T HE question of military co-operation between the United States and Europe has developed at such speed during the past fortnight that some of the parties are beginning to find...

In the incredibly distant days when the so-called Baruch Plan was promulgated (that is, in the summer of 1946), many people found it possible to hope that there might be a free...

Although the reduction in the air-lift to Berlin from Western Germany began on Monday, there is no reason to believe that the usefulness of this great and entirely successful...

The chances that the United Nations Conciliation Commission on Palestine may be able to achieve something before the Assembly meets in the autumn have increased in the past...

None of Iraq's oil has been refined at Haifa since the Jews seized that port fifteen months ago. This has meant a very serious loss of revenue to Iraq and an almost equally...

The debate in the House of Commons on the Press Commission report was inevitably something of an anticlimax. In October, 1946, when the trumpets first sounded to the attack on...

There have been so many checks and disappointments in the course of the Greek civil war that the present tendency towards optimism must be qualified by the warning that...

HE heat of the last few weeks has demonstrated the un- suitability of Gothic architecture (even of the Victorian "cathedral with knobs on" type) for warm climates. This, and...

The Liberal Summer School is hardly the most likely place for a close examination of the defects in the organiiation of British trade unions, but there can be no doubt that the...

A jet air-liner, the De Havilland Comet, made its first flight last week, and immediately climbed to 8,000 feet. It flew for over half an hour and landed without incident....

T HE gallant, resourceful and dramatic exploit of H.M. Sloop ' Amethyst' has won for her commander and crew, and for the Navy whose finest (and most stylish) traditions they...

tima in three years, the Ellen Terry award for the best play of the year, was speculating the other day about how film-producers would manage if custom decreed, as it does in...

has cropped up again. The thing that puzzles me about these recurrent and inconclusive debates is that nobody ever suggests the obvious expedient of increasing, not the number...

not help feeling sorry for the Editor of the Daily Worker at the beginning of this week. On Monday, when banner headlines about the Amethyst' streamed across every other front...

I SUPPOSE the biggest step which mankind could take towards alleviating the suffering caused by war would be a convention making the International Red Cross responsible for the...

By ROBERT WAITIIMAN Washington T HE world is so full of a number of things, and so many of them in this brutally hot summer seem to be concentrated in Washington, that nobody...

By M. J. BONN P UBLIC opinion is rightly worried about a recrudescence of nationalism in Germany, though people hardly realise that the Allies have created the conditions which...

D. R. GILLIE Paris T HE French National Assembly has gone on holiday. This means much more than the end of a British parliamentary session. A French Government is based on a...

By HONOR CROOME W HEN Sir Stafford Cripps left for his Swiss cure, wiseacres in a number of financial centres looked knowing and announced that the devaluation of the pound was...

THE FIGHT FOR HEALTH By SIR PHILIP MANSON-BAHR T HAT present health problems which fall upon the shoulders of the Colonial Governments are immense, intricate and burdensome no...

YOUTH AND ALL THAT By JOHN DAVY (Trinity College. Cambridge) LARGE part of the nonsense that is talked about Youth arises from the practice of spelling it with a capital Y. The...

RESULTS OF THE SESSION JUST CLOSED It is stale to repeat that Ministers have retained their posts solely because there is no one to oust them ; but the truth goes beyond that...

By HAROLD NICOLSON I WAS distressed last week to observe that Strix, in the absence of our Pater Matutinus, had condoned and even praised the Viking ship. I have never...

Magic Town." (Odeon.)—" City Across the River." (Gaumont.) --- Iris." (Academy.) Magic Town, starring Mr. James Stewart and Miss Jane Wyman, accentuates the great gap which...

SAINT-SAENS scored an improbable double in the first week of the Proms., with Moura Lympany playing the G minor piano concerto on the opening night and a performance of Le Rouet...

THE THEATRE "Death of a Salesman." By Arthur Miller. (Phoenix.) SELF-PITY is one of the less constructive emotions. The person who pities himself may enjoy it in a rather...

The 'Third Programme relays of Die ZauberflOte and Fidelio from the Salzburg Fcstspielhaus are not only musically, but reminiscently, entrancing ; for they revive in the memory...

