HE refusal of Italy to attend a conference of the three principal Mediterranean Powers on the withdrawal of foreign troops from Spain has faced Britain and France with the...

East in the past week have consisted of stalemate at Shanghai, where the Chinese are resisting the Japanese attack with almost complete success, and sweeping Japanese victories...

this v•eek. In the Asturias, the exhausted troops were unable to retain the town of Cangas Onis, on the Santander-Oviedo road, which has previously been almost obliterated by...

to Belgium on Wednesday is—subject to the proviso, common to all assurances, regarding the relation of pledge to execution —of undoubted value to Belgium. When the Locarno...

Australia, may leak forward to the General Election next week with some confi- dence. During the six years which his Government has held office Australia has climbed, without a...

perhaps a hundred million listeners on Tuesday evening dealt mainly with domestic questions, but its importance as a footnote to last week's Chicago speech on the international...

Dr. Stoya- clinovitch, to London this week, following immediately on his visit to Paris to renew for another five years the treaty of friendship between his country and France,...

local elections on Sunday gave results that are an encouragement both to the Front Populaire and the Chautemps Government. The Front Populaire obtained 62 per cent. of the votes...

civilising mission in China and the world is cast by the report of the Fifth Committee of the League of Nations Assembly on the traffic in narcotics. The facts may be allowed to...

the hooligans respon- sible for the injury sustained by Sir Oswald Mosley at Liverpool last week. Anything in the nature of serious political disturbance is rare in this...

is being displayed, both by the spokesmen of our own country and of certain of the Dominions, at the third annual Empire Migration and Development Conference which has been...

American trade treaty have continued now for several months ; and, as Mr. Eden and Mr. Cordell Hull have recently emphasised, there could be no greater economic advance than a...

University of Oxford is a mark not only of its donor's munificence but of his insight into the needs and functions of the University at the present time. Apart from Ltoo,000 for...

I F this country, and the world, are to escape the unimaginable catastrophe of a war involving three, if not five, continents it will be largely because the people of Great...

T HE roads, and their traffic, are one of those problems that are always with us, and since so little advance is made towards their solution, it might be most tactful to ignore...

success- ful business man or a munificent benefactor. He is an almost unique social phenomenon. This is no case of the deserving boy climbing the orthodox educational ladder...

caress the hand that feeds me, and I therefore refrain from all criticism, eulogistic or adverse, of the part played by the Editor of this paper in the film, Children at School,...

M OST people with whom I discussed the announcement of the projected visit of the Duke of Windsor to Germany felt, as I did, a little dubious about the wisdom of it. The Duke...

last year or two on the condition of Central Europe, but for me, at least, the realities of the situation have rarely been more revealingly put than they were by an Austrian who...

daily newspapers in London is reduced to six—or eight if two journals of inconsiderable circulation and specialised appeal, the Daily Worker and the Morning Advertiser, are...

[This is the first of a series of articles announced in last week's SPECTATOR. The age of the writer is 23. His experience and standpoint are sufficiently indicated in the...

By H. ROSINSKI T HE importance of sea-power in the Far East has not yet been properly recognised. By far the most important result of Japanese supremacy on the sea has been to...

By FRANCIS WHITMORE S IX months ago, when financial markets were rocked by the unpleasant surprise of the National Defence Contribution and the sudden scare about the price of...

By LAWRENCE ATHILL [This is the third of six articles in which Major Athill ha; embodied the con:lusions he has reached as a result of a personal investigation into British...

By WILLIAM E. RAPPARD (Rector of the University of Geneva) F OR over six centuries, the Swiss cantons in the heart .I: of Europe have been republics often described as...

By A. G. BRADLEY E LIZABETH CARTER has surely not earned full justice from posterity. She was the contemporary of Mrs. Montagu and Mrs. Thrale and the correspondent of all the...

By MONICA REDLICH . - FROM the arty chat that goes on in foyers among devotees of the ballet one might easily suppose that mime was a new discovery—a special, secret ritual...

INDIA UNDER CONGRESS ALREADY serious difficulties have begun to close in on the new Congress Ministries in the provinces where they are in office ; but they have been met with...

"Tales from the Vienna Woods." At Studio One OF the seemingly endless flow of musical whimsies front Central Europe this is one of the more attractive. It is, of course, always...

advertising films that the Gas Light and Coke Company produce, the Gas Industry has made three films that have no direct connexion with their product but stand, so to speak, on...

