W HILE the immediate military situation at Shanghai has not greatly changed in the past week, important developments seem imminent and the general outlook has appreciably...

situation. The strategic are far more important. That the Japanese military party is in full control at Tokyo is plain, and that it is resolved on a Chinese campaign on a...

sensibly modified, in the past week by the resolutions of the Jewish Agency, meeting, like the Zionist Congress, at Zurich, and the publication of a résumé of the report which...

Northern Spain. By Tuesday afternoon General Solchaga, entering and advancing beyond Tomelavega, had cut both the main road and a subsidiary road westwards from Santander, thus...

is important, but parts of it, such as his declaration that her Navy is her first line of defence, were obviously dictated by electoral considerations. (The Labour Party has...

months, the United States Congress adjourned sine die, having made havoc of President Roosevelt's legislative programme ; it will not reassemble till next January, unless a...

and Czechoslovakia last week is an excellent example of the deterioration which has taken place in recent years in the diplomatic manners and customs of Europe. The dispute to...

by M. Chautemps' Government in the course of its economy campaign was to undertake a reform of the French railway system, beginning with an increase in fares and rates which is...

of Lord Astor's League of Nations Committee on Nutrition, published this week (Allen and Unwin, 7s. 6d.), should serve for many years as an invaluable text-book to all...

international air race from France to Damascus and back represent a notable triumph for Italy, which makes such contests a matter of national prestige. Her airmen, whose...

obscurity into which the English canal companies seem to have sunk. The energetic and successful Grand Union Canal Company, which owns the longest stretch of private water in...

Fund was created in 1920, it has already, up to the end of last year, received nearly £16,000,000 from the levy on every ton of coal raised, and on mining royalties. Until...

all British consular officers to make it more difficult for foreign ships to obtain British registration should check what has long been an anomaly and something of a scandal....

WE are experiencing a moment of quiescence between _ deliverances by dictators. Signor Mussolini sur- veyed the whole field of foreign politics at Palermo last Friday and Herr...

M IGRATION is again becoming a living issue. One evidence of that is the conference to be held in London next month, at which the case for organised migration will be discussed...

quotes the Royal Commission on Palestine as saying that "it is in the highest degree unfortunate that in the exigencies of war the British Government was unable to make their...

right to be heard on those documentary films in regard to which this country enjoys an acknowledged supremacy, made in his letter in last Saturday's Times what most people, I...

asking a leading official in the Rotary movement whether Rotary existed, or could exist, in Germany. He answered confidently (and quite accurately) that it certainly did exist,...

for business rather than pleasure I feel fairly well qualified to pass judgement on their outstanding features. This week, among some hundreds of published letters which I have...

I SEE that a New - York paper decries the idea of Anglo- American co-dperation at Shanghai on the ground that it was London's " walk-out " in Washington at the time of the...

as the man who precipitated the royal crisis of last December. Now he has described in a speech in America exactly how it happened, and incidentally cleared up a previous...

By GREGORY BIENSTOCK T ODAY the noise of conflict is so overwhelming, the throb of the telegraph wires is so shrill, that it is difficult for the ear to catch the rhythm of...

By R. F. SCOTT T HERE has appeared, during recent weeks, a mass of literature and statistical 'matter acclaiming, with a just sense of satisfaction, the return to this country...

By WARREN POSTBRIDGE I HAVE never been to Australia, which no doubt is a misfortune both for Australia and for me. But I did go part of the way there last week—the first part ;...

By RICHARD FREUND A S a tonic for townsmen, camping is supreme. Ten years ago I could not have told my best friend how I spent my week-ends. Today camping has become popular...

By SIR PELHAM WARNER O NE has to go back to the cricket seasons of 2920 and 1921 for a parallel to the present situation in the County Championship. In both those summers the...

To readers on holiday, who normally receive THE SPECTATOR through a newsagent, we shall be glad to forward a copy of the paper each week to any part of the world, post free, at...

T HE sight of money-lenders should arouse great distress and poignance in the minds of honest folk anywhere. One cannot for a moment believe that a money-lender is a merciful...

By JOHN MADGE T HERE is one direction in which the present century can claim an undoubted advance, and that is in the application of science to the utilisation of new,...

