T HE only two gleams of hope to light up the sombre outlook in the British Zone of Germany are the fact that a foodship carrying 50o tons of grain from the Russian Zone has...

The frustrations of French politics are apparently endless. Last Sunday's election of Deputies to the National Assembly, while giving the Communists a bare majority over any...

The next few weeks will be weeks of rapid political and economic change in the United States. It is much too soon to forecast what the outcome will be, except that, this being a...

If the handling by Yugoslays and Italians of their conflicting claims in the Trieste area is any indication of how they would govern the area, if permitted, there is every case...

The delegates to the United Nations meeting in New York have still not secured a grip on their work. The preliminary skirmish- ing in the committees and the speechmaking in the...

The recent disclosure that Jewish terrorists were preparing to attack persons and property in this country (the original threat having apparently been made some seven weeks ago)...

The Minister of State, Mr. Hector McNeil, showed praiseworthy courage in talking straight sense about Spain to a Labour audience at the North Paddington by-election. It is...

THE new Session got away to a quiet and orderly start on Tuesday. The possibility of major surprise had largely been excluded by the Prime Minister's previous announcement of...

Last Saturday Mr. Justice Denning's committee on procedural reforms in Matrimonial Causes published its second interim report, which is concerned with the hastening and...

The increase in coal production which usually takes place in October has taken place this year. Output per manshift rose to 1.05 tons, which is still far short of the pre-war...

The challenge to the Government's totalitarian tendencies in the form of an upheaval from the Left has its interesting features. It has not hitherto been very clear what the...

T HE second session of no Parliament is ever like the first. The exhilaration on the Government side due to electoral victory has in some measure died down. Satisfaction with...

bridge in relation to atomic research is continuously pervasive. Dr. W. B. Lewis, who has just been appointed Director of Scientific Research at the Canadian atomic energy plant...

Theology (University of North Madras), its precious Chancellor, " Bishop " J. C. Ryan, and the Edinburgh Theological Hall affiliated with it. Somewhere in the picture is the...

I T was odd to see so many vacant places on the red benches when the King opened Parliament in the House of Lords (reclaimed for half a day from the Commons) on Tuesday....

I have not come across much better value for half-a-crown than a publication called Persuasion, the autumn issue of which has just reached me. I ought to say not a publication...

from the celebrations at Moscow on November 7th. From that fact anyone can draw what deductions he chooses. An incident that came to my knowledge a week or two ago may, or may...

a maiden speaker, announced that he was like a lady producing triplets for the first time—the delivery was likely to be hellish." — Cambridge Review. Maiden meditation,...

steady increase of the French-speaking population of Canada, which in the ordinary course of nature will soon overtake the English-speaking section. What the ordinary course of...

as receptions at the Soviet Embassy often have. In the matter of dress, the rule clearly was that there should be no rule—at one ex- treme black coats and Old Etonian ties (if...

By RICHARD CHANCELLOR G REAT events are shaping inside Russia; the signs are for all to see, and they may be interpreted with a fair degree of probability by those who study...

By E. H. KEELING, M.P. IX months before the end of the war President Roosevelt's 0 Government appointed a committee to study the history and effects of the air attack on...

By T. C. SKEFFINGTON LODGE, M.P. T 0 vote against most of the members of one's own party is a serious matter, not because a Member of Parliament is a sheep or because he fears...

By A. VICTOR MURRAY T 00 much ought not to be expected immediately from the pro- visions of the Act of 1944 for religious teaching and religious worship in the County Schools....

By ARTHUR BARKER O VER a year ago, the first trickle of P.o.W.s from Japanese hands reached home They have now had a year to re-discover the world in general, and their own...

By HAROLD NICOLSON W HEN I was a young man and first obtained employment as a clerk in the Foreign Office, I used sometimes to raise weary eyes from the cyphers or the indexes...

FRANCES HODGKINS, as is now well known, is an elderly lady who contrives to grow younger with every passing year, and a painter who has developed from quite unexceptional...

THE THEATRE "King Henry the Eighth." By William Shakespeare. At Christ Church. MYSTERIOUS loads of metal scaffolding heaped in piles in Tom Quad, women rehearsing in lecture...

" School for Secrets." At the Odeon. THIS is a nimble film. Never lagging or dragging, it speeds along, giving neither itself nor us time in which to consider what it is really...

HERE is an end: hope gone, Dull hearts fall heavy as the platform stone ; Eyes burn along cold rails ; Ears clank with churn and trolley, hiss with steam ; Thoughts whirl upon...

How far do the directors of the various B.B.C. programmes consult each other about their plans? One suspects a certain competitive aloofness. The evening is, of course, the peak...

radio programmes (not the Third Programme only) of the past week. Entries for next week's column must reach THE SPECTATOR office not later than first post on Tuesday, November...

IN U.S.A. AND CANADA by Air This service should ensure THE SPECTATOR being in the hands of readers in the U.S.A. and Canada within a few hours of publication. Subscription...

in your issue of November 8th Mr. Nutting's efforts at terse debate have caused him to lose the thread of his argument. How one proves that the Young Conservatives are becoming...

Snt,—In your paragraph Trade and Employment under News of the Week last Friday you take to task Mr. Marquand, the Secretary for Overseas Trade, for having remarked in the debate...

SIR,— Recent correspondence in your columns has been stressing the supreme importance of good-quality personnel for the control of Ger- many. May I express my whole-hearted...

my letter was dropped, and I appear to have attributed to Lord Winterton an opinion of Mr. Douglas Read's. I wrote, "But at the same time, I should like to point out that Mr....

" Mr. Osborne was the only person to plead for the representation of the working classes in the Tory hierarchy, and he was politely ignored." I was not ignored, since...