THE BALLET Sadler's Wells Checkmate, Ninette de Valois' new work, is the first ballet I have seen without any moment of relaxedness or of idyll. While Arthtir Bliss's score,...

Two Mozart Concerts THE autumn concert season seems to get busier every year, and the supply is evidently—if we except the recitals given to attract attention to the...

[Von einem deutschen Korrespondenten] GANZ schnell, zwischen Hcrbstmanover und Winterhilfswerk, muss der Fiihrer der Deutschen Nation dem Deutschen Herrgott auf dem Bilckeberg...

There seems to be some doubt whether the wild anemone is or is not a harbourer. These hosts are a great nuisance. I once transplanted a wild spindle into my garden and planted...

With this much reservation we must all acknowledge that the Lakes demand peculiar treatment. They are alongside a teeming population though themselves very sparsely populated....

On the first or second of October four thrushes left their nest which was built in ivy on the wall of a cottage in Hert- fordshire. When the owner, of the cottage fed these...

Oxford—the Shire not the University—has been quoted as giving a lead to the counties in the matter of preserving and making available county records. Its next door neighbour...

Many questions have reached me concerning an allusive reference to the queer fact that anemones are antipathetic to plum trees ! The scientific view is as follows. I am...

A National Park It is rather surprising perhaps that the Friends of the Lakes and their Honorary Treasurer, that most charming of writers, Mr. H. H. Symonds, are putting forth...

The whole subject of National Parks is to be discussed on October 16th by Professor G. M. Trevelyan at the annual conference of - the C.P.R.E. at Leamington. Preservation owes...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR, — May I, in submitting the following remarks, make reference to my friend Michael Langley's article, published in The Spectator of...

[Correspondents are requested to keep their letters as brief as is reasonably possible. The most suitable length is that of one of our "News of the Week" paragraphs. Signed...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] should like to make a brief reply to the criticism offered in the August 2oth issue of your journal to Dr. Sherwood Taylor's original article...

better suggestions, thinks that the entrance examination to Oxford and Cambridge should be made "considerably harder." His idea is to eliminate the non-intellectual commoner of...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—In his comments on my article, Mr. Henry C. Wilson seems to have missed the point of my remarks on the situation in Liverpool. The Irish...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] is perhaps worth while to correct one of Mr. Williams's misconceptions. He says that a large, in some cases a very large, proportion of the...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] • SIR,—The letter of Mr. Milliken in the issue of October 8th on the similarity between Dr. Cronin's The Citadel and Martin Arrowsmith recalls...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] do not wish to raise the general issues of modern art which Mr. Blunt and I have more than once debated in public without reaching agreement,...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Among Mr. Norman Maclean's condemnations of my ignorance and prose style, I can discern only one point on which he bases a defence of the...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] Sia,—Last week I am reading a letter which a guy by the name of J. F. L. addresses to you from a spot called St. Helens, Lancashire ; and in...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—In his review of my book Italy Against the World Mr. Wilson Harris is gravel' perturbed because I referred to Viscount Cecil as Lord...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—In your issue of September 24th, 1937, Mx. W. J. Lawrence, in reviewing my book, The Meaning of Hamlet, takes exception to a note on page...

The Saga of American Society (D. W. Brogan) A Stream of French Histories (j. M. Hone) .. The Papacy and Progress (W. T. Wells) .. Mr. Churchill's Gallery (Orb o Williams) .....

The Dauphin. By J. B. Morton. (Longtnans. 12s. 6d.) MR. ROEDER'S prolonged biography—it runs to 600 pages— of the Medici who was married to King Henry H of France, and chiefly...

The Power and Secret of the Papacy. By Rene FUlop-Miller. (Longmans. 7s. 6d.) HERR FaiiP-MILLER and Mr. Ridley are both concerned in their new books with the impact on the...

Great Contemporaries. By the Rt. Hon. Winston S. Churchill. (Thornton Butterworth. 21s.) To the public curiosity about personalities and to the fact that the journalism that...

M. GIDE'S second thoughts on the U.S.S.R. are less valuable than his first. In his Retour de l'U.R.S.S. he wrote with the objectivity of a disillusioned friend of the Soviet...

of Scottish history who have become a legend ; and what the legend means to most Scots is well illustrated in the steel engraving that used to hang in so many Presbyterian...

Orientations. The Autobiography of Sir Ronald Storrs, K.C.M.G. (Ivor Nicholson and Watson. 2Is.) THE urge to place on record one's memories of men and affairs comes to some, as...

