France today everything points to a major crisis in 1948. The financial measures proposed by M. Ren6 Mayer are certainly more drastic than any others which have been tried since...

T HE conference that failed has left its inevitable aftermath, but in fact the harvest is hardly visible yet. Mr. Bevin's report to the House of Commons was conspicuous for its...

Publication of the communications exchanged between the Minister of Health and the British Medical Association is a salutary reminder that the National Health Service Act comes...

In last week's debate on the White Paper on Capital Investment, Sir Stafford Cripps said that we could look forward to 1948 with quiet confidence. But he characteristically—and...

The decision of the Labour Party to take up the Communist challenge seriously at last is very timely. A truce between Socialists and Communists as the two parties define...

The trade agreement with Canada Which was concluded in Ottawa last week should give pause to those joyful optimists who have so quickly forgotten the gap in the balance of...

T HERE is cynicism, irony, almost tragedy, in such a heading. Christmas is before all things the festival of peace. "Unto us a child is born." "God was in Christ, reconciling...

I accept them both. First "the intellectual climate" and similar expressions —an unwarranted and (I am bound to agree) much-to-be-deprecated use of the word "climate." Second,...

T HE division of opinion in the House of Commons on the Civil List grant to Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh was curious. The Select Committee which considered the...

one I came across the other day seems to have more than ordinary merit. A Pole who had fled for political reasons to Austria and lived in a D.P. camp there was sent to farm work...

Sir Alexander Maxwell (not the Home Office one), who is chairman of the British Tourist and Holidays Board, seems to me to make a strong point when he argues that the abolition...

journalism, and certainly the message in Friday's Daily Telegraph on the evacuation of Ramak, on the north-west frontier, deserves that description. Pakistan, within whose area...

I suggested that a partial explanat:on of the Chancellor's apparent folly in disclosing his Budget proposals to a journalist half an hour or so before he began his Budget speech...

A MERICANS are beginning to guess who may be their next President. But the discussion of candidates is still little more than a political parlour game, played with surprising...

By GILBERT WALKER T HE Transport Act, 1947, is law, and on Vesting Day, January 1st 1948, the British Transport Commission succeeds to an immense • undertaking. Five men will...

By MICHAEL BERRY E NQUIRIES are being made as to why foxhunting still survives. Who hunts and why ? Well, the first necessity for the survival of any pack of hounds is a...

By W. J. BROWN, M.P. T HE Penguin series has added to our already considerable debt I to it by producing two very topical books on politics—one, by John Parker, M.P., entitled...

to place a firm order with their newsagent or to take out a subscription. Newsagents cannot afford to take the risk of carrying stock, as unsold copies are non-return- able....

By H. D. WALSTON B EFORE the war metropolitan France was, to all intents and purposes, self-supporting. Today the high cost of food—the principal cause of the recent...

By HAROLD NICOLSON I HAVE received a Christmas present from an unknown friend. It takes the form of a small book bound in maroon cloth with gilt lettering. The book is entitled...

FItzherbert." tEmpire). To keep us happy over Christmas, the season of meekness and "gentleness in hearts at peace," the Odeon is offering us a film called Build My Gallows...

INDIAN DANCING Ram Gopal IT is surprising and regrettable that the organisers of the Indian Exhibition at Burlington House have not snatched at the wonderful opportunity...

a would-be philosophical ballet descending in a direct line from Les Presages. It is a form of ballet favoured at the moment in France, it seems, unless the Ballets des Champs...

and certainly most tidy, if it is restricted to one type of plant, like the white wistaria at Gravetye ; but it is most amusing to indulge in a wide variety. A climber that can...

AND did the stars fling down their spears And did Orion hold his breath, With gold illuminated tears, When looking down on Nazareth? Arcturus and Aldebaran, Cassiopeia and the...

to include the Mermaid briar, best of all the climbing roses, one humble specimen is worth the fond attention of those who enjoy cut flowers. It is nearly always possible, even...

the grape-vine has disappeared from England as an out-of-door plant. Michael Drayton and Shakespeare and scores of writers into the eighteenth century allude to English...

No month in the year has been more unfairly treated by the poets and rhymesters than December. Shakespeare (though he gives it the more or less endearing epithet "old ")...

misconceptions contained in the long letter you have received from Moscow. It is the recurrent use, or rather misuse, of the word "democracy," which appears in every paragraph....

SIR, —In your issue of November 21st you were good enough to publish a letter from me on the position of graduate teachers in the national schools. In that letter I quoted...

your issue of December 19th, he has stated that two things are essential to ensure peace in Europe. He cites these as being, firstly, a genuinely democratic government in...

COUNT SFORZA'S POLICY Sta,—I think this is the first time that I put pen to paper in order to correct an article about myself. But I do so for two reasons : (1) because Harold...

