It was suggested in these notes last week that the French 'ought to win the battle at Dien Bien Phu. They still look like doing so. The Viet Minh's only hope of success lay in a...

When nto limit is complete13 , inexcusable. H ouse when the Prime Minister assured his questioners in the " o use of Commons on Tuesday that the Government gives to I l t...

No. 6 5 6 1 FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 1954

has been implicit in the Egyptian situation—that negotiations on the Canal Zone are in suspense primarily 'because neither side wishes to pursue them and not necessarily because...

of the Colonial Office pashas.

a bus from a carnival at Elath. Nearly all' the people in the bus were murdered by some men who entered it with machine-guns and left it, without stealing anything, in the...

Mr. Lyttelton's statement in the House of Commons did not add much to what was already known about the constitutional reforms in Kenya. It is evident that he has made the best...

begun to investigate one of the more pathetic anomalies of the Welfare State. It is this: the National Health Service is now more or less NMPPed to cure the sick, if they are...

a great f i r R le to play; and this will be enough for those who think Y a the players alone matter. But those who like games to be b al ea h for players and spectators have...

S IR WINSTON CHURCHILL did the country yet another service on Tuesday by trying to fix in the public's mind a proper awareness of the magnitude of the problems of atomic...

Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs switched its main attention from the West to the East some months if not years ago, and that it did so deliberately. The Western Powers have...

" N these anxious days, with so much weighing on our minds " began a letter in The Times the other day; it went on to advocate the establishment of an open air has haunted in...

v v i„"PPlementing the air lift to Dien Bien. Phu, is a stocky man use ', a brown, lined, weather-beaten face; his appearance tk " to call to my mind Fenimore Cooper's stock...

gives an eye-witness account of an incident in a Mafeking the spital, in which, after " a sharp verbal exchange," one of h e l W hite nurses refused to go into the operating...

cynic, " is given by more and more newspapers to reporting what more and more of their readers saw for themselves on television last night; and more and more time is given by...

" This is the sort of thing that doesn't make my life any easier," said the distinguished public servant, and he passed over one of the documents which he had brought down to my...

" WISH Africa was dead," said Miss Jellyby, who was not in sympathy with her mother's preoccupations, " I hate it and detest it. It's a beast." One finds British politicians...

43 ' BENJAMIN WELLES T HE United States so-called ' New Look ' defence policy, with its emphasis on strategic atom bombardment to l o replace reduced army and navy forces, has...

By ROGER LLOYD F ROM the occasional communiques issued since Christmas by the British Transport Commission, it looks as though British Railways are in process of clearing the...

BY STEPHEN TOULMIN E have heard a lot lately about the shortage of science teachers. Gloomy stories go the rounds of schools where all but the most elementary science teaching...

18th of a dramatic cantata, The Burghers . of Calais, by John Joubert. This is a setting for soli, chorus and chamber orchestra of a tex prepared from Froissart by G. K. Hunter,...

good enough to analyse or bad enough to dismiss; a straightforward pleasant enough affair starring Jane Powell, Gordon MacRae, Gene Nelson and Jack Leonard, each of whom gives a...

ART Gillies and Maxwell THE South hears much in general terms about the artistic renaissance north of the Border, but the Scots proudly keep many of its operations to...

MAX OPHULS is a brilliant blender of irony, frivolity and melancholy, those three essential ingredients to love as the French love it, and in Madame de 4 . an adaptation of...

Songs of British Birds: Brun.10473/4/5/6. FIRST-YEAR scholars in the bird school will accord nine if not ten marks out of ten for these four ten-inch records of the voices of...

and unrolling, lifting The green fringes from submerged rocks On its way in, and, on its way out Dropping them again, the light Squanders itself, a saffron morning Into masses....

The Shell This is the shell. Time out of mind, That shy, reserved old man Treasured it on his shelf; all spined And horned, a harsh white saurian. But through its cave a low...

W. A. B. GARDENER

admirable policy of occasionally , inviting artists to reply to their critics—rightly dealt only with the basic prob- lem which his play raises. Most critics con- sidered his...

how Mr. Charles Morgan can reconcile his Christian principles with the view that, although the Burning Glass might be used to destroy his fellow mortals, it should not be...

SIR, —As my views on the Tate affair have recently been placed in the hands of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I have to treat the subject as sub judice for the time being. I...

THE BURNING GLASS Sia, —I congratulate Mr. Charles Morgan on a skilful piece of polemic. In the face of such virtuosity truth seems hardly relevant, but all the same I should...

Sitt,-1 am reluctant to take up your space and to quarrel with Dr. Purcell, whom I found a most agreeable companion on the occasion of our only meeting. But his letter in your...

R. Stevens's letter in your issue of March 19th under the heading ' Chemical Warfare' are seriously misleading, not to say quite untrue. He writes" . . . many of the wild...

by the Myn- chester City Council. In the larger view, however, arc you not perhaps begging the question ? It is far from being only the philistines to whom the vogue in modern...

bronze by Manchester City Council stirred you (March 12) to editorial comment. This comment leaves me uneasy. Is there any serious -harm done by an alderman puckishly...

SIR, ---lt would he more to the point if Mr. Herbert van Thal's suggestion that Milton s Areopagitica be made compulsory reading as a text in all schools were extended also t°...

