A LL hope of progress in the matter of the debts is banished by the anachronisms of the American Constitution. Mr. Hoover, realizing that the time between now and June (when...

arc more fully discussed on a later page, is generally regarded as the head of a stop-gap administration. That judgement is based not on the personnel of the new government,...

The Round Table Conference may or may not be actually wound up before Christmas, but the end is in sight. The Conference by no means satisfies its Indian members, and if it does...

Entered as second-class Mail Matter at the New York, N.Y. Post ()flee, Dec. 23rd, 1896. Postal subecription 30s. per annum, to any part of the world. Postage on this issue :...

by the Colonial Secretary on Tuesday on the gold find in Kenya must be regarded as satisfactory. The difficulties of the situation are obvious. Gold has been found in Kenya and...

'Nineteen, after trying to draft a resolution on the Manchurian question acceptable both to Japan and China, has adjourned till January 16th. Nothing could be more...

now been voted by the American Congress, although the two Houses have still to agree upon the length of the transitional period. The Senate demands an interval of twelve years,...

so convinced a Protectionist as Sir Arthur Steel-Maitland challenges the Government squarely to say whether it would be prepared to enter a 10 per cent, group of nations—i.e.,...

goods or services. That truism has been driven into the mind of every newspaper-reader at least once a week for the past six months. Of the services this country is accustomed...

of a pure milk supply, the Ministry of Agriculture in Northern Ireland has done well to carry out a prolonged test of Dr. Spahlinger's bovine anti-tuberculosis vaccine. The...

Farmers' Union has advised its members to dismiss 6,000 men next week, the Union itself takes strong exception to so desperate a policy. Where the farmers' own society is in two...

the Cabinet minutes of the discussions on the American debt in 1922, the origin of this business is the scurrilous attacks upon Mr. Baldwin, who has been made the scapegoat of...

Amalgamation in the cotton trade has ratified the agreement to increase the normal number of looms .worked by each weaver. As the delegates accepted it on a vote by 104 to 40,...

meetings of the various educational associations in the first fortnight of January, The Spectator will begin next week the publication of a short series of articles on various...

On Monday a supplementary estimate for 118,010,000 for unemployment was passed ; and Sir Henry Betterton made rather heavy weather over an error of 85 per cent, in his original...

Parliament before Christmas has been remarkable for a most impressive attack upon the slums by Sir Austen Chamberlain. His text was that the Government ought to have included...

A MONTH ago the tote club evil was described in these columns as a development of which Parliament must take early cognizance. The ruling given last week in the Divisional Court...

T HE Anglo-Persian oil dispute has been formally discussed by the League of Nations Council and adjourned for five weeks to give time for the Persian Government to prepare its...

papers were not slow to realise that Lady Snowden could probably be tempted into expressing herself satis- factorily from their point of view on the termination of her B.B.C....

possession of firearms are all they should be. The answer to that is to ask the Home Secretary to read the newspapers. Only the other day an Austrian girl was able to walk into...

of the provisions of the American Constitution regarding the Presidential election it is hard so suppose that any- thing ever can. Mr. Roosevelt, by the way, is of course, not...

• represent the considered editorial opinions of the Spectator. I should be sorry to have to take that responsibility on my shoulders. My function is to comment On men and...

of the Intransigeant on a controlling interest in his paper, which has always supported • the Right, being - acquired by financial forces representing the Left, is an example of...

A LL Lord Beaverbrook's bellows were in full blast at the week-end—both on jours mivrables, as the French call them, and on the day of rest—fanning up a war-debt lire to scorch...

president of the Ruskin Society, repeats in the London Mercury the protest he made in the daily press against Sir Henry Newbolt's comments on John Ruskin's mar- riage tragedy....

By It. A. J.• WALLING. L ORD COKE said : "The whole Christian world hath not the like office as justice of the peace, if duly executed." The stress, it will be noted, lies on...

BY DR. EDNVYN BEVAN. T HE Editor has called upon me to give an account of the Christian faith "as I hold to it and live by it myself." This is a formidable task, but it is one...

BY A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT I T was inevitable that sooner or later Joseph Paul- Boncour would be Prime Minister of France, and cer- tainly he has every .qualification which...

BY STEPHEN LEACOCK. [Around the idea of Christmas there has grown up in our fiction a fine literary tradition. Under this convention Christmas is presumed to be a time of great...

Old Master Drawings THE exhibition of drawings now on view at the Galleries of Tomas Harris in Bruton Street covers all periods from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century and...

UNQUALIFIED praise is due to the British Broadcasting Corporation for including in its series of symphony concerts three programmes devoted entirely to the music of Elgar. These...

There is only one thing on my estate that pays," a land- owner said to me the other day, " and that is holly." He sells tons of it, berried at one price, unberried at another on...

The island sanctuaries in Britain slowly multiply. I hear wonderful stories of a private sanctuary, dedicated by a man of business, in the Orkneys. Some of the most charming and...

THE CHRISTMAS LANDSCAPE. The Christmas landscape is hung with a great wealth of berries ; and by some trick of the season holly leaves have grown more thinly than usual and the...

In the midst of the unusual warmth I have come upon one of the more melancholy signs of a hard winter : a redwing lay dead upon the lawn. This comely thrush, who comes with the...

In giving a list of the alien animals now at large in England I left to a postscript the nutria ; and a good deal of confusion has been caused by the introduction of the name...

