24 FEBRUARY 1956

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MACMILLAN'S FIRST ROUND

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I T is clear from the nature of the new economic measures introduced last week that the new Chaticellor found him- self in a tight corner when he arrived at the Treasury. By...

SPECTATOR

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ESTABLISHED 1828 No. 6661 FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1956 PRICE 7d.

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THE DECISIVE STEP

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W E should, as soon as possible,' wrote William Temple in the Spectator over twenty years ago, 'remove the death penalty for murder from the statute book.' We are still some way...

During the printing dispute some readers may find that copies

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of, the Spectator arrive late. We regret any short- comings in this issue and also any inconveniences that may be caused by circumstances beyond our control.

MUSEUM PIECE

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nHE embarrassing but indisputable fact,' a Spectator leading 1 article complained twelve months ago, 'is that in spite of all the money and effort poured into the production of...

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KHRUSHLCHEV'S KIND WORDS

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A sawrtey g o to press the Con g ress of the Soviet Communist P arty is not yet over. When the names of the new Central Committee and Party Praesidium are available its si g...

RESTRICTIVE PRACTICES

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By our Industrial Correspondent Tan Government's Restrictive Trade Practices Bill has had 1 an almost suspiciously g ood reception : even the restrictive practitioners have not...

DOLDRUMS IN DEUTSCHLAND

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By Our German Correspondent Bonn THERE THERE comes a time in the life of every parliamentary when its members feel a chan g e of weather in their bones and start lookin g...

CHILD'S GUIDE TO GUIDED MISSILES

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ONDAY'S effort by the Government to reassure the public about the g uided missile situation in this country received a singularly g ood press. Most papers carried reports of the...

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Portrait of the Week

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I F Sir Anthony needed proof that Government activity of any kind, popular or unpopular, is better than hopeful inaction, the last few days should have shown him. Taken singly,...

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Political Commentary

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BY HENRY FAIRLIE R. HAROLD MACMILLAN's success in the House of Commons on Monday should not be under- estimated but, even more important, the nature of it 4 , 110 111d be...

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OFFERED ON a Brighton menu last weekend : Beach Melba.

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PHAROS

IT IS HARD to believe, but in the whole of

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the British Broad- casting Corporation there is apparently nobody who can be trusted to argue its case on the air. For what other explanation can there be of the decision to put...

A Spectator's Notebook

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NOW THAT the House of Commons has voted for abolition of the death penalty, the Evans case can at last be isolated from that issue. In the debate Sir Lionel Heald, QC, who...

MR. TOM DRIBERG'S biography of Lord Beaverbrook, reviewed in our

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book pages this week, has had a stormy history. The Daily Express paid for the serial rights before the book was written, and when Mr. Driberg had finished it he flew off in...

PRISON INTELLIGENCE

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THREE MEN in the condemned cells heard by radio last night that their lives are to be spared. Each sat with a single earphone to his ear and heard the Commons decision during...

THE Daily Worker of February 17, 1956, welcomes the aboli-

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tion of the death penalty as a triumph for 'the forces of enlightenment and civilisation.' The Daily Worker of May 7. 1954, quoted (presumably with approval) the decree of the...

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Two Pulls in Malta

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BY J. GR1MOND, MP 0 N the first morning of my visit to Malta I stood in a swaying crowd, which chanted hymns and waved yellow and white Papal flags as it engulfed the Arch-...

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Dependent Television

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BY RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL 0 N New Year's Day an ITV camera crew descended on my home in Suffolk, by appointment, to record a film of my views on the second report of the Press...

Communism in India

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BY L. F. RUSHBROOK WILLIAMS H OW strong is the Communist movement in India, and what are the prospects of its steering the country into the Soviet orbit in the foreseeable...

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Dr. Wodehouse and Mr. Wain

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By EVELYN WAUGH N investigation has lately been made in the book-trade A to determine which literary critics have most influence on sales. I remember the time when the Evening...

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City and Suburban

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BY JOHN BETJEMAN T HIS month's casualty list of attractive English buildings to be destroyed is so long that I can only give a few examples, arranged alphabetically under...

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Murder in the Glens

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I T is a well-established literary convention that the poacher is a sympathetic character. People who write about the country invest him with a raffish glamour and credit him...

