It is no exaggeration to say that this document makes frightening reading. There is scarcely a page in it which does not include a suggestion for some new interference with...

As the day fixed for the signing of the North Atlantic Pact draws nearer, and the emissaries converge on Washington, it becomes steadily clearer that no doubts about the...

The elections held on the two past Sundays in half the cantons of France have completed the isolation of the Communists and carried recovery one stage further. It is now as...

The only hard and fast agreement that has been reached on the disposal of Italy's former Colonies in Africa is written into the peace treaty ; this states that Italy renounces "...

The Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace which met in New York last weekend was more a matter for tears than for laughter, though the element of comedy Was not...

The Liberal Party's annual Assembly at Hastings showed the Party in optimistic and unmistakably Radical temper. True, the spectacle of Liberal leaders championing the House of...

Such is the name given by a well-known headmaster to the notorious Circular 168 of the Ministry of Education, on which are based the regulations, in force since February 21st,...

p ARLIAMENT is now in the flood tide of business. Supple.: mentary Estimates for the past financial year have been disposed of, but estimates for 1949 - 50 have only just been...

The visit the Colonial Secretary is paying this month to the Rhodesias and other African colonies is particularly opportune in view of the controversy over mineral royalties...

There could hardly be a plainer demonstration of the simple truth that nationalisation of itself does not create prosperity than that which is now being provided by the British...

T . HE Conference of Commonwealth Prime Ministers is to meet, as the Prime Minister announced on Tuesday, on April 21st. It will sit, naturally, in private and the sessions will...

the Lord Chamberlain's censorship of plays, or indeed any censorship of plays, got their measure by an unexpectedly large majority it is not very likely to find its way into...

Affairs, edited by a gentleman named Kenneth de Courcy, contained some passages which whoever wrote them must, I should imagine, have lived to regret. The subject was the King's...

asset. So far as the popular papers are concerned it is worth next to nothing by Monday morning. To the Daily Express, indeed, the greatest race for two generations was worth,...

working-class conditions better than most people, on how far the average working man reads books and possesses books (a subject worth pursuing here or somewhere else some day),...

O NLY a handful of the oldest Members of the House of Commons remember Mr. Speaker Lowther, and as Mr. Speaker Lowther, rather than as Lord Ullswater, they will still remember...

goes undoubtedly to the New York Daily News on the House of Lords debate on artificial insemination: " BRITISH LORDS LASH LAB LOVE." JANUS.

By NIGEL BIRCH M.P. HAT guarantees can the French and the other countries trust ? There is no guarantee except to win over the soul of the German people to the side of Western...

By TERRY BISHOP B EFORE the Crown Film Unit decided to send eight technicians to Africa last year to make a film in Nigeria on mass educa- tion, none of us, I am sure, knew...

By ALAN IVIMEY N ORWAY and Denmark having decided to include themselves in the Atlantic Pact, the largest and the wealthiest of the Scandinavian countries still maintains an...

EUROPE IN AFRICA By KENNETH ROBINSON * CASUAL gldnce at the map, especially if it is a map which shows political divisions, will probably leave the impression that Africa is...

By SIR EVELYN WRENCH F EW men have done more to further the cause of friendship between the English-speaking . , peoples than Dr. Gilbert Grosvenor, who this month celebrates...

By J. P. W. MALLALIEU, M.P. O DDLY enough I missed the Dead-Heat in 1877. But, for fifteen seconds, on Saturday, March 26th, 1949, holding to a shrub which jutted from the...

A SALESMAN IN CANADA By M. D. BUTLER (Trinity College, Oxford) N April 1st, 1948, I sailed from Liverpool in the liner Ascania ' for Halifax, Nova Scotia. Among the...

SUBSCRIPTION RATES Ordinary edition to any address in the World. 52 weeks £1 10s. Od. 26 weeks 15s. Oct Air Mail lo any Country n Europe. 52 weeks £2 7s. 6d 26 weeks £1 is....

By HAROLD NICOLSON M Y friends often ask me (in sorrow rather than in anger) what it was that induced me two years ago to become a member of the Labour Party. To those of them...

"Angelina." (Academy.)--" Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House." (Gaumont and Marble Arch Pavilion.)—" Cardboard Cavalier." (Odeon.) IT is a wonderful experience to see an...

COLLECTORS of dramatic clichés—but nobody else that I can think of—should hurry, while there is yet time, to see this comedy of love in the hotel-lounge, at...

THEATRE " Daphne Laureola." By James Bridie. (Wyndham's.) THE first act of Mr. Bridie's new play takes place in a Soho Restaurant, Le Toit aux Pores, which is filled with the...

Thomas Beecham conducted the Luton Choral Society and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in a performance of Haydn's The Creation. It is a very strange reflection that this work...

THIS is going to be about " Young Contemporaries " at the R.B.A. Galleries, and I must warn you that it will read rather like a draft Civil Service return. " Young...

more serious damage is done by complete isolation than by the passing chaos " in the wards that follows visiting hours. ,Mr. Whitcombe simply gives the view of nurses, who are...

