F OR the first time since the Harvard speech of June 5th there exists a quantitative Marshall Plan as distinct from a qualitative Marshall Programme. A spate of figures, whose...

In a little more than a week the Council of Foreign Ministers will once again be meeting in London and once again the black shadow of Germany is spreading over the diplomatic...

" The recent arrival of Mr. Mikolajczyi in this country together with the trial for treason of Dr. Julius Maniu, the leader of the National Peasant Party of Rumania, and...

The main effect of the new Order announced by the Minister of Labour in Parliament on Tuesday will possibly be psychological. Like its predecessor, the Control of Engagement...

The Government will do well to re-emphasise its determination to withdraw from Palestine and not to act as sole agent of the United Nations however soon the latter may decide on...

As was to be expected, the Opposition amendment for rejection of the Government's Parliament Bill limiting the Lords' delaying power on public Bills passed by the Commons was...

There was a stronger and more confident note in Mr. Attlee's voice when he spoke at the Lord Mayor's dinner at the Mansion House on Monday. He spoke of production, and the...

between the Parliament of today and the Parliament of Asquithian days than this week's debate on the Parliament Bill. With certain notable exceptions, the debate followed an...

The attacks on the Government this week for the rationing of potatoes have been largely spurious. To accuse the Minister of Food of lack of judgement, inability to plan ahead...

In a more leisured age you had to wait 5o years for your Jubilee, but none will grudge the B.B.C. the 25th birthday celebrations which it has been sharing with us this week. The...

T HOSE whose only hope concerning the Budget was that it would have the smallest possible effect on their own personal finances have not been disappointed. Very few individual...

mourning Alec—Sir Alexander —Paterson, for of all the Prison Commissioners of the last twenty-five years—a singularly humane and sympathetic body of men —he was the most...

I wonder which of our feathered friends it was that they served to me as Roast Duckling last night. During its life, which was by no means as short as the menu suggested, what...

is extremely welcome. The new monthly (which costs 3s. a number or 303. a year, and is obtainable from Bowes and Bowes, Cambridge) does exactly what I have for years felt ought...

people to evolve a twenty-seventh letter for the alphabet, which is what a competition now current in Alphabet and Image is encour- aging them to do. This letter " must...

necessarily must, over a revision of the Burnham Scale on the lines recently recommended by the Burnham Committee. The proposals have not yet been (or if so have only just been)...

By GUNTHER STEIN D EMOCRACY and reason have taken some bad beatings in America. Both continue to suffer casualties in the " cold war " on two fronts—with the Soviet Union and...

By RAWLE KNOX T HE threat of a general election in Eire arrived almost overnight. The by-elections of last month were not expected to be more irritating than a dog barking in...

By BRUNSDON YAPP I T is a commonplace of physiology that when in doubt one tries it on the dog. In broad outline almost the whole of our know- ledge of the working of the human...

By H. G. SCOTT T WO of my brothers from Scotland, who have been visiting us this summer, and my wife have just come in from a day's fishing in our motor-boat. They brought...

By HILARY ST. GEORGE SAUNDERS T HE sun, approaching his setting, glared at me through two unglazed windows near the top of a brick and plaster wall, once the side of a house....

By WARREN POSTBRIDGE I WAS staying last week-end at the only hotel worth speaking of in a small country town in Southern England. It is not in hotels that one expects to get a...

By PAUL F. JENNINGS O UR first experience of le cyclisme is during a thunderstorm. A motor-cyclist suddenly materialises out of the rain two hundred yards ahead. He is coming...

By HAROLD NICOLSON T HE Americans this week have been thinking what on earth they are to do about Europe ; and the Europeans have once again been considering the eternal...

HEIFETZ playing the violin concerto and Michelangeli the Emperor have both raised in my mind the question whether such technically finished and faultlessly suave performances...

THE THEATRE "The Taming of the Shrew." By William Shakespeare. (New.) Nor enough weight, Mr. P. G. Wodehouse once complained, has been given by critics of Shakespeare to " the...

I HAVE recently read that the success or failure of Monsieur Verdoux is to be a test of England's aesthetic appreciation, whether its taste for works of art has become dulled by...

in Argyllshire. "Years ago my hostess and I when in Italy came upon a wood full of wild cyclamens, and we brought some roots back. They flourished exuberantly in this Scottish...