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Letters to the Editor

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The New Estate Merlyn Rees, John O'Leary, William Allan Pause War Correspondents Lord Burnham, R. A. J. Kirkby Burke or Gallup? L. R. England Free Elections Peregrine...

WAR CORRESPONDENTS SIR,—Both Gerard Fay and Cyril Ray are too

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deeply engaged in their own battles, Fay's with the corps of correspondents and Ray's with Fay, to consider the purpose of war reporting which is to make the battle under-...

SIR,—May I, as one of the migrants from the North,

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to whom Charles Curran refers in his article on the New Estate, be permitted to voice an opinion? His assertion that 'the North Country settler acts rather as a political...

SIR.-I served for two years in Army Public Relations and

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am 'ashamed at the recollection of my extreme youth and inexperience, which were all I had to put at the service of seasoned war correspondents. Fortunately, in their un-...

BURKE OR GALLUP?

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SIR,—We would have been content to leave any discussion of 'Burke and Gallup' in the capable hands of Gallup. But your own foot- note to Mr. Gregory's letter provokes us to...

SIR,—Mr. Curran has one initial advantage in writing about new

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housing estates—he knows nothing about them. I make no claim to know the lot, but I know something concerning them. My letter, so far from being 'an irrelevant trumpet blast,'...

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MINNIE

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SIR,-1 read with much amusement Mr. Gerald Hamilton's witty book reviews in your paper, but why does he say that 'Minnie' is a 'repul- sive appellative'? Both my daughter and I...

THE JOHN GORDON SOCIETY

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SIR,—The foundation of the John Gordon Society strikes a welcome blow for purity in our national life. But why, in this respect, allow all the credit to Mr. Gordon? I should...

SIR,-1 believe I am the only regular reader of the

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Spectator who knows that the Editor recently ran a grave risk of arrest and prosecu- tion under the Official Secrets Act. I only know of one man of letters who has been charged...

FREE ELECTIONS

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SIR,-1 am afraid Mr. Fairlie has still failed to grasp my point about free elections, although this is probably entirely due to my muddled arguments. May I make one more brief...

Sia,—Whilsi welcoming the formation of the John Gordon Society, of

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which we wish to apply for membership, we must point out that in our opinion the Society has based itself on too narrow a view of Mr. Gordon's work. The Society might well be...

SIR,—We have today written to Mr. Graham Greene, heartily applauding

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his sentiments, and offering our wholehearted services to the Cause. We have -told him that Mr. John Gordon has long been our hero—in fact we have a signed photograph of him...

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Contemporary Arts

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Sneezing Assassin MISALLIANCE. By Bernard Shaw. (Lyric, Hammersmith.) —RING FOR CATTY. By Patrick Cargill and Jack Beale. (Lyric, Shaftesbury Avenue.) Jr is rather sad how...

Spectacular Variety

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Tnn present show at the Leicester Galleries offers a spectacular variety of artistic intention. Eliot Hodgkin is a most painstaking facsimilist in the tradition of old...

Heart of Gold

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SUMMER SONG. Music of Dvorak; book by Eric Maschwitz and Hy Kraft. (Princes.)— DOCTOR Jo. By Joan Morgan. (Aldwych.) THE newest musical, about Dvorak gallivant- ing around...

`La Peri'

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THE intensely poetic subject of the legend of the peri has fascinated choreographers for a century past. The essence of the story is the attempt of Iskender to steal the Flower...

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Love in a Wet Climate

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THE RAINS OF RANCHIPUR. (Carlf011.)—FROU- FROU. (Curzon.) The Rains of Ranchipur is another version of Louis Bromfield's novel The Rains Came, and of one thing it can surely...

The opt ea tor

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FEBRUARY 26, 1831 CHANCERY REFORM. Lord BROUGHAM, on Tuesday, introduced his great plans for the reform of Chancery, in a powerful speech of nearly four hours. He commenced by...

MUSIC of the Spheres WHATEVER the final outcome may be

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of the acrimonious dispute between the BBC and the Musicians Union, it is just possible, one likes to think, that it may lead indirectly to a reassessment by programme-planners...

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BOOKS

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Claud in Clover BY GERALD HAMILTON 6 ISTORY,' Mr. Claud Cockburn reminds us (quoting Ernest Toiler), 'is the.propaganda of the victors.' This is no doubt why the rebel in this...

