'ACCORDING TO HERACLITGS, everything changes, all the time,' as the Foreign Secretary wrote in Le Monde on Tuesday. Nothing seemed to have changed more than the Government's...

T M French pronouncements about the future of NATO strike at the whole integrated system of defence upon which the security of the west and the free- dom of mankind depend.'...

a competition, of its own on why the pound is weak. The letters of congratulation flowed in and here again the trade unions were widely held to be the villains, though there was...

all political power to the army after several weeks of student rioting, but two days later he appeared to be making a comeback. There were new rumours of a political coup in...

Friday March 18 1966

The Off-key Election By _ALAN WATKINS S OME years ago Mr. Wilson—Mr. Angus Wilson, that is—wrote a short story wherein one of the characters looks into a mirror in which he is...

During the 1964 election campaign, Mr. Amery, the Conservative candidate, called on a convent of fourteen enclosed Carmelite nuns in his constituency of Preston North. He won by...

A Conservative Party• Conference From DEV MURARKA MOSCOW T HE twenty-third party congress will be an interregnum rather than a landmark on its own. It will be a pointer to...

that they were being prepared. At 7.51 Mr. Gerald Kaufman distributed a few to chosen chums. I got mine one minute before Mr. Wilson got to the end of his prepared speech. The...

By CLEMENT FREUD Tiff E are the porcupine days; both sides show the s ir quills and neither bites. Peacock-like the party leaders preen themselves before their own people—for...

Absolutely nothing happened until 7.37. All eyes on entrance. From time to time a number of soberly dressed men of what the French call 'a certain age' filed down the aisle. As...

Europe, capacity 3,500, was decorated with posters urging us to go forward with Labour. The audience sat on frayed velvet tip-up seats and as no one remembered that the good...

At 6.45 when I arrived there was a man on the platform making a minor speech (a continental practice this, where league , football matches are preceded by a reserve fixture)....

single line of dignitaries; the atmosphere was socially desirable, middle aged, Sunday school. The chair- man or whatever said 'it was an inspiration when our party chose you...

spoke and got the requisite amount of applause each time they mentioned Mr. Wilson, Labour, The Highlands, housing or Mr. Shinwell. The nation, said the Provost of Glasgow, must...

All press-seats not only had a copy of the Heath speech but the text of one he was to make later that night in Exeter. The handout was subheaded `Please check carefully for any...

building, constructed one felt more for the glory of our Lord than the convenience of our Lord Mayor. One side of the hall bore a large orange-on-black banner stating RIGHT...

Mr. Wilson wore a single - breasted charcoal suit, no waistcoat; he wore a ring on his third finger left hand, and silver-grey hair. Mr. Heath wore a three-piece...

The Hand of Power From DON COOK PARIS I N the writings of Henri Bergson, the philo- sophersopher who is one of the influences in General de Gaulle's life, there is a passage...

Another Look at Mao From ARNOLD BEICHMAN WASHINGTON T HERE are curious signs here that some serious rethinking is under way in high government quarters about US policy...

By ARTHUR SELDON I s it time the politician was deflated and put in his place? He should re-read Shakespeare. In war we can stand—we desperately need—a warrior-leader...

March 17, /866 Mr. Gladstone has promised justice to dogs. He suggested in the House of Commons yester- day week that the dog duty is too high, and is in fact a purely voluntary...

'I think we've been a very pragmatic govern- ment. We shall remain a pragmatic government.' —H. Wilson, Election Forum, BBC TV, March 10. Pragmatic: 1. Relating to the affairs...

0 NE of the few good things about this so far oddly unreal election campaign is that there are signs that the conspiracy of silence about sterling and the exchange rate is at...

A last farewell to the great Bonnard exhibition which closed on Sunday. Sad to contemplate all that colour draining out of London, and to think that one can no longer turn in at...

