Nothing could be more unfortunate than the tension that for various reasons has been created in recent weeks between the West German Government and the High Commissioners,...

HE London dockers have struck so often, and almost always for reasons so inadequate, that any comment on their behaviour must sound repetitive. Condenination of their disregard...

No detailed public statements can be expected from the British, American and French representatives now meeting in London to prepare the ground for the Three-Power and Atlantic...

The decision of King Abdullah and the Parliament of Jordan to incorporate the remnants of Arab Palestine within the boundaries of the Hashimite Kingdom of Jordan is a logical...

In order to be defeated in war it is necessary to obtain the use of a - battlefield ; and for this reason the Chinese Nationalists may not have many more opportunities of...

The Western Powers have one incomparable advantage in the Trieste question. They really want a stable and peaceful settle- ment. Now that feeling in Italy and Yugoslavia has...

The Union of South Africa is completely self-governing, and since this country cannot if it would interfere in the Union's internal, or for that matter its external, affairs the...

The systematic progress of the talks between India and Pakistan, and the presence of Pandit Nehru in Karachi, on the first visit he has paid to Pakistan, is reassuring. That the...

To adapt Dr. Johnson's words on Goldsmith, Mr. Churchill touches no debate that he does not transform. His meditations, inconclusive though they were, on the possibility—or...

head. During his criticism of the detailed proposals of the Budget Mr. Churchill recalled asking Lord Keynes what he thought was Labour's attitude to wealth. In one word Lord...

of the matter, was that he was very skilfully avoiding saying anything that could be construed as even an approach to a positive proposal. He had captured the close attention of...

T HE Labour Members roared their relief when the result of the first division on the Budget resolutions was announced at the table. Relief was understandable ; but there is no...

The meeting on Scottish self-government at Edinburgh last Saturday gave the movement a status it had not hitherto enjoyed. The number of the delegates—close on a thousand—the...

T HE Government fortunately escaped defeat on Wednesday, though only by a hairbreadth—fortunately, because no man in any party could desire to see the country plunged into...

for the next two weeka." Pigging it ? JANus.

a herd of Churchill in the House of Commons on Monday. cows."—Mr.

while the luncheon in honour of the new Chambers' Encyclopaedia was in progress there, half the universities in the country would have had to close their doors for lack of...

set last week to persons taking the Colonial Course at Cambridge : " Do you consider Islam or Christianity the more suitable religion for an African community which finds its...

doubt whether the poet was really episcopophile), Lord Beveridge and Professor Basil Willey and Dr. Helen Darbishire descended at the week-end, may claim to have provided the...

and still occupying the editorial chair of 'the Sunday Times, must have been easily the oldest active editor of an important journal ; even Mr. Robertson Scott put his...

T HE problem of the Dean of Canterbury becomes in- creasingly acute. A Dean is commonly assumed to have decant duties of some consequence to occupy him. They do • not seem to...

of Dumbarton and Dunbarton. In the newspaper reports of the recent by-election the two forms seem to have been used indiscriminately, but there is no doubt some distinction...

By SIR STEWART GORE-BROWNE• T HAT the question of race relations in Africa has become one of the major problems of the day is now generally recognised. The problem is not the...

By Professor C. M. YONGE, F.R.S. T HE second largest of existing fishes, the basking shark, Cetorhinus maximus, is frequently to be seen during the summer months off the...

By SIR HARRY GILPIN * T HE first industrial revolution gave to a minority power, wealth and all the kingdoms of the earth. The second, in which we are now living, has behind it...

By IVANROE Calabria, April T HE Italians are practised imbroglioni, and tell many funny stories to advertise the fact. . Even the land-occupation in the South has provided an...

By JEAN ROUNAULT Y visit to the U.S.S.R. - was not clandestine ; it was organised for me by the N.K.V.D. In January, 1945, six months after the liberation of Rumania and its...

By NEVILLE CARDUS p REPARATIONS for the 'cricket season are going busily forward up and down the land. Groundsmen are again at their fell work. Bats are being oiled, and...