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A Study in Impotence

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BEAVERBROOK : A Study in Power and Frustration. By Toni Driberg. (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 21s.) THE cautionary tale used to be told of a penurious peer who made his living,...

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Coup de Foudre

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THE ARCHBISHOP AND THE LADY: The Story of Fenelon and Madame Guyon. By Michael de la Bedoyere. (Collins, 16s.) THE duc de Saint-Simon, in his encyclopxdic memoirs, devotes some...

No Antimony in the Cesspool

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HOW CHARLES BRAVO DIED, By Yseult Bridges. (Jarrolds, 21s.) IN 1876, the high afternoon of the Victorian day (income tax, 2nd in the £; divorces, a few hundred in the year),...

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Post-war Malaya

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Tuns is a well written and very well balanced book. While most recent works on Malaya have been either soldiers' reminiscences or politicians' manifestoes, Mr. Perry Robinson...

Class-conscious Comedy

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THE TOWN TRAVELLER. By George Gissing. (Methuen, 7s. 6d.) IN late-Victorian prose—Gissing's is a good example—the social channel is carefully marked by little winking signals :...

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Correction: COAL, is OUR LIFE. By N. Dennis, F. Henriques,

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and C. Slaughter (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 25s.). The title of the book reviewed by the Rt. Hon. Emanuel Shinwell, MP, in last week's Spectator should read as above.

New Novels

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A WEEK of expectation and disappointment: Kate Christie's Harold in London (Collins, 12s. 6d.) brings the hero of Smith, her oddly-llavoured and rather more than promising first...

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THE COST AND FOLLY OF DEARER MONEY

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By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT As soon as a Chancellor of the Exchequer gets down to his job in the Treasury he seems to lose touch with the body economic outside. He becomes like a...

COMPANY NOTES

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By CUSTOS THE trouble about a bear market is that it may take an unconscionable time in establishing itself. The present one started on July 22, 1955, after the Financial Times...

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SEED Bans

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Preparatory work such as the making of a seed bed is advisable even when a gardener is mainly concerned with getting his plot dug unless, of course, everything to be planted is...

A SALMON ASTRAY If the migration of birds is one

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of nature's great mysteries, as great a one is the behaviour of migratory fish. There is nothing mysterious about the departure from the river of spent fish but the reason for...

SQUIRREL HARRIERS

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I read not long ago of a squirrel being chased along the ground and up a tree by a stoat. The squirrel proved too good for the stoat in the tree but it was, of course, rather...

Country Life

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BY IAN MALL THERE are many winter occupations in the country that are carried on in the shelter of steading and barn and only a few that are plainly on view. Of these I have...

Chess

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By PHILIDOR BLACK (10 men) WHITE (11 men) C. MANSFIELD (1st Pr Isl ize ° , 1 E 38 1 Ajedrea Argentina, 1926) WHITE to play and mate in 2 moves: solution next week. Solution to...

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SPECTATOR CROSSWORD No. 876

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ACROSS I How William ioes to work in the scrum; see the point? (8 5 Overscrupulous with a smack (6). 9 City ruse to get safe (8). 19 Bowyer notoriously concealed in New York...

The winner of Crossword No. 874 aro: Mr. R. M.

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Bateman, The Cro sways, Macclesfield Road, Wilmslow, Cheshire, and Miss M, Taylor, 190 Greenmount Lane, Bolton, Lancs.

Competitors this week are asked to contribute the last 150

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words of the first instalment of a sensational serial thriller. A prize of £5 (which may be divided) will be awarded to the competitor whose entry most artfully indicates what...

Adjectival

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The usual prize was offered for the most interesting piece of narrative including all the following adjectives, in any order but in their correct sens'es : disingenuous,...

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SOLUTION TO CROSSWORD No.8 74 ACROSS.-1 Flying colours. 9 GlengarrY. 10

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Enact. 11 Menet, 12 LairdshiP. 13 Stabbed, 15 Nuances. 17 Railing, 19 Cap; trio. 21 Castanets. 23 Bruin, 24 Pater. 27 Deadlocks, 26 Knuckle-duster. DOWN.-2 Lie in wait 3 Ingot....