volume of stock offered is small—as that the...

English Cathedral Music from Edward VI to Edward VII, By E. H. Fellowes. (Methuen. i6s.) THE establishment of the Anglican Church presented composers with an urgent and...