MR. CHURCHILL surpassed even his own masterpieces of lucid and spirited exposition in his speech on Tuesday, In which he surveyed the first year of the war and the last exciting...

T HE withdrawal of the small British force before powerful Italian forces and the evacuation of Somaliland may be of no great military consequence but are much to be regretted...

The negotiations between Rumania and Bulgaria have been brought to a conclusion which everyone well acquainted with the history of the Balkans in the last 32 years will regard...

The very successful British naval bombardment of Bardia and Fort Capuzzo was probably designed in part to counter the impression created by our evacuation of British Somaliland....

Mr. Lees-Smith called attention last week to one aspect of Eire's neutrality which deserves to be more widely known than it is. At present a very high proportion of the British...

Japan's policy cannot be developed without regard to the balance of world forces, and one may assume that her Govern- ment receive particularly good information about the...

On President Roosevelt's initiative the United States has taken two simple and straightforward, yet profoundly significant steps towards creating common bonds of defence between...

pass over the fine laudatory speeches of Privy Councillors Lees- Smith, Percy Harris, Hore-Belisha, Winterton and Sinclair. These are at any rate noticed in the daily Press....

equality of sacrifice and more promotion by merit: they all praised the spirit of the men in the Forces, welcomed the more offensive and aggressive note and asked for long-range...

on the progress of the war. Oratory will not die while he lives. Here are some striking phrases chosen at random. " The front line runs through the factories "; " Since the...

John Anderson and other members the Government who are associated with him in the handling the aliens question should continue to be indifferent to public inion here and unaware...

has been one of the earliest Id best-gathered in the memory of man. If there must needs e a drought in this country, August is certainly the best anon for it to occur. The crop...

Our Parliamentary Correspondent writes: A unique and memorable Session is drawing to its close, and once again the man of the week has been the Prime Minister. On Thursday he...

boil what had been mmering elsewhere before—the conflict between individual d national interest in the matter of air-raid warnings. Any dividual anxious to save individual...

E VEN in the sphere of social reform war presents its opportunities as well as its drawbacks. Though many measures of reform which would have been thought indispensable in...

present time is of exceptional interest. Those whose opinion has always been: " Never trust a Froggy! " are inevitably Wagging their insular tails ; they have always had their...

be welcomed for more reasons than the obvious one. It shows that even in war-time not only the big commercial battalions prevail; the body of cultivated opinion in England,...

last war proved, have an unpleasant habit of clinging to emergency powers long after the emergency is past. We ought not, after this war, to be compelled to fight piecemeal, for...

we may assume that by taking a day off now and then, as he did last Saturday, he can at least maintain the strength of his air-fleet ; but we, whose losses are greatly less, and...

T HE war is so complex and is being fought on a scale so J gigantic, that it is hard for the common reader—and, indeed. for men of expert knowledge—to assess the significance of...

more tedious duties, that, alone among Government Depart- ments, it may proudly claim to be the Ministry of Romance. I -ate4 the Postmaster-General has requested us—without, as...

By STRATEGICL S IT is some comfort in these critical days to mark that while we have a skilful and stubborn enemy we are meeting him in the way most likely to defeat him. In...

By MICHAEL ZVEGINTZOV p HE " war guilt " trials now being staged by the Petain 1 Government are not mere surface phenomena designed to please Germany or to provide scapegoats....

By ERWIN D. CANHAM By Air Mail. T HE upsurge of American public opinion urging the sale or transfer of 5o or 6o American destroyers to Great Britain has been most striking....

By J. M. SPAIGHT p HERE have been speculations in the Press recently whether ,IL our Government may not be about to change its policy in regard to aircraft production, whether...

ordering " The Spectator " regularly, since newsagents can no longer be supplied on sale-or-return terms.

By LORD DUNSANY I NEVER knew in what year this happened. It is the story an old colonel told me when I was quite young, right at the beginning of this century ; old Colonel...

By P. 0. LAPIS M UCH has been written, in many places and in many tongues, about the Foreign Legion, and I might add that all sorts of things have been said about it. My own...

IN the women's apartments is a young woman who does not know sorrow, On a spring day she paints her face and goes up to the king- fisher tower. Suddenly she notices the willow...

THE THEATRE " Take Back Your Freedom." At the Neighbourhood Theatre IF Winifred Holtby had lived it is unlikely, I think, that her play Take Back Your Freedom would have been...

North - West Passage." At the Empire KING VIDOR has always been one of Hollywood's most bewildering directors. In The Crowd he put himself among the really great film makers ;...

Siat,—In his letter which appeared in The Spectator of August 2nd, Dr. Jacks put it forward that the Nazis appear to have a far more definite idea of what they would like the...

correspondents, I am still exed about the dictum of the Archbishops that for some pacificism a genuine vocation. I cannot believe that two such masters of the glish language...

are perfectly defensible if two propositions be accepted; first, that live on differing levels of spiritual enlightenment; and second, that use and blesses the services of him...