Sta,—I have read with interest the correspondence which has arisen from a letter, published in your issue of November 21st, from a German boy, Werner Fielits. Mr. Duder's letter...

article, in your issue of December 5th, on the difficulty of learning the English language. I am unable to agree with his opening sentence, and quote as one reason thr fact that...

StR,—In your comment on the new electoral map in your issue of December 19th, you do not remark on the effect that the redistribution of seats will have on present political...

Sra,—In your issue of December 12th, in his article The Marxist Brothers, Mr. Norman Kirby writes: "The Socialist movements of Bulgaria, Rumania and Serbia looked to St....

Sta,—One cannot but appreciate the wisdom and far-sightedness of the article by the Steward of St. John's College, Cambridge, published in your issue of December 19th. In the...

Sin,—Since no one seems disposed to challenge Janus's assertion that there is a moral obligation on the part of Mr. T. L. Horabin to resign his seat in the Commons, may I do so....

Snt,—Knowing your paper's wide connections, I wonder if you can help me communicate with any British organisation or persons interested in promoting the welfare of Ukrainian...

Sin,—Mr. Scott writes: "Unity on the lines of the South India United Church is regarded with much displeasure among Anglicans." It would be more accurate to say that some...

your . issue of December 12th you say that "no one from whose memory the great Liberal traditions of the past have not faded could see the disappearance of a Liberal Party from...

SIR, —In your leading article of December 12th and in a reference to the proposal to nationalise "the highly efficient iron and steel industry," you write that "if a...

The Jackson "New Deal " The Age of Jackson. By Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. With an introduc- tion by Herbert Agar. (Eyre and Spottiswoode. 21s.) IN March, 1829, a mob of uncouth,...

ON May 6th, 1432, there was set up in the church of St. John at Ghent the great painting which is known by common consent as the Ghent altarpiece. The Adoration of the Lamb (or...

Oxford Stone. By W. J. Arkell. (Faber and Faber. 25s.) ARC.HITECTS nowadays work mostly in substitute materials, and feel about stone much the same as they feel about vintage...

Prehistoric Britain. By Jacquetta and Christopher Hawkes. (Chatto and Windus. 15s.) "PREHISTORIC "—the schoolboy who in 1947 finds that he has exactly 2,000 years of British...

The Street Trader's Lot : London 1851. By Henry Mayhew and Stanley Rubinstein. (Sylvan Press. 12s. 6d.) IN a way, in spite of its poignancy and the mass of information it...

THERE are six contemporary English novelists whose books I always order in advance, because I know that I shall be able to read them again and again. They are Miss Elizabeth...

The Day Before Yesterday. By R. A. Scott-James. (Muller. 10s. 6d.) The Day Before Yesterday consists of editorials written by Mr. Scott-James for The London Merc14, and covers...

6d.) THIS excellent book on how to make the best of rations should prove a godsend to those thousands of amateurs who have been forced by circumstances to become cooks. So...

Penguin Books. 2s.) HERE is the social and spiritual history of the nineteenth century, illustrated and laid before our eyes. The century started with Bewick and Blake, one...

Winston S. Churchill. (Harrap. 2 Vols. 50s. the set.) WHEN MT. Churchill's great work on his most illustrious ancestor first appeared fourteen years ago, The Spectator said of...

R. A. L. SMITH, before his death at the early age of twenty-nine, had made his name in an important but hitherto almost unexplored field of mediaeval history. As the result of...

as a story. Hilda Winstanley, "a tall girl, well made," with "very fine straight chestnut-brown hair," appears first being bidden to stand up and show respect to the vicar—an...

by the spirit of Knole. It was first published in 1922, and, after various reprints, reappears now with many new illustrations— the illustrations are a feature of the book—and a...

A PERCEPTIVE refinement is common ainong British ceramic studies ; tn it this series adds a continuous awareness of historical issues which will make many readers wish that such...

Press. 3s. 6d.) BY his choice of title Mr. Carrington, intentionally or otherwise, challenges comparison with Professor Hancock's brilliant Argument of Empire which, in the...

L3 ri al= 13E103L.'10 0 m 4 o 0 S EL 0 u _g A R e!s. '12LaralUelt WU 0 G3 E utmo L e s m &Hal P S B E IP A R 0 SOLUTION ON JANUARY 9th The winner of Crossword No. 455 is :...

2 3 4 5 6 o7 WM IIMOMVN / 0 IL_ / R MV, \ k'NloW \\ N'k \ X\ N\\ \ \ II•K\ 18 I V•••., ••.` ' rit Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the...

By CUSTOS Wax only a few days remaining before the exchange into British Transport stock home railway investors are now face to face with their re-investment problem. I do not...