HOLDING his first exhibition at the Zwemmer Gallery is Jan Le Witt, better known for his share in a quite delightful partnership, which, for ten years, has done so much to...

WAS ever an autumn of so many colours and of more halcyon days seen in England? Its end has been almost reached even if frosts and storms are yet longer postponed. The second...

part of both the English land- scape and the English garden that we have been inclined to curb a good many trees and bushes to its limitations. There are many illustrations. For...

that have just left us will doubtless return to the same eaves next year, proving that birds have faithful. memories, if not intelligent minds. For myself I hold, with Professor...

TRUSTING TO AMERICA Sitt,—I am sure that your other American readers share my gratitude for Professor D. W. Brogan's The Wicked Uncle, and for all his contri- butions to The...

Sta,—Mr. Russell Greenwood's article on Japan is certainly timely and- of great interest. I feel that those who have attempted to study the Japanese mind since the surrender...

Sm,—Janus in his note on the " Council Public School " speaks of those " whose home conditions make it desirable that they should be at a boarding school rather tha., a grammar...

Sta,—My wife and I have just returned from a visit to Germany. One of the most tragic of the impressions and memories which we shall carry back to our Australian home is the...

SIR, —Mr. Colin Mann's letter in your issue of November 7th contained one particularly important sentence: "The British Council has more valuable work to do than ever before. ....

Heber is not responsible for it. His own suggestion for a tune was one which can be found in VoL II of the Musical Miscellany, 1729, p. 94, entitled " The Faithful Maid," to the...

SIR,—Sir Norman Birkett's reference in a recent Spectator to Isaac Watts' hymn " 0 God, Our Help in Ages Past " seems to present an oppor- tunity to express my long-felt regret...

Inter- national crowd have in "Abide With Me "? On such occasions Welshmen sing "Land of Our Fathers." Surely Sir Norman Birkett has confused Twickenham on Welsh International...

StR,Mr. Peter Fleming, in his review of the play Anna Lucasta, now at His Majesty's Theatre, writes: "It is acted entirely by negroes, but there seems to be no particular reason...

Borthwick's interpretation of the attitude of " the founders of the present establishment " towards episcopacy is not supported by the history of the Church of England during...

" MR. HARROD says No! " That sentence, which appears on the dust jacket of this little book, answers the question posed in its title. It must be one of the shortest and most...

A Friend of Cecil Rhodes Flora Shaw. By E. Moberley Bell. (Constable. , 15s.) THE name of Flora Shaw, whose life covered the years from 1852 to 1929, is probably remembered...

Western Political Thought. By John Bowle. (Cape. 21s.) THE author of this book suggests that 'it should be regarded, not primarily as a work of scholarship, but as a guide-book...

a case of a novelist maturing late, with a highly con- sciouS deliberation, it was Henry James. At the age of twentyreight he published his first novel ; but Roderick Hudson...

From Luther to Hitler : The History of Nazi-Fascist Philosophy. By William Montgomery McGovern. (Harrap. 21s.) PROFESSOR MCGOVERN'S book was written before the war in order to...

Nelson. By Carola Oman. (Hodder and Stoughton. 42s.) IT is difficult to pin down the nature of Nelson's genius. The ability to win battles was the result rather than the...

ON finishing this book I wondered whether there is any value in long analytical biographies, since this short life creates with the simp:est means the picture of a man so vivid...

and attractive volume is a breath from The Countryman. It is a good many decades since Mr. Robertson Scott worked 'in Fleet • Street, though in his first chapter (a reprint of a...

Paintings by Felix Kelly ; Paintings and Drawings by GregOrio Prieto. (Falcon Press. 10s. 6d. each.) AT the present moment neither of the artists represented in these admirably...

The Hunted. By Albert J. Guerard. (Longmans. • 9s. 6d.) NOTHING outstanding this week : three readable novels which fail to raise the critical pulse but will serve to mark the...

winner of Crossword No. 449 is: MRS. C. 92 Prince's Road, Liverpool, 8. M. PLACKETT,

ACROSS 1. Unopposed passage 'of the Red Sea. (8.) 5. Some profess to find a fortune in it. (6.) 9. Six-legged hen. (8.) 10. The vulture has left the inn to its partner. (6.)...

By CUSTOS NEVER having suspected Mr. Dalton of being a courageous Chancellor of the Exchequer, I cannot pretend to be surprised at the contents of his eagerly-awaited...