Sm,—We have now been at war nearly a year, but not one of us knows exactly what are our war aims. It is true we have been told that the object of the war is to stamp out...

concerned with definition of Pacificism. Yet, surely, the statement cf the Archbishops has to do with Christian Pacificisrn ; and something may be said in support of the...

fin view of the paper shortage It is essential that letters on these pages should be brief. We are anxious not to reduce the number of fetters, but unless they are shorter they...

SIR,—May I be so rude as to say that the article in your last issue by Ranjee G. Shahani is one of the very few sensible communications on India that have appeared in your...

SIR,—The Surrey County Council, in common with some other councils, has just informed its employees that any who are placed on the register of Conscientious Objectors will be...

Sia,—Farmers have always done well in war-time, and it is only right perhaps that every dog should have his day. In the last war the capital value of stock was nearly trebled....

one problem in evacuation areas that is gravely affected by the rapidly increasing taxation—tha t of the education of one's children? Let me, to be precise, cite my actual...

SIR,—The Government are asking us to reduce our expenditure upon luxury and non-essentials. The Chancellor of the Exchequer wishes to avoid inflation. The Minister of Labour is...

SIR,—The correspondence in your columns on Britain, France and Culture reminds me of the replies given by French soldiers at the front to a questionnaire addressed to them last...

Sta,—It is true, as your correspondent, Lady Simon, says, that many British citizens " stand outside of religious bodies of all persuasions." But any one of these who fails to...

Slit,—Evacuated from France in June, I have recently received the enclosed letter from a French friend, written from Marseilles on July 2nd. The writer, a Marseilles business...

SIR,—The type of camouflage which is now used on many buildings and vehicles betrays a lack of appreciation of the basis of this science which should not exist when advice could...

was glad to see the comment in " A Spectator's Notebook " on the lamentable failure to get the Promenade Concerts broadcast. Mr. Ogilvie is notoriously a lover a good music, but...

Early Victorian Cambridge THE Vice-Master of Trinity continues to place all lovers of Cambridge, and all students of University life and history, under a heavy obligation by...

Poems. By D. S. MacColl. (Blackwell. 7s. 6d.) AT the age of eighty, Mr. MacColl publishes his first book of verse, and prefaces it with a photograph of himself in 1882, at the...

An Epic of the Gestapo. Sir Paul Dukes, K.B.E. (Cassell. los. 6d.) SIR PAUL DUKES is not only a bold and resourceful secret agent, but also a writer with the gift of relating...

By Many Waters. By A. R. B. Haldane. (Nelson. los. 6d.) THE present writer was once fortunate enough to enjoy the thrilling privilege—for a fisherman—of taking over, for a few...

The Stoat. By Lynn Brock. (Crime Club. 7s. 641) Murder at the Munition Works. By G. D. H. and M. Cole . (Crime Club. 7s. 6d.) Danger Road. By Mark Saxton. (Heinemann. 7s....

YOUR constant reader is not always over-judicious. Indein, as Mr. Kellett remarks, some men read so much and remember so much that eventually they cannot distinguish between...

Mountaineering Holiday. By Frank Smythe. (Hodder and Stoughton. I 2S. 6d.) THIS lively and agreeable record of three weeks' climbing in the Dauphine and the Mont Blanc district...

I Bought a Mountain. By Thomas Firbank. (Harrap. 8s. 6d.) THE author of this book, tired of two years' imprisonment in a Canadian fruit cannery, drove in a wild November gale...

The Adventurer. By Anne Meredith. (Faber. 8s. 6d.) Too Dear for My Possessing. By Pamela Hansford Johnson (Collins. 8s. 6d.) The Sig Wheel. _ By Mark Benney. (Peter Davies. 8s....

By CUSTOS WAR Loan at tot. That is the City's answer to Hitler's blitzkreig. Naturally, there is no great activity in the stock markets, but the gradual creeping up of prices is...

FURNESS, WITHY AND CO., LTD. WAR-TIME SHIPPING PROBLEMS THE forty-Moth annual general meeting was held in London on August loth. Lord Essendon, in moving the adoption of the...

Except perhaps a cook surveying her lines of bottled fruit or jam, no one gets such pleasure from evidence of accomplished work as a farmer in the spectacle of a great...

Orchard Methods The other day I walked through an orchard in which it seemed that every tree was laden with fruit. The shy apples were as many as the more robustious kinds....

It is good and interesting for many of us to be forced to turn our attention from the flower garden to the vegetable. We discover to our satisfaction such profound truths as...

Different seasons are accompanied by particular freaks of growth in this plant and that. This summer seems to be a season of double- dealing, so to say. I have received by post...

a Book Token for one guinea will be given to the senaer of the first cot- ect solution of this Week's crossword puzzle to be opened. Envelopes should be marked " Crossword...

SOLUTION NEXT WEEK The winner of Crossword No. 76 is C. C. Coffey, Greystu , 10. Myddleton, Ilkley.