By HAROLD NICOLSON I HAVE been scanning the tributes paid to Lord Berners with that grim repugnance with which one reads the obituaries of a friend for more than forty years....

The "Cocktail Party" Stit,—In his appreciation of Mr. T. S> Elies new play (Spectator, April 21st) Professor Dobrde said of the language: "Now, we feel secure, Mr. Eliot has...

THEATRE g1Cry Liberty." By Esther McCracken. (Vaudeville.) Cry Liberty is a play about the cold war between the British and their bureaucrats. This bitter and unequal struggle...

to remember a time when to call a play " well-made " was a term, if not of reproach, at least of condescension. But how pleasant it is to see such a piece upon the stage. After...

"Retour a la Vie." (Academy.)—“ State Secret." (Plaza.)— ,, Chance of a Lifetime." (Leicester Square.) FIVE episodes, unrelated to one another save in their common plea for...

SIR ADRIAN BOULT'S farewell concert with the B.B.C. Symphony Orchestra (which will surely be no more of a farewell than that of many a beloved singer) allowed him to revel in...

WHAT constitutes a mural painter ? In this country, it must be admitted, mostly the wish to be one. In the absence of the sensible provision that operates in so many other...

THE death of a poet creates an official vacancy—the Laureate Wordsworth has departed. It is an histOrical fact, but not more ; for he had long been withdrawn from the world of...

Report by Peter . Flemin g The Order of Merit is bestowed on British citizens by the King for " especial distinction in any field." There are at present two vacancies in the...

Set by Hilary Brett Smith The following have been tried out for the Third Programme. A prize of £5, which may be divided, is o f fered for extracts (not more than 200 words)...

Sta,—I-Iaving just seen for the first time the full text of Miss Edith Sitwell's letter (Spectator, March 31st), I should like to answer some of her factual " points" I was not...

Mr. Stassen's Granny SIR,-- - The March 17th issue of the Spectator carried an item by Sir Heneage Ogilvie attacking a series of articles which I wrote for the Reader's Digest...

Sitt.--Mr. Ronald Chamberlain, like Mr. Herbert Morrison, casts covetous eyes on the " middle-class " vote, recognising rightly that the future of State Socialism is dependent...

Sir Edward Clarke, K.C., to the Rev. E. L. Macassey, D.D.: " As . is lawyer I have made a prolonged study of the evidences for the events of the first Easter Day. To me the...

Rice's letter, reached me. Unfortunately I left the paper behind, so must answer his letter from memory. It made me very sad. Mr. Rice is obviously a very nice person. But he is...

SIR,—It was my duly, during the last war as well as in the previous one, to question many hundreds of deserters, who passed through my hands to " durance vile." I have no...

vital interest to all Christians. Surely Mr. H. W. Pearson is right in saying that the primary evidence of the Resurrection is not in the Gospel narratives, transparently honest...

H.M.S. ' New- foundland,' does so with his tongue in his cheek? Wilfred Granville, in his recently published Sea Slang of the Twentieth Century, defines a " King's 'aard bargain...

SIR.—I am sorry to have been so slow (thanks to illness and absence) to 'reply to Mr. Max Belofi's letter published in your issue of March 31st. But I am more than sorry—I am...

SIR,—I cannot refrain from expressing my feelings of surprise that a writer of Mr. Hesketh Pearson's attainments should be so misled by prejudice as to sign the article on D. H....

SIR,—Professor Gibb thinks that we in Western Europe are disqualified from offering criticism and advice on Arab affairs, because we have not been conspicuously successful in...

Si .estate aid means State control. Witness the fate of the schools, the hospitals and, alas! the noble medical profession. The Dean of Winchester is somewhat optimistic if he...

very promising young Cambridge man, " dowered with the scorn of scorn," composed, and published in the ephemeral Press, under the title Oxide of Milton, some rather cruel...

SIR,—I was much interested in Mr. Renford Bambrough's article, Easter in Athens: 1949, in the" Spectator of April 7th. There is just one point in it which seems to me to call...

Sul,-An the Spectator of April 14th two correspondents draw attention to minor errors in Dr. H. W. Garrod's review, of March 31st, of Mr. Marpks's University Slang. Partly...

readers are urged 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...

