The announcement of Great Britain's decision to recognise the Communist regime in China was taken more philosophically in America than had been expected. By the "Central...

of prosperity in Western Europe as a means of forestalling Communist encroachment is clearly understood. It must be equally clearly realised that the situ- ation is...

The British Government has announced its withdrawal of guarantees originally given less than a year ago to the Burmah Oil Company in connection with its rehabilitation...

The chances that the Trades Union Congress would succeed in its painful attempt to check wage claims were never very bright. Now the attempt has failed, for even if the...

It becomes clearer every day that Sir Stafford Cripps's decision last summer to assert that the economic situation was getting better at a time when it was patently getting...

Publication of the letters exchanged between the First Division of the Civil Service and the Prime Minister regarding First Division salaries can only create something like...

W ITH the definite announcement of the date of the General Election the battle must be held to have been joined, whatever legal niceties may arise about the date from which...

again, with a repetition of his "tinker's cuss" affirmation and his rejoinder to an interrupter that he "would rather have fish and chips than Tory tripe." This seems to demand...

T HE Judges seem to be very much of one mind on Capital punishment. No abolition ; no discrimination between the treatment of men and women murderers ; no immunity for criminals...

the miners' leader, and a good many other workers, at the vote of large sums of money to the managing directors of Austin Motors and Standard Motors at a time when ,trade...

prepared by Dr. Lewis-Faning for the Royal Commission on Population (Stationery Office, 4s.), is the most comprehensive and detailed study of birth-control, its causes, its...

Spurgeon's birth I can only contribute one story—and for that I cannot claim originality. Dr. Spurgeon, walking in the neighbourhood of his Metropolitan Tabernacle in South...

election myself ; but an article in last week's Economist is worth a refer- ence. Calculations based on Gallup polls are quoted which point to a Conservative majority. The...

By A. L. B. PHILIP T HE Shah of Persia's return home from his six weeks' visit to the United States of America a week ago was the occasion for an official welcome in Tehran....

By PROFESSOR W. E. LE GROS CLARK, F.R.S. I r is probably true that the conception of the evolutionary origin of the varied forms of life existing today, as the result of a...

By RAWLE KNOX I OWEVER hard one tries to recall objectively, as all good journalists have already done, the events of 1949, the resultant patchwork always reveals a marked...

By JAMES WING A DOGGED American pride in home products has made the United States market a hard nut for would-be exporters to crack. Even when an export article has splendid...

By J. P. W. MALLAL1EU, M.P. (for Huddersfield) A ST September there were 617. Today there should be only 32, if the replays have been tidied away. By the first Saturday of May...

SPECTATOR) London. 8th January, 1850. SIR,—It seems doubtful whether passports ara really yet dispensed with in France ; and from experience I can well imagine how the...

Hacking Home By RONALD F. GUNN (University of Edinburgh) T HE dingy red-brick cottages flung back the clatter of Silvertail's hoof-beats as we walked slowly through the mining...

COMPETITION No. 2 Set by MARGHANITA LASKI Each morning one opens one's newspaper with a twinge of expectation—of what ? What news would you most like to read one morning when...

By HAROLD NICOLSON I AVING for twenty years been a member of the British Civil Service, I have retained the deepest respect for authority. I tend to assume that all...

CINEMA Task Force is a long conscientious record of the birth, growth and maturity of the aircraft carrier, and as a documentary, if not as a vehicle for Mr. Gary Cooper, it is...

THE programmes of the winter season of Promenade Concerts which has begun this week contain a very fair proportion of works by British composers of the older generation, but...

Many of those who have commented on the proposal to acclimatise the elk in Scotland seem to imply that deer of any sort are rare in England. They are, in fact, to be found in...

Noted with gratitude: Mr. John Gielgud's reading of Gerard Manley Hopkins's The Wreck of the Deutschland. But this is a voice that could read Baedeker and make it a linked...

ONE of the best recent B.B.C. broadcasts was of no earth-shaking consequence. It was Tommy Handley, a tribute by his old friends and colleagues on the first anniversary of his...

ON no single theme in the prognostics of weather are more prophecies in existence than the warmth of January. They all, so far as I remember, aver that warm days in the opening...

The discovery of the earth block, and the invention of a tool to make it, seem to me a real advance in the mechanics of gardening. That most vulnerable container, the...

I wonder, by the way, whether a knowledge of Shakespeare's stage would have helped the producer and actors of the recent television Twelfth Night ; but I'm tempted to think that...

have also been some bad ones ; but these I may leave in oblivion. The B.B.C. does not succeed every time in finding speakers who have the double art of writing a talk for the...

Not long since I made a rather unkind reference to the planting of trees in parts of London, where the plane and the much suckering ailanthus (a tree of earth rather than "of...

After some enquiry I find that a fair number of local mills — once a godsend to the locality and of value to themselves—have again come into service after a period of...