THE NEED FOR TORY REFORM Sm,—I have been most interested to read the correspondence of Mr. Rawlinson in your excellent paper on the subject of the encouragement of...

Sta,—I shall remain unrepentant of having, to quote Mr. Rolt, " invited a public controversy," if by so doing public interest in canals will become focused in its proper...

Sta,—Please allow me to make a few remarks on the first paragraph of Mr. Harold Nicolson's Marginal Comment of November 8th. Even if we assume that the German professors to whom...

the first news in the Press of the food crisis in the British zone of Germany. Further poignancy was added to this coincidence when we read the account of the debate in the...

into my letter on Army education as a result of a typing slip? I wrote that the Central Advisory Council for adult education in H.M. Forces and the Regional Committees arranged...

SIR,—The marrow of Mr. Maurice Bruce's article on Army Education in your issue of November 1st is in the sentence "The Secretary of State for War has expressed the hope that the...

SIR,— Women, rightly or wrongly, have no great reputation for accuracy. Women novelists when they venture to write of historical events and military matters should beware. It is...

may I be allowed to draw attention to another baffling anomaly? Now that the benefits of art therapy are being officially recognised by medical authorities in hospitals and...

no reference was made, in the recent debate on the appointment of a Royal Commission to enquire into news- paper proprietorship and management, to the Herald-Morrison case. A...

Sta,—If every first-class traveller would always buy a third-class ticket and pay the difference on the train, the railway companies would soon discover that either they had to...

Inquest on the Press, you state that the recommendations of the proposed Royal Commission " will either lead to Government action or they will not. If they do not the commission...

SIR, —In support of Mr. S. Brooke's letter in The Spectator of Novem- ber 1st, neither an approach of the Arts Council of Great Britain nor the Central Institute of Art and...

SIR,—I am taking the liberty of writing to you, having read Harold Nicolson's Marginal Comment in your last issue. May I say that I feel deeply with him when he speaks of the...

It is an old question: which is the cleverest variety of dog. The poodle, the retriever, the Airedale, the St. Bernard, the Alsatian, to give a few examples, have their...

country drink of yarrow beer has procured me an introduction to a most learned and suggestive little book, Cornish Recipes, issued by the Cornwall Federation of Women's...

Is it an illustration of the intelligence of dogs that they give continual evidence of being troubled by a conscience? The other day in the Lake Country a sheep-dog bitch came...

Sia,—The remarkable article in your current issue entitled How Did Rome Happen.? suggested to me a new line of thought which seems not without a measure of importance. If the...

the subject of first-class travel overlook an important distinction. Most people who journey between two points some considerable distance apart are forced to travel by train....

so last week in walking round the Botanic Gardens at Oxford. The most beautiful thing—apart from the trees—as it seemed to me, was a bush on the top of the rock-garden, but it...

SIR, —The difficulty in obtaining Government publications is not quite so great as is suggested in Janus's note in your last week's issue. The Stationery Office has bookshops of...

SIR, —All I need say in reply to Mr. Alan Moorehead's letter appearing in your issue of November 8th is this: Field Marshal Lord Montgomery was selected as G.O.C. 3rd Division,...

Sire—Janus regrets that a child's birth certificate reveals whether he is legitimate or not, and states that no solution has yet been found. A solution of this matter occurs to...

LUCAS DE PENNA has hitherto been little more than a name to the English jurist. He was a Post-Glossator ; " verbosi in re facih, in difficili muti, in angusta diffusi" was...

Potted Tiger Clemenceau and the Third Republic. By J. Hampden Jackson. (Hodder and Stoughton for the English Universities Press. 4s. 6d.) IN every series of popular histories...

The Teaching of English in Schools. A Symposium edited for the English Association by Vivian de Sola Pinto. (Macmillan. 10s. 6d.) IT is good that the teacher should from time to...

I Talk of Dreams. By Kenneth Walker. (Jonathan Cape. 10s. 6d.) THERE are not, it is said, many speeches that alter votes in the House of Commons, and there are relatively few...

The Timeless Moment. By Warner Allen. (Faber. 10s. 6d.) STILL the books on mysticism appear. This age, having gone through tribulation and at the same time being largely without...

Bengal Journey : A story of the part played by the women of the province, 1939-1945. By Rumer Godden. (Longmans. 10s. 6d.) India's Hindu - Muslim Questions. By Beni Prasad....

Maquisard. By Albert J. Guerard. (Longmans. 7s. 6d.) MR. GUERARD calls his novel of the Maquis " A Christmas Tale," a sub-title which brings with it all the wrong associations...

James Hurnard : A Victorian Character. Selections by G. Rostrevor Hamilton. (Cambridge University Press. 7s. 6d.) ANY exhumed and renewable Victorian is now described habitually...

SIR JOHN MAititiorr died last year at the age of eighty-sii, leaving behind him the unpublished MS. of his autobiography, unpublished because, with a modesty that was entirely...

border may be admitted into that delectable region. But if they both share much the same scene and portray much the same people, there is a considerable gap between their...

THE King's Speech, containing nothing unexpected from the City point of view, passed without noticeable effect on security prices. The really interesting feature market-wise has...

A. De Weerd. (Robert Hale. 15s.) MAJOR DE WEERD, a member of the editorial staff of the American Infantry Journal, has collected together in this volume eleven essays on...

one guinea will be awarded to the sender of she first correct solution of this week's crossword to be opened after noon on Tuesday week, November 26th. Envelopes must be...

The winner of Crossword No. 399 is Miss STEVENSON JONES, Old Mill Hey, Willaston, Wirral.