Germany which has been leaking under the door of the old India Office since the talks began on April 20th was much more explicit than the bare official announcement, which was...

G ENERAL SMUTS has once more answered the highest call of duty and accepted one of the many seats in the Union Parlia- ment generously offered him by his colleagues in the...

The minor miracle of French politics which put M. Schuman of the M.R.P. into office last November at the head of a coalition with the Socialists has come to be accepted as a...

The Ministerial changes do not inspire great enthusiasm. Mr. Dalton's early return to the Cabinet was inevitable. He has paid a high price for a momentary indiscretion, and it...

The Parliament Bill, which has broadly the effect of reducing to twelve months—and often in practice to much less—the time by which the House of Lords can delay the passage into...

The rejection by the House of Lords by a sweeping majority of the "death penalty" clause added to the Criminal Justice Bill by the House of Commons in itself changes nothing....

The difficulty of maintaining interest and a sense of reality in military exercises in time of peace (and even in time of war) was the main one facing the Chief of the Imperial...

The time for the people of Czechoslovakia to express their dis- approval of the seizure of power by the Communists was last February when Mr. Gottvvald's coup itat took place....

T HE debate on the Nenni telegram was probably, and happily, unique even in the extensive and varied annals of Parliament. It showed, too, the unpredictability of Parliament....

Palestine the United Nations has achieved an unexpected triumph, for which much credit must go to Mr. Bevin and the British Cabinet generally. The Security Council has always...

to be little question about that, but in fact there is a good deal, quite enough to carry the problem into the High Court of Justice, where a ruling was given on it last Friday....

in his opinion, exhortation by postmark really does. I have just received a letter bearing, adjacent to the stamp of the town of origin, the legend— A DISTINGUISHED CAREER...

as some Government departments. Take this question and answer from Tuesday's Hansard: 1Via. E. P. SMITH asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will consider reissuing an...

booklet Harvest Home, "The official story of the great floods of 1947 and their sequel," has been prepared by the Central Office of Information is singularly hard to divine. The...

body, and its publications are well calculated to interest the apathetic elector in the procedure, the achievements and the vagaries of Parliament. In the latest issue of...

T HERE seems no doubt now that, in spite of recent events, General Smuts will be at Cambridge on Thursday as arranged for his installation as Chancellor. It should be in every...

By RICHARD CHANCELLOR IN assessing the true strength of the Soviet Union today there is I a dangerous tendency, in the absence of accurate and up-to-date information, to rely...

By F. STREETON STEED O NE hundred and twenty sections, with eleven schedules trailing in the rear, the whole spreading over 206 printed pages, make up the Town and Country...

By ROBIN NIAUGHAM IMRAVELLING south-eastward along the Mediterranean coast I from Tunis to Tripoli, capital of the western part of the former Italian colony of Libya, the...

By BARBARA CASTLE, M.P.- T AKE forty-five miles of Pennine Way, together with four or five Parliamentary wayfarers of varying degrees of public prominence, and you have all the...

By DAVID BROCK IT HE newspapers, with their love for emotional but misleading sobriquets, are fond of calling the North American Indian 4 ' the vanishing American." According...

By M. G. IONIDES N OT even the most ambitious economic planners have as yet proposed to bring the weather under their control, though there have been occasions when they have...

Loan of all beauty, give me grace, In this new spring to see Thy face. Give me a heart serene and still To look on loveliness my fill, Catch drops of colour, silver . sound, The...

By HAROLD NICOLSON T HERE are moments when even the most vivacious man becomes exhausted by the reiterated disappointments of our angry age and yearns to exchange the mud and...

THE THEATRE "Corinth House." By Pamela Hansford Johnson. (New Lindsey.) THIS play has several virtues, but the sum of them is smaller than its central defect. This is because...

THE B.B.C. performance of Verdi's Otello demonstrated dramatically what is perhaps clear enough in any case—that the orchestra plays a part almost as important as that of the...

"Four Steps in the Clouds." (Curzon.)—" Sans Lendemain." (Studio One.) — " Body and Soul." (Empirii— "I Love Trouble." (Tivoli.) THE new Italian film at the Curzon tells a...

I saw the rime on the first early potatoes, and tried the experiment of washing it off before the sun got to it. I went up and down the two rows with a waterin g can. The young...

taking a stroll at night down the hill past the cherry orchard, turning to my left outside the gate. I am always accom- panied by my corgi dog and an old half-Siamese cat of...

A NEW AIR MAIL SERVICE Special air mail rates for carrying printed papers to certain countries in the Western Hemisphere have recently been introduced. These permit the thin...

I DO not know how long it is since David Jones last held an exhibition of his work, but his pictures are rare enou g h for a new show of recent chalk and watercolour drawings at...