With scrupulous courtesy and a proper sense of the historic importance of what he was about, President de Gaulle's letters to President John- son, Mr. Wilson, Chancellor Erhard...

It would, I suppose, be unduly restrictive to suggest that the proper province of a judge is to try the case in hand, and that his duty ends there; but it is only too apparent...

what are we to make of the recent decision by Mr. Justice Stable to release to the press photographs of a couple who had been attacked by a young thug on the grounds that...

Just how far away we still are from the rational discussion that Hirsch and I would both like to see was amply evidenced by the behaviour of our two 'heavy' dailies over the...

The Battle for East Anglia By J. W. M. THOMPSON E AST ANGLIA teems with marginal seats: at least half of the constituencies there, eight out of sixteen, will change from...

A Straight Answer By STUART HOOD T HERE is a good deal of evidence to support a thoroughly depressing theory of mass communications. It says, briefly, that people tend to...

Haley's Comment By JOHN WELLS The f is weak because one mild and balmy Dulwich dawn when dew-hung daffs stood glist'ning on the lawn and doves were warbling in the vernal...

ACROSS.-1 Barnacle. 5 Skewer. 9 Bordered. 10 Antrim. 12 Lalage. 13 Handcart. 15 Astronomical. 18 New- foundland: 23 Underpin. 24 Snatch. 26 Aplomb. 27 Shalimar. 28 Ending. 29...

ACROSS Keturning left-winger departed by water (7) 5. Seat of a laird in the poultry- run? (7) 9. Daddy can be so sweet! (5) 10. Butterfly reputation enjoyed by an academy (9)...

Here Be Giants By ALAN BRIEN My first memory is of tracking down a long, dark,high corridor towards a door which suddenly opened and threw a great, yellow rhomboid of sun-...

It's all off. Harold's decided to be crowned instead.—A junior minister. He [Mr. Heath] has behaved like a sulky little boy who won't give up his lollipop.—Lord Byers. We are...

criminal is one by choice. He for g ets the sexual offender, the criminal who is in any wa ) mentally ill, and, more often than not, the recidivist. He would do well to read...

SIR,—It made me as wrathful to read Geor g e Wheat- ley's nasty and cheap letter as. in the opinion of Blake. it m ade Heaven to see a bird ca g ed. We must on no account, Mr....

SIR,—Is the SPECTATOR, like other hien pensant pub- lications, not guilty of inverted McCarthyism when dealing with immigration? Anyone who urges restric- tion is labelled...

From: Jonathan S. Boswell, T. C. Skellington- Lodge, William Phillips, G. Reichardt, Gyles Brandreth, Susan Knibbs, Marjory H. Phillips, Alfred Sherman, S. M. Wyllie, A. G. F....

Sur,—There is an aspect of this rule which I do not remember havin g seen mentioned in print. Like others I paid for my National retirement benefit but was never allowed to draw...

SIR,—In what cloistered sanctuary has your corres- pondent W. Williams been livin g ? Between 1918 and 1926 1 was more than once caned (on the hand) in my Yorkshire g irls' school.

finds the modern management of diabetes 'rather boring' (SPECTATOR. February 25), but I suspect that many diabetics might disagree with him. While it is true that diabetes can,...

Sts,--Where's the crossword? Blast you! And I am serious. If you are stopping it, as it once was, then say so. You can cut out other things rather than the crossword. But keep...

The Fallacy of Hope —2 By BRYAN ROBERTSON I N his final illness, Turner was told by Dr. Price of Margate (where he stayed in his later years in lodgings) that death was near....

the Ministry's report published in 1962 as 'The Conduct of Fluoridation Studies, etc.,' he should have his mind set at rest about the method of dosing and testing. But the real...

should seem to have joined the 'sheep' in blindly accepting the Ministry of Health's recommendation, because of the 'overwhelming weight of medical and dental opinion.' Opinion...

Mad Craze R UTTING: an uncouth phrase by which the vulgar denote that gentle dalliance which in the well-wooded forests of Hampshire passes between lovers of the ferine kind.'...