When Dr. Alex Munthe wrote of the plight of the birds of Italy in San Michele he builded better than he knew : he moved the heart of the Duce to consecrate Capri as a sanctuary...

is bred there ; and there is to be seen one of the most perfect of the silver fox farms. Over it the other day circled and gambolled no fewer than seven buzzards ; and though...

has not been sufficiently directed to the style of indictment which has been used in a recent prosecution of a person stated to be engaged in the spread of social unrest. The...

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I write to call attention to a wrong inference which might easily be drawn from the paragraph in "A Spectator's Note Book," of December...

the Spectator of November 4th Sir Patrick Fagan says that Great Britain has never given "a pledge to establish responsible government in India," and "provide for respon-...

[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.—Ed....

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Suf„ , —Mr. Aldous Huxley's article on D. H. Lawrence's Etruscan Places, in your issue of November 4th, is full of suggestiveness and worthy of...

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sin,—I take the liberty of addressing you. I have been a professional rat-catcher and vermin destroyer for twenty-five years. Rats, mice,...

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sut,—Mr. H. B. Tune's method of making the foreigner pay was exploded twenty-five years ago when the late Mr. Joseph Chamberlain started the...

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—There can be no doubt that our Labour Bureaux have failed in their beneficent object, chiefly because the touch has not been sufficiently...

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sin,—As editors of The Shakespeare Head Brontë we shall be most grateful if you will kindly allow us to answer one or two points in Mr. E. F....

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—AllOW me to thank you for your sympathetic article entitled "Our Northern Neighbours." I do not propose to write about the specific trade...

BY XAN-rn 'ern. [A prize of one guinea will be given to the sender of the first correct solution of this week's cross-word puzzle to be opened. Envelopes should be marked...

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sra,-In your issue of December 2nd you say "unfortunately the poor always prefer milk from a tin to milk from a dairy." Why do you libel the...

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,-Your Parliamentary Correspondent, in the issue of December 16th, states that nothing will reconcile the Socialist view that all rents...

The English Dramatic Critics, 1660 - 1932. Assembled by Tames Agate. (Arthur Barker. 12s. 6d.) "THERE is no human invention so aptly calculated for the forming of a free-born...

Son of the Morning. By E. J. O'Brien. (Cape. 10s. 6d.) As the genius of Nietzsche developed more and more along its wild elliptical course towards the light that finally blinded...

felicitous estimates of Nell Gwyn's character, writes : "If we knew as much of her as Boswell has enabled us to know of Dr. Johnson, we should possess, in that unwritten book,...

Puss in Books. (Geoffrey Bles. 8s. 6d.) Tins anthology, according to the compilers, Mr. Michael Joseph and Miss Elizabeth Drew, is intended for" the members of a kind of...

garden needs no emphasizing either when we drive past his cottages or observe the advertisements for new books on gardening . in the literary pages of his newspapers. It is a...

IT was a good idea to collect in a series of volumes tales and sketches chosen from the pages of Bkzelarood's for the last forty years. No other magazine has maintained so...

Sir William Orpen, Artist and Man. By P. G. Konody and Sidney Dark. (Seeley, Service. 25s.) Tms book is divided into two parts—the first biographical the second critical. Mr....

Bv L. A. G. STRONG. Mundy's Child. By Alice Lindley. (Allan. 7s. 6d.) INDIVIDUALITY in writing is always easier to appreciate than to define. It is true that some authors make...

sug- gestive and informing little book on The Framework of Inter- national Society (Longmans, 2s. 6d.), which is published for the Workers' Educational Association. Mr. Bailey...

many years to the history of the Privy Council and the Cabinet, left the unrevised MS. of the second volume of The Cabinet Council of England in the 17th and 18th Centuries (H....

GREGOIRE AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION By Lord Ashbourne The " constitutional " Bishop of Blois, who was a fierce Republican and also a pious Catholic, has seldom attracted the...

and beauty of its ancient ceremonies is nowhere more abundantly displayed than in those special rites which belong to the functions of Bishops : the sacraments of confirmation...

Began, Mrs. Williams-Ellis related the story of Evolution in a language intelligible to the youngest child, and in this book, How You are Made (Black, 2s. 6d.) she provides...

Beadnell The author of this book (C. A. Watts, 10s. 6d.) has made an honest and diffident but not altogether hapu oi attempt to re-write and bring up to date Dennis Hi t rd's...

We regret two errors in connexion with a review under this heading in our issue of December 16th. Mr. Bell's book, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, is priced at 15s., not 10s....

Slowly but surely indications increase of more cheerful prospects for some of our staple industries. I referred recently in these columns to the important development in...

And that railway shareholders have suffered terribly in recent years both as regards dividend and capital depre- ciation there can be no question. Next week I expect to be...

Notwithstanding the fact that the railroads are doing their utmost to meet modern requirements, both as regards the speed and comfort of the railways, traffics continue to fall...

Railways and the Investor I Fist) it very difficult to justify the lack of attention which seenis to have been given by the Government to the findings of the Salter Report on...

HOLIDAY MARKETS. THE approach of the Christmas holidays has had the usual effect of restricting dealings in the stock markets during the past week. On the whole the tone has...

Meanwhile, not only railway directors and the railway shareholders are confronted with a serious position as regards the profit-earning power of the companies, but upon the...

Nor is it as though railway charges themselves had not increased, for although of recent years there has been a great increase in facilities for cheap short-term travel,...