MR. THURBER'S public platform may be The New Yorker, but the sophistication that he wears should lead no one astray. Like Mark Twain and Will Rogers before him, he conies from a...

MR. EDWIN MUIR'S new volume is notable for its unity. It is not nature through a temperament that he shows us so much as time and history, scattered places and enduring legends,...

The Land That Time Forgot. By Michael J. Leahy and Maurice CraM. (Hurst and Blacken. 12s. 6d.) Gran Chaco Adventure. By T. Wewege-Smith. (Hutchinson. • 12S. 6d.) 1.2s. 6d.)...

Father Brown on Chesterton. By John O'Connor. (Muller. 5s.) ADMIRATION of G. K. Chesterton the writer has a peculiarly personal element in it, dependent very much on the degree...

The Case of the Seven of Calvary. By Anthony Boucher. (Hamish Hamilton. 7s. 6d.) UNLIKE his puppets, the inventor of murder stories frequently escapes the sentence he deserves....

Fanny Keats. By Marie Adami. (Murray. ros. 6d.) THE classic description of Keats's sister - " the only description of her ever published," Mrs. Adami says-is by that good-...

By FORREST REID OF the five novels in this very heterogeneous group two are American, one is a translation from the French, and two are English : of the five novelists, Mr....

I:147 An up-to-date travel book on Iran (lately Persia) is certainly needed, so rapidly have conditions changed in a country which will doubtless soon be on the tourist track....

Mr. Mais has evidently enjoyed writing his memoirs (Hutchinson, los. 6d.) just as he obviously takes a pleasure in broadcasting from the Eng- lish countryside or from America,...

When Nathaniel Woodard, then a humble curate opened a day school in one room of New Shoreham vicarage in 1848, he had no money but an abundance of faith. His project was to...

- Major Van der Byl is well known for his vigorous campaign against the trap- ping of fur-bearing animals, That he is no armchair humanitarian may be seen from his racy account...

Mr. Villiers' book (Hodder and Stoughton, 20s.) is ' described on the title page as "A Journal of a Voyage round the World, undertaken and carried out in the Ship 'Joseph...

PROFESSOR DAVID By M. E. David The late Sir Edgeworth : David, whose career has been described by his daughter, Miss David, in a very readable volume (Arnold, 12s. 6d.), was a...

ALTHOUGH it may fairly be said that all the Motor Shows, at least for the past ten yeari, have had for their chief feature evidence of increasing comfort and power, as well as...

Even gilt-edged and other fixed interest securities have not been completely immune from this week's selling and War Loan and similar stocks have shed half a point. This is...

MARKETS are a sad spectacle. Indeed, this week's events have strongly resembled an air bombardment (new style) in which non-combatants have suffered equally with those in the...

The firmness of shipping freights after their recent big rise is very impressive, especially when commodity prices, with which they are usually fairly closely linked, have...

obvious uncertainties of international politics, to stress the merits of merchanting companies' shares, but with the proviso that the general recovery movement is maintained, I...

also the attraction of D. and W. Murray new 5 per cent. los. preference shares at 7s. 9d. This company's preference dividend require- ments have been scaled down very...

THE POSITION OF MARKETS THE present condition of the security markets would seem to suggest that the country and, in fact, the world as a whole must be heading for a fresh...

Gilt-edged securities have again been among the very few Stock Exchange markets to show any resistance at all to the general depression. It is evident that the uncertainties of...

MARKETS LACK SUPPORT. STOCK EXCHANGE quotations have continued their wavering and hesitant course during the past week. Half-hearted recoveries have taken place from time to...

Holders of the" C "stock of the London Passenger Transport Board had a pleasant surprise at the close of last week, when the Board declared a final dividend of 21 per cent, on...

This week's meeting of Harrisons and Crosfield, Limited, was notable for a lucid explanation by Mr. H. Eric Miller, the • chairman, of the circumstances in which the special...

How well-managed Rubber companies have quickly returned to prosperity, thanks to the improvement in the price of rubber under Restriction, was modestly outlined in the speech of...

MR. - ERIC MACFADYEN'S SPEECH PRESIDING at the annual meeting of HosCote Rubber Estates,' Ltd., held on Thursday, October 14th, at 1-4 Great Tower Street, E.C. 2, Mr. Eric...

TEA AND RUBBER POSITION PRESIDING at the twenty-ninth annual meeting of Harrisons & Crosfield, Ltd., held on October 12th in London, Mr. Eric Miller said : The company's...