By E. L. WOODWARD L ETTERS in this and other journals during the last fortnight have dealt, incidentally, with a problem of practical as well as theoretical importance at this...

SLACK WATER IN FRANCE By D. W. BROGAN 1T was two years since I had been last in France, and, then as now, I had arrived in Paris On the eve of July t4th. In 1935 the day of...

Tuts is easily the best play that Mr. Winter has yet written, and, despite occasional lapses and misfires, it holds the attention with dramatic surety. It would appear that the...

"High, Wide and Handsome." At the Plaza—" A Castle in Flanders." At the Berkeley OVER High,'Wicie and Handsome more superlatives are likely to be spilled than it deserves ; it...

THE THEATRE Gertie Maude." By John Van Druten. At the St. Martin's THIS deft, agreeable, unimportant story of a chorus girl who met with signal bad luck in the year of King...

Tintoretto in Venice VENICE continues its series of exhibitions in the Ca Pesaro, which opened two years ago with Titian, by presenting this year a magnificent display of the...

[D'un correspondant parisien] UN touriSte, Sac au dos, demande une livre de pain dans une boulangerie de village. La boulangere lui explique que c'est jour de fermeture...

perhaps in mass ; but some of its very nearest relations are a real addition to a garden, or a landscape. There is a ragwort, whose proper name is senecio maritima, which grows...

a particular change in one of the common objects of the landscape. The haystacks and some of the straw stacks are no longer—on many farms—grouped massively in the yard. Instead,...

has been watched in a Cheltenham garden. A thrush hatched . out a flourishing brood from a nest built in a buddleia bush close to the house. The young were seen enjoying...

An Illegal Weed. On several occasions on this page allusions have been made to the spread of ragwort over English and, for that matter, Scots farms. Last week a glorious...

seem to he growing odder and odder. Its movements, the dates of the flocking and pairing, are all odd. It has appeared, for example, outside Oxford at BoAr's Hill (sometimes...

time to plant one sort of bulb at any rate ; the lily's planting month is August. In one British island, St. ,Helena, which has been enduring great depression, it is hoped that...

It has been vigorously maintained and as vigorously denied that rainbow trout (which are the stand-by of New Zealand fishing) are indigenous to • England. They are as little...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Your correspondent, Mr. H. Howard, rightly recalls us to our lost sense of fair-play where Italy is concerned. I would supplement his...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Col. Butler's remarks on the subject of the struggle in Spain would be more convincing if they were supported by some unbiassed first-hand...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Your correspondent, Rosamond Lehmann, by addressing her request for books for the Spanish sick and wounded to : "anyone of your readers...

[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. Signed...

to see either right or light in the Spanish struggle. Certain fervent Catholics, including his grace the Archbishop of Westminster, Sir H. Lunn and your correspondent, Colonel...

Sta,—I fail to see why British people should be asked by your correspondent to deal so tenderly with Italian sus- ceptibilities. Mussolini described the Abyssinian outrage as...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—May I be permitted to thank Mr. Ross Williamson for his more exact definition of the Socialist short programme to which Labour is now...

Pakenham's last letter go to the very heart of the question of Labour's failure. He boasts of an "intellectualised foreign policy." I suggest that it is precisely this "...

Baird is somewhat faulty. The basis of a Co-operative Society is share capital. The, purpose of a Co-operative Society is to buy and sell on such terms as will give preferential...

—It seems now generally admitted, both at home and abroad, that only a real understanding between England and Germany—not necessarily an alliance—can prevent the even- tual...

IR n your interesting article on "Universities and Employment" you refer to "the higher status which is sup- posed to be the perquisite of a 'university man.'" To a...

SIR,—In your note appended to the Rev. H. Kennedy's letter, in which he asked for more accuracy in your special corre- spondent's description of different churches, you remark...

these two words, as though they were compatible, and the trend of the article upon them in your last issue helps to show to what a serious extent the very notion of a university...