Slit,—Mr. Monro Davies gives "Sundays, 2-4" as the time for visiting children's wards at Guy's Hospital. ' For about a year and a half the time has in fact been 5.30-6 on any...

- L'AFFAIRE KRAVCHENKO Snt,—Mrs. Tanya Matthews's article L'Affaire Kravchenko has struck me as one-sided, redolent of or, rather, immersed in, the atmosphere of impassioned...

Sitt,Sir Angus Watson seems to be so blinded by his moral passions as to have lost all sight of elementary .principles of logic. He makes an attempt to arouse prejudice against...

depend on the fiat of this or that ezclesiastical body, but is one of 'simple fact. A martyr is not necessarily a saint—if we may trust St: Paul—but he is, as I conceive it,...

Snt,—It will be interesting to know whether any of your readers can support Sir William Beach Thomas's suggestion that certain clumps of limes may have been planted as a...

Snt,—" The Church of England, with the sanction of the State, definitely canonised Charles the King " (W. H. Hutton, The English Saints, Bampton Lectures, 1903, p. 351): and...

not unnatural that decent people should hesitate to discuss in public this degrading subject. Nevertheless if artificial insemination among human beings is legally permitted in...

Snt,—With reference to the note in the Spectator of March 25th, The Akaba Argument, I should like to draw your attention to the findings of the Acting Mediator for Palestine,...

The "peck of March dust" has become a bushel, and every cottage garden is already full of seed. I cannot but think it better to follow the cottager rather than the specialist in...

sm,—I must protest at misinterpretation of my views in Mr. C. E. Vulliam?s review of my book Social Pragmatism. Whatever Mr. Vulliamy means by saying that I am " concerned...

Another set of collectors, usually of-a much more amateur sort, have been abused of late, not always with justification. Their case the case of plant-collectors—has been...

Sut,—I was surprised to see that Sir. Jocelyn Lucas, M.P., in his article About Badgers, should refer to the badger as "the only surviving member of the bear-tribe in this...

THE SPECTATOR INDEX July to December 1948 Published at 2s. 6ci.. By post 2s. 7d. Send your instructions with a remittance to— THE SPECTATOR, 99, Gower Street, W.C.1.

rivers - should know of the three pamphlets entitled Pollution produced (from 51 Victoria Street) by the Field Sports Society. In general the tale. is shameful.' Peradventure...

Sra,—Mr. Harold Nicolson's . retraction of his remarks on Sir, Arthur Conan Doyle does credit to his heart, but the principles he appears to be recommending are rather...

THE annual report of the Royal Society , for the Protection of Birds makes it quite plain that the greatest enemies of our rarer birds , are the THE annual report of the Royal...

Sra,—On page 381 of the Spectator of March 25th, under the title : " Thanks for the Bonfire," I read: "Does anyone deserve kudos for these reliefs, and if so whom?" Pardon ny...

Civis Romanus On Active Service in Peace and War. By Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy. (Hutchinson. 25s.) WHEN in 1945 Mr. Stimson retired from the office of Secretary of...

IT is a truism to say that the influence of great distances, coupled perhaps with the sedative effects of central heating, ice-cream and Coca-Cola, makes it difficult for even...

Gloucestershire. By Kenneth Hare. (Robert Hale. 15s.) You will not (if, as I presume, you read in 1946 his buoyant, bustling, wayward and reluctantly discreet autobiography No...

ow that we have got out of India we are perhaps in a better sition to enjoy William Hickey's autobiography. We have cast Off the white man's burden of a troubled conscience ;...

IN a sermon at Lincoln's Inn in 1856 Frederick Denison Maurice used these words: " When all schemes of human policy crack and crumble ; when we discover the utter weakness of...

Winchester College. By J. D'E. Firth. (Winchester Publications. 30s.) IN this story of the oldest of the public schools it is possible to follow English history of the last...

The Sickle and the Stars. By Alexander Clifford and Jenny Nicholson. (Peter Davies. 12s. 6d.) Two countries in the world today fascinate us whether we like it or not : Russia...

Henry David Thoreau. By Joseph Wood Krutch. American Men of Letters Series. (Methuen. 15s.) EVEN now, eighty-six years after his death, it is not an easy task to assess...

Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreev. By Maxim Gorky. Translated by Katherine Mansfield, S. K. Koteliansky and Leonard Woolf. (Hogarth Press. 7s. 6c1.) • THIS...

By CUSTOS WITH less than a week remaining before the Budget statement stock markets are maintaining a surprisingly firm front. The strength of gold shares, whose attractions in...

and Unwin. 18s.) THIS Swiss writer has reconstructed twenty-two Alpine disasters that took place mainly in the nineteenth century. M. Gos puts " the birth of alpinism " at the...

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one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution of this week's crossword to be opened after noon on Tuesday week, April 12th. Envelopes must be received...