SIR, —It has become-clear during the past few years that there is a growing need in this country for a reliable centre of information on events and attitudes in the different...

A man in dusty blue overalls stepped out intei OF road and waved a tattered flag for us to pull up. We came to a halt and the flagman advanced and put his hand on the door....

WHEN we called in at the shop in the village to allow my companion to get his fishing per- mit, the sun was shining and three old men were leaning on a whitewashed wall across...

(II. A. C. EVANS) How strange to think that roses Have neither eyes nor noses, Whose beauty, as one gazes, Outshines the poet's praises; Whose colours, forms and sizes Are...

Referring ' to my note about the problem of getting rid of a plague of grey squirrels in the roof of a large house, Mr. D. V. H. Smith of Harpenden offers an interesting...

confession. I was born in 1892. Two or three years ago when filling up a form on a bumpy air voyage I wrote down 1829 by a slip. I waited, to see what would happen. Nothing....

No. 215 Set by Geoffrey Caston The mediaeval guilds were in the habit of demanding from initiates subscription to an oath setting out briefly the general principles to which...

dawn to dusk all frontiers remained completely open ? Even if the scheme were operated only between Belgium and Luxembourg, a beginning would have been made, a symbolic gesture...

Meanwhile, we have to consider the problem of the old, which is already grave and will become increasingly graver year by year. The expectation of life has been much extended by...

Torment for Authors BY E. ARNOT ROBERTSON OW hard it is on writers, the professional eaves- droppers, that the most engrossing restaurant con- versations are never those made...

the President's Putter in January I said that this year's'University golf match was likely to be the best for years. I was thinking then of the shot; and so on. The sober fact...

By ROSEMARY WOOD (Dalkeith High School, Midlothian) HEN you go to an orchestral concert, who holds your attention most ? Do you watch the conductor, poised on the rostrum,...

The Drama and Mr. Eliot By ANTHONY HARTLEY T HE publication of The Confidential Clerk* marks something of a climacteric in T. S. Eliot's poetic drama. Nobody has experimented...

(Batchworth Press. 25s.) Hat der Teufel einen Sohn So ist er sicher Palmerston ! To the European monarchist Palmerston played that role of arch-mischiefmaker which Bonaparte...

l's THIS is the most interesting book on a musical subject that has appeared in English for a long time. No performer whatsoever and no would-be intelligent listener should...

Survey of International . Affairs, 1951. By Peter Calvocoressi. (O.U.P. for R.I.I.A. 45s.) Documents on International Affairs, 1951. Edited by Denise Folliot. (0.U.P. for...

or at best wit. The lack of religious fanaticism implied by Mr. Gervis is perhaps due as much to exhaustion as to tolerance. Two universal factors finally emerge, neither of...

PROBABLY the most popular historical work ever written, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, appears again in two forms : first in a brief, stimulating hors d'oeuvre,...

MANY of the better American writers are Southerners and English readers will know some of the subjects of this symposium—Williao l Faulkner, say, or Allen Tate or Thomas Wolfe....

CLIO Tuns, aged seventeen, suddenly commands the attention of the dinner party at the Chateau Maria Sophia: But this is weird . . . watching you all! Earlier I told Princess...

Europe, 1944-5. By John North. (H.M.S.O. 10s. 6d.) Tms book is one of a series of short histories of the Second World War, written at the request of H.M. Government for the...

(Simpkin Marshall. 25s.) Tins book of photographs by Emmy Andriesse sets out to show the true back- ground to the last two and a half years of Van Gogh's life—not merely to...

the Nineteenth Century. By E. E. Y. Hales. (Eyre and Spottiswoode. 25s.) Pto NONO was Pope for thirty-two years, and this book is an attempt to defend his policies during this...

1954-2. Com- piled by F. F. Clough and G. J. Cuming. (S:dgwick and Jackson. 50s.) THIS last instalment of discographical research and scientific book-keeping is full of...

By G. C. Allen and Audrey G. Donnithorne. (Allen & Unwin. 20s.) Introduction to the Economic History of China. By E. Stuart Kirby. (Allen & Unwin. 18s.) DESPITE the prejudice...

Britain in the World Economy. By Sir Dennis H. Robertson. (Allen & Unwin. 7s. 6d.) SPEAKING in 1947 to the British Association, Sir Dennis Robertson remarked that "what are...

cause. One of its authors, Dr. Smith, is a world authority on the subject; Dr. Markham is one of his co-workers at Cambridge. Mysterious and malign, on the fringes of the...

markets and the easier trend which is noticeable in some sections of indust,rial shares su gg ests that if the Bud g et does not do something to help industrial investment, that...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT THE Treasury decision to re-open the g old bullion market in London does not bring a resident of the sterling area any nearer to his old liberty to buy g...

evidence. . . The bill proposes to make it a substantial offence to take means for the purpose of preventing the entrance of legally- authorised officers; to empower the Magis-...

Bh u OEM M OD OD OOMR M MO amm ua ummm PWUR WEIMMMOP W M WOMBS UMERMIRMO MMMIVO EIMROGROCOM ORBE MEIMMEI R Solution will be published on April 9th The winners of Spectator...

r 9 2 ■ 4- 5 so 7 a 1/ 12 13 14 IS 17 ■ ts i9 I+ 20 23 21 22 24 26 24 27 a9 25 Two prizes are awarded each week - a book token...