A Long Felt Want E VEN if her face was partly blotted out and her voice occasionally forced by two stand- microphones, Cleo LaMe and band made a pleasant insert at the St....

The Ole Terrors M Y own reaction to most Spanish dance troupes is a condition best described as the Old Terrors—a feeling of mounting disquiet, brought on by an evening of...

The Beasts Have It C EARCH the cinema at its gruesomest, and it would be hard to find a more embarrassing script than that of Born Free (director : James Hill). And the fact...

By TONY TANNER A FTER all, every sort of shouting is a transi- tory thing. It is the grim silence of facts that remains' (Conrad). On November 15, 1959, in Holcomb, Kansas,...

An Autobiography : The Story of my Experi- ments with Truth. By M. K. Gandhi. Trans- lated by Mahadev Desai. (Cape, 16s.) ON March 7, the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas,...

Twelve and a Tilly. Essays on the Occasion of the 25th Anniversary of Finnegans Wake. Edited by Jack P. Dalton and Clive Hart. (Faber, 30s.) A TILLY is the extra, buckshee,...

'The ideas by which men live' were his, too. He, too, made his living by them. Truly, he roared 'YES!' in thunder; never a wee 'no.* In his heart that beat for liberty alone, he...

THERE can be few more enterprising foreign correspondents at work today than James Cameron, whose knack of getting himself into inaccessible places is almost uncanny. Last year...

By PHILIDOR L. I. LOSHINSKI (HI =, USSR, 1948) vairrn to play and mate in two moves ; solution next week. Solution to No. 273 (Fleck) : R—K B 5, threat Kt—B 4. Kt. Kt—Q 7 ;...

The Anti-Death League. By Kingsley Amis. (Gollancz, 30s.) A Drop of Patience. By William Melvin Kelley. (Hutchinson, 25s.) WRITING about contemporary fiction seems to entail a...

NATIONAL AND GRINDLAYS BANK LIMITED THE following are extracts from the circulated state- ment by the Chairman, The Rt. Hon. Lord Aldington, P.C., K.C.M.G., C.B.E., D.S.O., for...

There is first the amount of profit earned by our branches and remitted after deduction of local taxation and any necessary provision for bad and doubtful debts. Then there are...

Dearer and Dearer Money By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT N o one likes the moneylender. As for the usurer, the early Christian Church con- demned him to outer darkness. Most members of...

is in each of the territories in which we operate and how much profit we make in each. In certain of these countries we publish, as we have to by law, a local balance sheet and...

By CUSTOS TuE feature on the Stock Exchange this week 11 was the weakness in government bonds on the threat of dearer money. The slide in Wall Street also adversely affected...

Last year was not a good one for the motor trade. After March last there was an abrupt halt to the strong upward trend in the sales of new vehicles. In fact, in the last three-...

By LOTHBURY T HE Britannic Assurance Company has pro- duced excellent figures for its centenary year, 1965: the ordinary branch premiums on new business were up by 13 per cent...

liqueur, but Peter Hallgarten, doubtless im- pressed by the success of after-dinner chocolate mints, has. He calls it Royal Mint-Chocolate Liqueur, it costs 38s. 6d. a bottle...

Vanishing Breed By LESLIE ADRIAN They have not, however, completely vanished. In fact, I hear that numbers of skilled and will- ing workers in this field have escaped from...

he needs the observation of an aircraft spotter and the memory of a computer. Looking at the new AA handbook Co - driver : The Motorist's Companion (12s. 64.), I realise that I...

Say a Few Words By STRIX ONE of the salient differ- ences between the town and the country is that in the town there is a greater by being thin on the ground. • I would be...

Spring Books-1 One year's subscription to the 'Spectator': f3 15s. (including postage) in the United Kingdom and Eire. By surface mail to any other country: £3 5s. Overseas...