BEFORE I turn to a more personal record of country matters, I want to make use of this rare and happy opportunity to pay a tribute to Whuff's master, the habitual writer of this...

year the Botticelli-like procession of spring throws emphasis upon items. (Item! What a word to use for all the magic of it!) This year, however, everything is underlined. The...

GROUNDNUT ACHIEVEMENT Snt,—Really the critics of the groundnut scheme should make some effort to check the facts! It is nonsense for your correspondent, Mr. F. Jellinek, to...

SIR,—Mr. John Francis, writing about Hyderabad in The Spectator qf May 7th, refers to the Nizam's freedom to "determine his relations with the Government of the Indian Union,...

because any scheme which leads to development in the colonial Empire we must all wish to be crowned with success, but Mr. Hynd's article is not likely to convince anyone of the...

Sta,—A careful reader of the sentence which has upset Mr. Cooper will find that I was referring, not to poetry nor to architecture nor yet to textile design, but to Mr. Henry...

SIR,—Your article Labour at Scarborough was particularly naïve and did not appear to reach the standard which one expects of The Spectator. There is much that can be criticised...

SIR,—I must first of all acknowledge Mr. Dymond's apology. He at least exhibits caution in admitting it to be unwise to embark on anything in which one will be outclassed by...

Sitt,—Janus asks the question why a bright boy should be kept from university entry examination until 16 or 17 years of age, when he could pass it at 15+. Here is one answer :...

Sint,—Mr. P. J. Wood's idea of what constitutes " proof " of the alleged folly of the system of bulk-buying is peculiar. The U.S. Military Authorities who bought maize in the...

Sta,—According to an analysis of Polish military and civilian casualties in the Second World War, ten millions or 28 per cent. of Poland's pre- war population have been killed,...

Sta,—In The Spectator of May 28th the D.P.R. of the Coal Board denies the statement in your previous issue that "less coal per manshift is being produced today than in 1938."...

Sta,—If Sir William Beach Thomas will consult the well-known book by W. J. Bean, Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles, he will find full information about the Lombardy...

Sn1,—In Professor Walker's article, Smuts or Malan? in The Spectator frequent reference is made to Afrikanders. I have always understood that this is the name of a species of...

officer from the station the other evening I came across about a dozen rabbits along the edge of the field all caught in traps, kicking, squealing and most of them terribly...

SIR,—Your comments on the shortage of newsprint prompt me to ask how the Government can justify using posters to popularise trains? Like everything else, travelling...

the Michelangelo of our time" is surely a reflection on the times. In short, your art critic meant: "Michelangelo is no Moore."— Yours, &c., R. W. ALSTON. The Watts Gallery,...

Sut,—May a very insignificant member of the legal world ask, with the utmost diffidence, a question or two about the second paragraph in A Spectator's Notebook in your issue of...

Prehistory and Poetic Myth The White Goddess : A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth. By Robert Graves. (Faber and Faber. 30s.) THOSE many admirers of Robert Graves' work who...

The Formative Years. By Henry Adams. Condensed and edited by Herbert Agar. (Collins. Two volumes. Two guineas.) HENRY ADAMS professed never to have heard of ten men who had...

The Brontes—Charlotte and Emily. By Laura L. Hinkley. (Ham- mond. 15s.) As the Brontë centenaries crowd upon us—Branwell died on Sep- tember azith, 1848, Emily on December 19th...

THE word " fake " can mean many different things. At one end of the scale it covers Van Meegeren's forgeries of Vermeer and Floren- tine reliefs by Bastianini ' and at the other...

The King of Asine and Other Poems. By George Seferis. (Lehmann 7s. 6d.) TRANSLATING poetry is doubly difficult when the original language (considered in isolation from the...

From Charlemagne to Hitler. By J. S. Davies. (Cassell. 12s. 6d.) MR. DAVIES has written a political history of Germany in which Lord Runciman gets seven lines to Frederick...

Wordsworth's View of Nature. By Norman Lacey. (Cambridge University Press. 8s. 6d.) THIS short study is no attempt to break new Wordsworth ground. That would be difficult after...

IN the past philological learning has been almost entirely devoted, as Mr. Lewis points out, to the "accurate establishment of classical texts," and only now when the world is...

Men of Forty-Eight. By Jack Lindsay. (Methuen. 10s. 6d.) "WHY,' he wondered, swerving the car to avoid a dead pye dog, 'do I love this place so much ' ? ' This place is the...

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[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 yune 15th. Envelopes...

By CUSTOS WHAT with the Smuts reverse in South Africa, a fresh sprinkling of dividend reductions and some striking demonstrations of what dividend limitation can mean for the...