s OME idea having rather mysteriously grown up that someone or other wants a Coalition Government (possibly speeches by Mr. Harold Macmillan and Captain Peter Thorneycroft...

The scrutiny of the statements passing between the East and West German political leaders on the subject of an All-German Consti- tuent Council is likely to be a profitless...

Next week's elections for the Gold Coast Legislative Assembly represent an experiment which, whether it succeeds or fails, is bound to have an enormous influence on the...

It is always dangerous to make pronouncements on the course of the war in Malaya, as the authorities concerned have now pro- bably realised. The number of bandits is still a...

By one device or another the Communist element in the trade unions manages to make trouble—and to make it so that the main bouts correspond with each new attempt to improve the...

The announcement on Tuesday of a new issue of national savings certificates carrying interest at the rate of 3 per cent. per annum did not come too soon, and it still remains to...

When public attention is drawn to the procedure of courts-martial it is usually the apparent anomalies of military law and the harshness of sentences which arouse criticism....

The rapid increase over the past ten years or so of the habit of eating out has produced a situation in which 236,000 catering establishments serve in the course of an average...

H OW far the Opposition considersr. Nr. Attlee's statement on defence has redeemed the Government's delay and how large %section, if any, of the Labour Party regrets it or...

An advertisement appeared in the Manchester Guardian last week which, since it was addressed to electricity authorities and con- cerned something called ripple'injection, was...

0 N Monday the Prime Minister made a grave speech in the House of Commons. On Tuesday the United Nations' Political Committee took a grave decision at Lake Success. It was not...

missing word question: " In the sweat of thy — shalt thou eat bread " (Genesis iti 19). I admit that I got it wrong, though 1 have been reading Genesis lately. (Persons who...

Cecilian iuet—not the less welcome that it was obviously unpre- meditated. An article on Reunion by the veteran Viscount Cecil was faced,. on the opposite page, with a letter on...

The Evening Standard is to be congratulated on securing a photo- graph of a Danish lady in tears seeing her fiancd off to Korea. This is a notable achievement, for tears are a...

R. BEVAN'S political broadcast last Saturday—his first—had been awaited with some curiosity. Would it be the torrential and provocative Nye of the House of Commons ? Not at...

Kent has diligently and religiously signposted (in preparation for the Festival of Britain) all that portion of the Pilgrims' Way lying within its borders, Surrey has declined...

association of Shakespeare with the wording of parts of the Authorised Version of the Bible has elicited various interesting communications. The most interesting is a copy of...

named Brittania ' by the Minister of Transport." Daily Telegraph. They are thinking of calling the next one " Britannia." JANUS. JANUS.

By STRATLGICUS T HE reactions to the campaign in Korea demonstrate that only the existence of actual military operations deeply stirs the democratic world. Russia, of course,...

B) ERIC FENN 1 he important questions are therefore two: What is the nature of the responsibility resting on the B.B.C. in regard to religious questions, and what sort of...

By CANON ROGLR LLOYD GOOD many railway books have recently been published, most of them meriting attention as works of literature, for there is today something of a renaissance...

By SIR EVELYN WRENCH R. LOWELL THOMAS, the American news commentator and lecturer, makes a practice of appearing unexpectedly in some far-off part of the world just when it is...

By JAMES LAVER C OCHRAN—Sir Charles Cochran—was accepted by the youngest generation of playgoers as one of the grand old men of the theatre, one who was still active, still...

THE SPECTATOR 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...

On Being Broadcast At By JAMES M. MATTHEWS (Brasenose College, Oxford) T HE views of undergraduates were not invited for the Beveridge Report on the B.B.C. It hardly matters....

0 CREATURES resident on earth with Man, Count us your enemies. I fear you must. We slaughter you or mould you to our plan. All you can say of us, alas, is just. But there was...

By HAROLD NICOISON S OME days ago I received from a friend who is wintering upon the Continent a copy of the Ecrits de Paris for February, 1949. " I found this," he wrote, " in...

SOME plays arc so completely over the first-night audience's heads that they rank •as failures. Marriage Is No Joke is one of them. Because I .enjoyed the humour which irked the...

THEATRE 'the Gay Invalid." (Garrick.) FROM a snowbound, lamplit Paris street in the eighteenth century, from the tale of an ingenuous hypochondriac pauperised by apothe-...

AMERICA'S contribution to the visual arts of the past quarter-century has surely been that of movement. What Disney has done in two dimensions (and I speak, not of the quality...

' , Pandora and The Flyin g Dutchman." (Odeon.)— ,, Black- mailed." (Gaumont and Marble Arch Pavilion.)—“la Reglc du Jeu." (Lveryman.) THE Dutchman who was cursed to sail the...

