that no new commitments to France were made during his Paris visit has not removed fears that in the event of war this country will be expected to despatch an army on a conti-...

T HE failure of the General Strike in France on Wednesday is reassuring. It is arguable that a stoppage of work for 24 hours might have satisfied the protesters of the Left and...

projected visit of the Prime Minister and Lord Halifax to Rome in January should be received with the misgiving and suspicion manifested in certain quarters in this country. It...

The Future of the Young Offender The welcome given to the Penal Reform Bill, whose second reading the Home Secretary moved in the House of Commons on Tuesday, was so general and...

the West Indies opened its public sessions in Jamaica on November 4th ; last week the Manchester Guardian reprinted from the Daily Gleaner of Jamaica an exceptionally...

prearranged demonstrations posing as spontaneous is one of the features of such regimes that will never be intelligible to democracies. Count Ciano's much-heralded ,speech in...

the German Academy this week, the President of the Reichsbank, Dr. Schacht, made a spirited defence of the new financial structure he has created in Germany. It was the more...

interest Parliament. When the continuation of the Special Areas Act was debated this week, there were scarcely enough members present, out of a House of 615, to fcrm a quorum...

reached by Poland and the Soviet Union this week has caused much surprise and speculation. It reaffirms the non-aggression pact signed in 1025 and in force until 1945, and...

The charge of " coddling criminals " which has been heard outside found very little echo in the debate on the Second Reading. Controversy for the most part centred on two...

in manuscript . on August 5th, 190, and there were parts of it which the House of Commons never saw. The Home Secretary of the day declared. that the Orders in Council made...

it is the reaction after the events of September and October, or perhaps it is the supposed imminence of a General Election ; but, whatever the reason, the House of Commons is...

will introduce, once again, the " Walkers' Charter," a Bill giving the public full access to " uncultivated mountain and moor land." The Bill has been regularly introduced since...

companies have been putting, not only to the Minister of Transport, but, by an extensive - adver- tising campaign, to the public to whom in the end they make their appeal, is...

DALADIER has completely defeated the General . 0 .!1- • Strike, which, fortunately for France, collapsed ignominiously, but his victory can hardly be - considered permanent and...

B Y an undesigned but interesting coincidence, while the Home Secretary was on Tuesday expounding to the House of Commons a Penal Reform Bill whose whole tendency was to lay...

success for Mr. Eden in the United States next week. There is nothing Americans want to hear about more at the present time than the defence of democracy, and there is no...

By D. R. GILLIE M. Daladier has accused the labour leaders of organising the strike to sabotage his policy of peace, in other words the policy which led to Munich, and from...

By W. McG. EAGAR N O system of National Service will save democracy from dictatorships and itself unless it takes in the great mass of young people from the day on which they...

By ERICH WOLLENBERG T HE parachute-jumper is now quite an ordinary phenomenon in the military and sporting life of Soviet Russia. The army contains at least a quarter of a...

By JOACHIM JOESTEN W HEN in the first days of November the Franco cruiser ' Nadir ' shelled and sank the Republican freighter Cantabria ' just off the Norfolk coast, few people...

By NIGEL TANGYE [THE S?ECTATOR last week published an article " Fighters, not Bombers," by j. 1b1. Spaightl This decision is tantamount to the War Minister announcing that he...

By WILLIAM GERHARDI IN a preface to The Oxford Book of Light Verse Mr. W. H. Auden expatiates on what is light verse. Mr. Auden explains that when society and the poet are...

IN ancient Egypt the kindred and friends of a dead man met periodically at his grave for a feast of remembrance. One of the songs sung on such occasions has been preserved for...

The Reverend Francis Dawson is a Prebendary of Canterbury, Rector of Allhallows, Rector of Chiselhurst, Rector of Hayes, Rector of Orpington, and he also derives an " honest...

By JEAN-JACQUES BERNARD M CHAMOIS comes home greatly disturbed. He had • lost his head over this dinner at the Magistrans. From the salmon trout to the chocolate ice, by way of...