Sut,—May I join with those of your readers"Who welcome your decision to give additional space to your financial contributor, Custos 7 If it gives any emphasis to the expression,...

SIR,—I have read with interest Mr. Bavin's letter in reply to mine which appeared in the . Spectator of April 14th. I must still insist that it is utterly wrong for a minister...

is much to be hoped that no one will be deterred from reading the third volume of Bishop Hensley Henson's Retrospect of an Unimportant Life, or be guided in his estimate of the...

SIR,—J. M. Dent's Everyman's Encyclopaedia may be, as Mr. Wilson Harris finds it, concit clear and accurate on the whole, but " on the whole " must be emphasised. In Vol. 7, on...

prided himself on inventing a fresh diminutive on the basis of "rugger," and a new spoonerism. A German baron of my acquaintance, an under- graduate at Trinity reading for Mods,...

Tennyson really was quite a good poet! This profound dictum follows the search for a quotation that had baffled the memory of a correspondent, to wit: " The music of the moon -...

The effects of a continuous downpour have been almost startling. Green lines appeared suddenly in our potagers, the grass began 'almost to wave, birds united in song, rabbits...

A properly constituted trust has this advantage over a more loosely defined society, that it can keep mopping up desirable sites, as the Norfolk example triumphantly proves....

Spectator.: •

Is it an early spring? Most of the migrant birds, swallow, cuckoo and nightingale at any rate, have turned up pat to the standard dates. The few unduly early appearances, as of...

THE shires (how many deserve to be called counties?) begin to follow the inspiring lead of Norfolk in the formation of Naturalists' Trusts. The Yorkshire Trust is celebrating a...

I N a country villa a government clerk who lectures on the Apocalypse is entertaining visitors. They have come to see his guest, an epileptic Prince, who in face and character...

The Young Wordsworth LET no one call this book well-timed. That its appearance synchronises with the centenary of Wordsworth's death is accident. It is much too good a book to...

THIS book presumably completes the publication of the material left by Stanislaysky at his death. It consists of a course of lectures on his " system " of acting, delivered to...

Overture to Overlord. By Lt.-Gen. Sir Frederick Morgan, K.C.B. (Hodder and Stoughton. zos.) THE glamour of action in the field is easy to convey in the reminiscences of...

AMONG the literary superstitions of this country is the superstition that there has always been something which can be described as the English novel," the assumption being that...

OSCAR WILDE!. divided books into three classes—books to read, books to re-read and boolr.s not to read at all. In the third class he included " all argumentative books, and all...

Chambers's Encyclopaedia. New Edition. 15 vols., (Newnes. los.) AN encyclopaedia is one of the pleasantest works to fall (meta- phorically speaking, of course) into the lap of...

THERE must be a great many people to whom the names of G. I. Gurdjieff and P. D. Ouspensky summon up merely some such random recollection as that it was at the former's...

defined. It comprises three entire counties, Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset, parts of Berkshire and Somerset, and a corner of Devon. But it is a strange Wessex that excludes...

The Hollow of - the 'Wave. By Edward Newhouse. (Reinhardt and Evans. 8s. 6d.) The Hollow of the Wave is an interesting American novel, a very readable novel and probably a...

Two social workers have analysed here the conditions under which children live in dockland. Stories of individual families are inter- spersed with a general survey and...

from FitzHerbert to Tull, 1523-1730. Mr. Fussell gives a list in alpha- betical order of 456 books, pamphlets and periodicals, and the libraries where they can be found, and 'a...

[A Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution of this week's crossword to be opened after noon on Tuesday week, May 9th. Envelopes...

.1 ,! E , C I i . F1 i C A Rittill_l_ U ' i = itAOLK:EIRiS 1 . is, Pa S:S1 14 Ll .co P . E'S t4101P a A.111E_ o Li °IA' e ' 4 . : i ii i i_el T 0 E tc 'i istIPIS SOLUTION ON...

By CUSTOS DISPLAYING his now familiar stoicism, that essentially patient and long-suffering animal, the average investor, seems to have already gone part of the way towards...

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