THE third, and unfortunately last, of the concerts given by the London Classical Orchestra in the Chelsea Town Hall was on January. 30th, when Trevor Harvey conducted a...

Report by N. K. Boot A prize of f5 was offered for the first sentence of a novel guaranteed to deter the reader from reading any further. Drastic qualifications had to be...

a slice of Sir Charles Wood's financial surplus have been active this week. A great number of - parochial meetings in the Metropolis have made demonstrations to help Viscount...

Set by Hilary Brett-Smith A prize of f5, which may be divided, Is offered to an excerpt (of not more than 250 words) from Herr Baedeker's description of one of the following :...

in saying that in this country " a flock is shepherded by one person," but in the Near East 1 have many ' times seen flocks of sheep spread out in a triangle crossing the...

to a letter that has been received from the Ministry of Health by those who had made covenants to subscribe funds to assist the maintenance of the voluntary hospitals before the...

SIR.-1 arn in complete agreement with the views set out by Mr. Robert G. Tat i ran in the Spectator of January 12th., The housing problem of Britain must be solved by employing...

SIR.—In reply to "Ex-Patient," in the Spectator of January 12th, the figure of £1,000 for a thoracoplasty operation was obtained , from a medical journal. It was produced by an...

SIR, The correspmdence I have so far seen on this subject overlooks the fact that tne Oran plan for the proposed General Council of the .. .. ,.,; „„c uou ut Inc rress, namely...

Television Over There SIR.—In the first four months of last year in America the market value of United Paramount Theatres stock fell about 20 per cent., while that of Zenith...

Sia,—Mr. Young's main grievance, amongst a number of distortions and misrepresentations, expressed in his review of my book The Forties. appears to be )hat I give a "West-End "...

I suppose everybody this month has been giving some thought to the personality of mountains. The disasters in the Alps have dwarfed even man's inhumanity to man. The long...

SIR. —Much of the content of the Spectator is devoted nowadays to the consideration of how best to prepare for the next war. Why is it that it does not occur to anybody that war...

SIR,—Mr. Thompson's argument appears to be that, because the Chinese have long memories, having once attempted an invasion of Japan seven hundred years ago they are bound to try...

to attend to the garden this week, except to seek assurance that my transported yew hedge looks none the worse for its removal ; and to remark that in a friend's garden over at...

other day, and I had a good view of it from my study-window, which faces across the valley from the brow of a mid-Weald hill. Disturbed by cries, the tooting of a tin trumpet,...

A WELL-COMPILED selection of American verse is a valuable book, particularly for one who wants to know the background of much modern poetry, or to understand what has proved to...

Booth Mobilises His Army IN the second volume of the official history of the Salvation Army Colonel Robert Sandall describes the swift and successful mobilisa- tion of an...

This book on Arthur Devis and four more painter members of . his family is printed upon beautiful, hand-made paper and gives a rare pleasure to the mind and eye. It is a...

The World Rebuilt. By Peter Howard. (Blandford Press. 23. 6d.) MoRE people probably have been irritated than inspired by what has been known successively as the Oxford Groups,...

The Poacher's Handbook. By Ian Niall. (Heinemann. 8s. 6d.) BOOKS about the country tend to be polemical, preaching the virtues of compost heaps with what Sir William Beach...

On Producing Shakespeare. By Ronald Watkins, (Michael Joseph. 2 IS,) Producing Shakespeare. By C. B. Purdom.: (Pitman. i Ss.) Ir is a sign of the times that these two books...

The Truth About Korea. By Robert T. Oliver. (Putnam.. jos. 6d.) THIS frankly partisan little book haS some topical interest for English readers as an example of one type of...

Tests anthology pleases me immensely, and I am sure that it will please all except the very stuffiest of our British islanders, especially those to whom the tea-pot, the...

THIS little book provides a useful introduction to its subject, for each of these speakers in the B.B.C. Third Programme knew very well what he was talking about. Dr. Chapman...

Joseph. los. 6d.) The Younger Sister. By Isobel Strachey. (Cape. cos. 6d.) FOUR English novels, each of them promising serious pleasures and all, I fear, disappointing. Miss...

Ui2il k. V Wrd ji C q.. o v I P ve' T ER i It EiE ki 01111k 11 IA111141E4) a T cis 5 ril Vll a 0.1N 0 I 5 1 s clic TIA GifINIT 1:1111E NI Ai.,0■I OiT SOLUTION ON...

IA Book Token for one guinea will be awarded so the sender of the first cornea solution of this week's crossword to be opened after noon on Tuesday week, February 13th. ACROSS...

By CUSTOS FACED with a substantial enlargement of the rearmament programme investors may be forgiven for pausing before entering into any fresh commitments. From Mr. Attlee's...