STAGE AND SCREEN MUSIC EVER since Beethoven's music was divided into three periods it has been a commonplace of criticism to find in every composer who lived long enough a...

THE CINEMA of Time. At the Marble Arch Pavilion The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse is primarily an extremely efficient piece of screencraft ; that it transcends this possibly...

[D'un correspondant parisien] DES amis anglais nous demandent des eclaircissements sur la situation en France. Its disent bien comprendre les donnees generales, mais ils se...

Le Grand Steele THE exhibition of French seventeenth-century art at Bristol, organised by Mr. Anthony Blunt, manages to provide, within a small compass, a surprisingly balanced...

Revived Animals Welcome news multiplies of the revival of more than one British animal that was at one time almost extinct ; the wild cat, the marten and the polecat ; and the...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR, —You would not thank me if I went all over the ground again in replying to Mr. Ramsay Muir.. Whether my view or his is the right one,...

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR _ [Correspondents are requested to keep their letters as brief as is reasonably possible. Signed letters are given a preference over those bearing a...

Mr. Spender's article in your previous issue, which many ,of your readers must have appreciated as extremely impartial and well halanced,..Mr. Ramsay Muir, who, in common with...

voice of Mr. Eden has rung out calling the nation to unite in face of the gravest of all the perils that ever confronted it. I, for one, do not understand what Mr. Eden thus...

far from having " failed to help China in its time of agony," as Mr. Edwyn Bevan suggests, the Soviet Union has immobilised 400,000 of Japan's best troops in Man- chukuo, where...

stamp method of raising money for a charitable purpose, proposed by Commander . King-Hall and mentioned by one of your leaders in your last issue, has in Switzerland long been...

obliged to Mr. Lawson and General Erskine- Tulloch for their appreciation of my work on foot-and-mouth disease. What they say is quite true. I should like to make clear the...

[To the Editor of TILE SPECTATOR] SIR,—I am glad to read Mr. Howard Perkin's letter in your issue of the 25th. I am one of the many who feel that all this " bandbox and...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] Sut,—Mrs. Agnes Hamilton, though a friend of the Jews, quite rightly prefers a critical diagnosis of the attitude felt towards them by the...

interesting article in last week's Spectator may I point out that it was Edward I, not Edward II, who expelled all the Jews from England in 129o, and that though this may have...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—Mr. Peter Fleming's long but largely irrelevant notice of the Unity pantomime, Babes in the Wood, contained certain misconceptions which,...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] S IR, I learned with interest from Mr. Edward Banks' letter, in your issue of November 18th, that the house to his design, which won the £i,000...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] Sta, — Mr. J. W. T. Holland overlooks' the fact that the fees in the case he refers to very considera . bly reduced the amount of compensation...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—In connexion with your article in your issue of Novem- ber 18th, 1938, entitled " The Importance of Rumania," may I point out that Dr. G....

it should be cheaper to injure a poor person than a rich one ?—Yourp [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR]

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] Sut,—What exactly is the effect of the Non-Intervention Committee's proposals about granting belligerent rights to General Franco ? On...

BOOKS OF THE DAY By ERNST BORNEMAN THE difference between the contemporary novels of England and America is the difference between two languages. The preservation of a large...

Our Present Discontents. By W. R. Inge. (Putnam. 7s. 6d.) THE Dean has become an English figure. English figures are not so plentiful as they were—our age flowers• as...

Lloyd George. (Gollancz. 18s.) THE PEACE TREATIES AND AFTER The Truth About the Peace Treaties. Vol. II. By David Lloyd George. (Gollancz. 18s.) MR. LLOYD GEORGE, having...

Samuel Pepys, The Saviour of the Navy. By Arthur Bryant. (Cambridge University Press. 12s. 6d.) THERE are historical biographies and biographical histories ; but it is extremely...

Tins book, based on a great mass of unpublished papers, Canning's letters to his aunt, his cousin and his wife, and a full journal kept by Canning between 1793 and 1795, makes a...