Protestant or Catholic ? SIR,-1 have just read Mr. Keene's two letters on the use of the word " Protestant" and I am amazed in particular at his statement that "there Is a...

the above book may have on the uninitiated, those who have read it will feel that the Spectator has fallen below its usual high level. So conspicuous indeed are the omissions...

argument of the same word with different meanings has played no small part in the disunion of Christendom ; and of all theo- logical terms "Catholic" and " Protestant " are for...

against Mr. Christopher Hollis that the Netherlands "have not had a Roman Catholic Prime Minister since 1933." It is only a year or two ago since Dr. Beel resigned after being...

it is Under the shadow of the Vatican that the largest Communist Party has

against the claims of the Papacy, not against the Catholic faith and Catholic order, both of which she possesses ; whereas the Protestant Churches have repudiated Catholic order...

law it was made to appear that the provisions of the Act of 1948 (not 1944 as printed) were intended to give effect to the recommendation of the Speaker's Conference of 1917....

six—It is difficult to understand why you persist in your vendetta against the State of Israel because it refuses to agree to the inter- nationalisation of Jerusalem. You base...

SIR, —Mr. Webber's letter on teachers' salaries in the Spectator of January 6th contains a fallacy more widespread and more dangerous than any which he claims to refute. His...

is with interest that I read J. M. Anderson's article, Shop Stewards, in the Spectator of December 30th, and as the role of a shop steward is misunderstood by millions of those...

SIR,—From time to time we are treated to complaints by people in diverse prominent positions that the recruiting campaign for His Majesty's Forces is failing to draw the...

SIR, —It matters little to your critic of the trst study of Marshal Tito that I have been gathering material for the volume during four visits to the country since 1945. He...

SIR,—Perhaps if I point out that I am a Cumbrian born and bred, this may receive more credence. In reply to your correspondent, I would claim that I have encountered this...

Magazine Post) Idd,

SIR,—In these days we all make our own beds, except, perhaps, Members of Parliament ; otherwise they would surely, by now have effected by legislation—or, more likely, by Order...

SUBSCRIPTION RATES 52 weeks L s. d. 10 0 50 0 ORDINARY EDMON by post to any part of the World ... AIR MAIL (World-wide distribution by Air) To all countries in Europe ....

SIR,—May I point out that the name of the Fettes master, whose verses are quoted in the Country Life column of the Spectator for December 30th, was H. R. Pyatt, and not ii R....

in reading proofs, two sentences in my article, Fontana di Trevi, were misleading. What startled me in the Villa Borghese was to learn that the lady with .her clothes off was...

A Life's Work. By Margaret Bondfield. (Hutchinson. zos.) TOE life-story of Britain's first woman Cabinet Minister is bound to be an exciting tale ; the question is, who should...

los. 6d.) BEFORE the war Mr. Voigt supported the left-wing Government of Spain against the rightest rebellion of General Franco. Since the war he has supported the right-wing...

MOST of what is written about Picasso is either sensational or stupid. Gossip writers, smart reporters, half-educated critics of every nationality pounce on the smallest item...

THIS volume of over 1,200 pages is reproduced by photolithography from the original already published in the United States: This is a sensible decision, and enables the book to...

Further Studies in a Dying Culture. By Christopher Caudwell. (Bodley Head. Ss. 6d.) CHRISTOPHER CAUDWELL was twenty-nine when, in 1937, he was killed while fighting as a member...

THIS is a good book to dip into because it is arranged in alphabetical order of cat lovers and indexed and starred for illustrations. To begin with one dips for favourites....

Poetry and the Teacher. By T. W. Sussams. (Nelson. 12s. 6d.) THE aesthetic factor is the most elusive, and often the most dangerous, element which teachers, from elementary to...

Tilts is in no sense a complete history of the years of change, during which the revolution in British journalism was effected by such men as W. T. Stead, George Newnes, the...

The Alabaster Hand and Other Ghost Stories. By A. N. L. Munby. (Dobson. Ss. 6d.) IF the present-day short story is less uniformly defined than it was when Chekhov, Maupassant,...

Tins book belongs to a class which is in some sense beyond criticism, but whether above or beneath it would be difficult to say. Mr. Doorly sets out to re-interpret the Bible...

E T• N SOLUTION ON The winner of Crossword No. Redcot, Exeter. JANUARY 27 562 is A. J. Withycombe, Esq.,

[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 arfter noon on Tuesday week, january 24Th....

By CUSTOS CONDEMNED to another six weeks of waiting for the political show- down the City can only make the comment: "It might have been worse." It might, indeed, for if polling...

Gauguin. Introduction and Notes by Herbert Read. Venetian Paintings. Introduction and Notes by W. G. Constable. (The Faber Gallery. THE best of this bunch of coloured books,...