(With apologies to the Rector of Brent Eleigh). [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I wish you would instruct your special correspondent to be more accurate in his...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] StR,—We are a little disappointed to note the grudging manner in which you admit Mr. Carpenter's point in your footnote to his letter under...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—GreaMeSS is that within a man which lifts him head and shoulders above his fellows and enables him to carry out into practice the aims of...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] • SIR,—The Archbishop of York, speaking recently in Edinburgh in connexion with the Conference on Faith and Order, quoted Dr. Garvie, who had...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Dr. Copeman's article in The Spectator of August 13th is illuminating and informative. He admits that orthodox medi- cine is pretty much...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—" Janus," in your issue of The Spectator of the 20th instant, in the last paragraph of "A Spectator's Notebook," states that "Mr. Burns...

it will not do. You state that "every ton of Russian timber reaching these shores today arrives in Russian ships," but you now admit that in 1936 practically to per cent, was...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—While I am in agreement with your talented com- mentator " Janus " on the subject of the litter nuisance, I feel that I must join issue...

Bench strongly supports your view that whilst some motor offences are ethically serious, others have no moral significance. Often I have heard constables giving evidence in...

PAGE Middletown Again (S. K. Ratcliffe) • • 354 Soviet Understanding (E. H. Can) .. • • 355 Dear Youth (E. E. Kellett) .. • • 355 An Unheroic Dramatist (Graham Greene) . . .....

Dear Youth. By Barbara Wilson. (Macmillan. I2S. 6d.) " alio," born Sophie Biihler in Stuttgart, was one of those quiet unobtrusive people whose influence is more powerful than...

Soviet Understanding. By Richard Terrell. (Heinemann. 7s. 6d.) MR. TERRELL has written a nalve, inconclusive, irritating, uneven, but rather original, book. He has made one...

The Last Invasion of Ireland... By. Richard - Haves. .(iiU : t5s.) - HISTORY is rarely capable of being written from oral tradition. This record of the invasion of Ireland by...

ROGER BOYLE is one of the great bores of literature, and it can hardly have been a labour of love for Mr. Clark to edit for the first time these eight ponderous heroic plays,...

Farewell, Spain. By Kate O'Brien. (Heinemann. 7s. 6d.) IN Mary Lavelle Miss O'Brien wrote an admirable, a vivid and sensitive novel, and did justice to its Spanish setting. Both...

Famous American Men oi" Science. By J. G. Crowther. (Seeker and Warburg. I5s.) MR. CROWTHER has put together four biographical sketches to make a lengthy book. His subjects are...

The Life of Jesus. By Conrad Noel. (Dent and Sons. 12s. 6C1.) FATHER CONRAD NOEL, in this vivid and arresting book, has some severe things to say on "the heresy of the...

By E. B. C. JONES The Rising Tide. By M. J. Farrell. (Collins. 7s. 6d.) AESTHETIC merit is one thing ; readability is another. There are great and deeply satisfying novels...

the stock markets the steadiness of gilt-edged and other fixed-interest securities. Despite the rising tendency of bank advances credit remains abundant, and although I feel...

THESE are hard days in Throgmorton Street. Just as the promised boom was gathering momentum it has been very effectively nipped in the bud. The result is one of those rather...

Capital reconstruction schemes which cut across the legitimate claims of preference shareholders are fortunately becoming more rare, but I cannot exclude from this category the...

for a strong revival of international trade and switched earlier in the year from Imperial Tobacco into British-American Tobacco shares must now be regretting their boldness....

Having often stressed the merits, as a progressive industrial company, of British Oxygen, I am glad to see that this under- taking is back in the news with a purchase of _a...

FRAUDULENT SHARE-PUSHING UNDER the title of" Share Sharks" The Spectator in its issue of August r3th dealt in a manner which has been thoroughly approved in the City with the...

IN reviewing Stock Market developments during the past week, I am almost equally impressed by the seriousness on the one band of the fall in Far Eastern stocks and all that is...

A week ago I gave a table showing the extent of the fall in leading Chinese and Japanese stocks, even since the end of last month, but that fall has now been greatly increased....

A correspondent has drawn my attention to the reorganisa- tion plan recently put forward by Simms Motor Units Ltd. That plan, it may be recalled, is concerned with methods for...

BY ZENO [A prize of a Book Token for one guinea will be given to the sender of the first correct solution of this week's crossword puzzle to be opened. Envelopes should be...

RI's 1 01 T HI El RA u r i nt. A • 01A/ SIR' AIM] PI AI G El RI II SIMI EI Af KI El R SR Alli s SI I IMI P EDI 1E1/41 TI BIC) Ai PSI Z I SI OM OlUIRIII E EIL SIIICI...