Dance and Drama in Bali. By Beryl de Zoete and Walter Spies. (Faber. 3os.) IT seems certain that, with the possible exception of Tibet, no place in Asia or Africa looms so...

A SCHOLAR'S ANTHOLOGY (Gollancz. 7s. 6d.) _ IN literature, as elsewhere, one man's familiar is anotherls unfamiliar ; it is perilous ground for a selector to tread. He must be...

Hilaire Belloc. (Cons:able. x2s. 6d.) IT is the penalty, or perhaps the reward, of eminence that a great writer's later works do not provoke contemporary critical curiosity. No...

Emperors, Angels and Eunuchs. By Helen Diner. Translated from the German by Eden and Cedar Paul. (Chatto and Windus. 12s. 6d.) - IN his " miniature portrait " of the great...

The Diary of an Art Student of the Nineties. By Alfred Thornton. (Pitman. 6s.) IT is not, alas, likely that a great many of the regular readers of The Spectator survive from the...

Stoughton. 6s.) Perri. By Felix Salten. (Cape. 5s.) Salem the Mouse-Deer. By A. Hillman and Walter W. Skeat. (Macmillan. 7s. 6d.) Puppy and the Cat Hodge. By Lorna Lewis....

for CHILDREN , y The Cream of the Jug By L. A. G. STRONG ( 3,. MI. f al j it . it ((...1 or, d. 0.1. The Lost Queen of Egypt. By Lucile Morrison. (Seeker and Warburg. 7s....

There is no dividing line between picture bcoks and story books and these are primarily meant for one person to read aloud while the other look's at the pictures. Orlando, the...

And Forty Others All these books deal with the absorbing business of learnin; about everyday things. Baby's Very First Book, by Constance Wickham and Eulalie (Collins, 5s.),...

There are plenty more to choose from, but here is a good half dozen. The first four deal in magic; One of the best for ages 6 to 9 is The Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse,...

The Royal Air Force, by , Monk and Winter (Blackie, 3s. 6d.). Thoroughly practical. There is a brief history of the R.A.F., and an account of the qualifications required of a...

Starting with the youngest : Little Lamb, by Dahris Martin and Lilly Somppi (Collins, 5s.), is just right for quite small children with its lilting story and plenty of...

Joanna Carman is unbeatable. Another Pony for Jean (Coffins, 8s. 6d.) is a successor to her first book, though it is complete in itself. Jean's first hunt is a flop, and so is...

By RATE O'BRIEN Story of a Lake. By Negley Farson. (Gollancz. 8s. 6d.) Margareta. By Alec Brown. • (Boriswood. 8s. 6c1.) Last Port of Call. By Heinrich Hauser. (Arthur Barker....

story of a j ussian girl who left her home in Petrograd at the beginning of the revolution and came to settle in England. It is a story that has been told many times, but never...

feature of many ancient families, especially Scottish ones. Like the ghosts, and underground passages of the old family castle many of these phenomena, though claiming remoter...

useful compendium of information. In tills volume is assembled for the first time a detailed collection of the documents, where they exist, defining the constitutional...

The Round Tage is profoundly depressed by the outcome of the Munich Conference and by our lack of national agreement on foreign affairs. It regards friendship with Nazi Germany...

Mr. Michael Stewart, who has experience both as a poli- tician and as a teacher, has written an interesting and -useful primer of politics, The British Approach to Politics...

Road Problems in the Lords If the reply given last week by Lord Erne, Lord in Waiting, to the criticisms of the House of Lords on existing road conditions reflects the attitude...

By CUSTOS ONCE again it has been a case of Sterling over the Stock Markets and occasionally the shadow has seemed very black indeed It is not, and should not be, that the...

industry have not been slow to adjust their views to the improved economic outlook. It is only in the last two months that there have been unmistakable signs of increased...

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

SOLUTION NEXT WEEK The winner of Crossword No. 322 is Dr. S. K. Sledge, Hillcrest, Bradford Road, Wakefield.