The periodical progress reports made by M. Monnet on the work of the National Planning Council are more or less the French equivalent of the Economic Survey in this country....

The strategy of the Conservative majority in the House of Lords in the matter of the Iron and Steel Bill has no doubt been well considered. The party is to a man bitterly...

F ACE having been saved at the cost bf a few thousand human lives, the Nationalists have made a sudden withdrawal and the Communist forces have entered Shanghai, receiving from...

The Postmaster-General's handling of the telephone question on Monday created such profound mental confusion that the House passed from the subject to another, equally...

With a Labour programme about to be launched, or at any rate authorised, at the party's annual conference ten days hence, anxiety to know where the Conservatives in their turn...

Two separate grievances are now agitating the railway workers, but they both spring from the dissatisfaction which was caused when their claim for a general increase of a pound...

The Minister of Fuel and Power, Mr. Hugh Gaitskell, addressing a not conspicuously friendly audience at the annual conference of the Electrical Trades Union on Tuesday, laid...

Mr. Gromyko's suggestions for ending the civil war in Greece which, it is now known, were brought to the notice of the British and American delegates at Lake Success last month,...

C OLIN CLARK, the economist, makes a distinction between manufacturing and what he calls " tertiary " industric$ which supply power and provide communications or enter-...

The increase in pay for trained nurses in general hospitals, an- nounced at the end of last week, was the expected sequel to the rise in rates for student nurses which took...

T << HE main problems before the Four Ministers were those of the functions and powers of the future central government of Germany, the achievement of economic unity for that...

refers to a member of his staff in China as " the world's worst sailor." I doubt that. I know of a competitor whom I could put forward with some confidence. But for the one and...

F OR reasons which may possibly be adequate the Post Office appears to lag behind any other Government department in getting back to pre-war standards of efficiency in public...

Dead, is broadly identical with the view I expressed here a fortnight ago. Answering a question on the subject in the House of Commons on Monday, Sir Hartley Shawcross observed,...

of the Labour movement, and it is always slightly disconcerting to find an oracle declaiming, not through a cloud of subterranean smoke, but through its hat. In his latest...

in Camden Town, has begun to perform the same office for Shaw is encouraging. But some of the alliterative and slightly satirical comments on " culture in Camden Town " are a...

not failed to point out, has its pitfalls. I quoted last week, in connection with the debate in the Convocation of Canterbury on the functions of women in the Church, the words...

By FREYA STARK N April 11th, 1792, the fate of the West Indies was sealed by the naval engagement which the French call the battle of Dominica and we know as the battle of the...

By EDWARD HODGKIN T HE sight of a figure in clerical dress standing in Piccadilly holding a cross thrust forward in one hand is unusual enough to attract a crowd. But if the...

By H. D. WALSTON A GRICULTURE in its most primitive form is an essentially seasonal occupation. In East Africa, for instance, the native farmer works hard for a week or so...

MBABU VILLAGE By E. R. CHADWICK* T HE publicity that has been given to the efforts of the Ibos of Udi Division of Onitsha Province, Nigeria, to improve their villages by...

By DR. A. OLDERT A FTER an absence of over twenty years I revisited the U.S.S.R. as a doctor in a German infantry regiment on the Russian front in 1941 ; and after the...

By F. BRITTAIN T HE gipsy girl had belonged to a wealthy family and her relations were many ; and so, when she was buried, our village church had seldom if ever seen a...

since pre-war days, it is still necessary to place a firm order with a bookstall manager or newsagent to ensure regular weekly delivery of the SPECTATOR. Newsagents cannot...

THE NEW INQUISITORS By ALAN E. THOMPSON (University of Edinburgh) p ERHAPS it would have been better if we had taken our war aims less seriously. We fought for so many ideals,...

By HAROLD NICOLSON -F 4 VER since April 2nd, 1821, when Archbishop Germanos first raised the standard of revolt at Kalavryta, Greek ecclesiastics have played a lively part in...

THE THEATRE " Ann Veronica." By Ronald Gow. From the Novel by H. G. Wells. (Piccadilly.) THOSE who excavate the primitive earthworks behind which our remote ancestors hopefully...

THE epithet " lavish," when earned—and this one earns it—by a revue, generally implies sins both of omission and commission. In the latter category it is apt to suggest a...

" The Snake Pit." (Odeon, Marble Arch.)-" Man on the Run." (Plaza.)-" Now Barabbas." (Warner.) THOUGH not swift to anger and though loth to bite the hand which feeds me, I feel...

AT the end of the war it seemed possible not only to refer to a " School of London " for the first time, but to hope for the develop- ment of the younger painters forming that...

on Tosca, a work which reached Odessa, Cairo, Buffalo and Helsinki before Vienna. Mahler was not a blind Wagnerian, for he intro- duced Bizet's Djamileh and Charpentier's Louise...

After "Leonidas of Tarentum " The season of ships is here, The west wind and the swallows ; Flowers in the fields appear, And the ocean of hills and hollows Has calmed its waves...

SIR,—I was interested in your article, Nuts and Men, in the Spectator of May 6th ; and, having recently returned from a visit to the groundnuts scheme, agreed with very many of...

WOMEN AND THE MINISTRY SIR,—Although I am entirely in agreement with Janus in his support of the claims of qualified women to recognition as officials of the Church so far as...

he would stop writing such rot as he did in his first paragraph in the Spectator's " Notebook" of May 20th. If only he would give some time to the study of St. Paul's teaching...

now dangles it before the ecclesiastics, so, if "Life is beset with troubles," he has, I fear, made more for himself again ! He will not want a full- scale discussion on women's...

Sul,—In his article Jerusalem's Fate, published in the Spectator of April 29th, Mr. Owen Tweedy made reference to the place in Moslem traditions and Arab civilisation of...

think that the British public may be misled by the expressions "Polish spy ring," " Polish Embassy," " Polish military atlachi," etc.; uied by the Press in connection with the...

Sts,—The author of the article, Whose Peace ?, makes some rather mis- leading assertions. Nobody who worked with the Free French move- ment during the war would agree with him...

Sia,—Will you allow the wife of a very recent graduate to quarrel just a little with Mr. Townsend over his picture of married life at Cambridge ? There are other pictures, and...

be a good enough tribunal for the discussion of matters even more important than literary (and artistic) integrity, one is not unduly perturbed by the contemptuous dismissal as...

a good deal of sympathy Dr. David Thomson's article Specialisation? in your issue of May 20th, and it occurs to me that your readers (and possibly Dr. Thomson himself) may like...

Sia,—In Mr. Ross's own words, " A lot of nonsense has been talked and written recently about The Naked and the Dead, but surely his own letter is the most nonsensical. Firstly,...

SUBSCRIPTION RATES Ordinary edition to any address in the World. 52 weeks ct 10s. Od. 26 weeks 155. Od. Air Mail to any Country in Europe. 52 weeks £2 7s. 6d. 26 weeks LI 3s....

AFTER the drawing-room on Saturday afternoon, her Majesty, accom- panied by three of the children, left Buckingham Palace about five o'clock, in an open carriage, to drive round...

of feelings (between the gourmet and the ornithologist) the disappearance of his almonds, usually reserved for Christmas-fare. A great spotted woodpecker picks up every fallen...

coast defence is likely to become law ; bat it is treated as a local obligation. Surely subtraction from the area of England ought to be a national affair. Anyaste acquainted...

THAT beneficent body, the Pilgrims' Trust, it, and has been, chiefly interested in historic masonry, and. this year's report is no eireption. It contains, for example, an...

Ssa,—A few days ago I received my quarterly electricity , account. The meter-reading dates were omitted therefrom, and I at once wrote to the Electricity Board !or this...

eaves 117101I of its charm to the "flaxen thumb" of that shill' ul gardener, the Queen's mother) was opened to the public last week and rained much money for the nurses'...

of defence against frost invented and practised by a naval aria= in floater, Captain Leivis, Presteign. He has now, I we, written a letter to The Times on the subject, giving...

An Autobiography and Other Essays. By G. M. Trevelyan, O.M. (Longmans. 12s. 6d.) An Autobiography and Other Essays. By G. M. Trevelyan, O.M. (Longmans. 12s. 6d.) PROFESSOR...

The Younger Keynes Two Memoirs. By J. M. Keynes. (Han-Davis. 7s. 6d.) THESE two memoirs, fragments of autobiography and history, were originally written by Maynard Keynes for...

FEW people are probably better qualified than the author of this book to give a full and authoritative account of the exploits of "combined operations " during the war. The...

Laughter in the Next Room. Being the Fourth Volume of Left Hand, Right Hand ! By Osbert Sitwell. (Macmillan. 18s.) As I was reading this excellent new volume of Sir Osbert...

The Earliest Chemical Industry. An Essay in the Historical Relations of Economics and Technology illustrated from the Alum Trade. By Charles Singer. With a Preface by Derek...

THE great French historian, Elie Halevy, died in August, 1937, leaving unfinished , his history of the English people in the nineteenth century and that of European Socialism •...

IN this vast volume of American scholarship and industry there are ;666 pages of text and there are two columns of small type on every page. I estimate that the entire work...

Redemption. By Francis Stuart. (Gollancz. 9s.) IT is a philistine habit of mind, no doubt, that is content to sub- stitute for criticism an expression of taste. Yet in the...

Hale. 15s.) Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. By Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald. (Robert Hale. 15s.) THIS volume, by the editor of The County Books series in which it appears, is...

Office machine, is the arty warrant officer determined to " appreciate " the country, by which he means the relics of ancient Greece, and, furthermore, he is determined to let...

Tins book, published only a few weeks before Hugh Kingsmill's death, is a collection of literary articles reprinted from the New English Review and other journals. They are, in...

eAt. N 144 ' I !C 1M; 'S L ' 1 IL 0 SOLUTION The winner of Crossword No. 529 Avenue, Sheffield, 8. • ON JUNE 10 is K. P. BARNETT, ESQ., 15 CIWW3111W

Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct sohnion of this week's crossword to be opened after noon on Tuesday week, lune 7th. Envelopes must be...

By CUSTOS IT is clear from this week's news from Throgmorton Street that stock markets have now entered a fresh period of test. Selling has not been either panicky or heavy,...