The School for Scandal last week committed felo de se before it began in its choice of Lady Teazle. On the stage mis-casting can be concealed, or at any rate mitigated, by the...

This—plus a Joseph Surface with no trace of soapiness in his voice—took the heart out of the production. Yet, miraculously, the whole affair was very nearly redeemed by Sir...

our programmes, August Bank Holiday last Monday finding the documentary B.B.C. at the Zoo and the Serpentine, in the South Kensington museums, at cricket and athletic meetings...

IT is twelve years since Herr Hitler organised his exhibition of " degenerate art " at Munich and denounced the "artificial stam- mering of people whom God has denied the boon...

strong plea for the prevention of disease. There is one aspect of prevention which seems to me at the present time to outstrip in importance everything else. That is the...

Sut,—Three observations are called for by Mr. Fleming's article on Formosa in the Spectator of July 29th, and I trust you will allow me to make them. I, too, have personal...

ARCHITECTS IN CHAINS Sm,—Before the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947, slipped on to the Statute Book it provoked considerable protest against its financial arrangements, but...

Stit,—The present fundamental struggle in Eastern Europe, as elsewhere, is between those who believe in God and those who do not. In the Spectator's words—" Cross or Sickle."...

SIR, —The article College and Industry, by B. R. 0. Bell, on the Under- graduate Page in the Spectator of July 8th, and the letters to which it has given rise in the Spectator...

seem to recall a recent passage in A Spectator's Notebook which commented on the disparity between the number of womenfolk at the disposal of the writer, and the substantially...

Sta,—In grave economic difficulty and danger of destruction in an atomic war in which then can be no adequate defence, we are now reaping the fruit of the fatal and foolish...

Slll,—In his review of Thi Food of the People, in the Spectator of July 29th, Sir jack Drummond refers to the regulations which are sup- posed to have prevented craftsmen from...

Stn,—Strix, in passing on the information that Viking should be pro- nounced " Vicking," is subscribing to what Prof. H. C. Wyld, in his Universal English Dictionary, dismisses...

SIR, —In reviewing Experiment in the Film, Mr. Cyril Ray refers to " Dovzhenko's juxtaposition of newsreel shots." I have not seen Dovzhenko's most recent work, but his earlier...

prodticed by U.F.A.W. (The Universities' Federation for Animal Welfare), that the recent Anti-Blood Sports Bill increased the membership of the British Field Sports Society from...

the harvest and ripened the barleys at unanticipated speed has had -some rather surprising effects on wild flowers. On one common, for example, it has often been asked why the...

Slit,—How should we pronounce his name ? I say Puffer.—Yours faith-

SIR, —In a recent notice on the Humorous Art Exhibition there was a complete absence of any feminine name. The cartoonist brand of art seems to have no attraction for women...

promised a larger circulation than " The Doctor." It is the Peasgood Non-such of roses, of enormous sue and stout petals, beautifully scented, and it is a good doer. Another and...

to, cutting their wild patterns of flight at an inordinate height ; and they have stayed with us later than usual in the enjoyment of this pastime. The presumption is that they...

SIR, —The Lee Metford .303 magazine rifle replaced the Martini-Henry at Bisley some years before 1897. We were armed with it at Sandhurst in 1894. I used its successor, the long...

HERE and'tfiere is to be seen a field which was cut, cleared and ploughed before the first day of August. There do exist records of harvests which began in June—I have the...

a sub-editor in the Paris office of the New York Herald Tribune to deal with cricket reports reminds me of an occasion, between the wars, when this same gentleman, or one of his...

SUBSCRIPTION RATES Ordinary edition to any address In the World. 52 weeks kl 10s. Od. 26 weeks 15s. 01 Air Mail to any Country in Europe. 52 weeks k2 7s. 6d. 26 wetka ,fl 3s....

THIS is a capital guide book: it will, I think, be essential to any English traveller in Portugal who wants to see that delightful country thoroughly. Selective, of course, it...

The Well-Meant Urn The Well Wrought Urn. By Clcanth Brooks. (Dobson. 10s. 6d.) MR. BROOKS has followed up his Modern Poetry and the Tradition with a book in which he...

MISS WEDGWOOD must forgive us if we take it for granted that anything she writes will be sound, lucid and composed with a due regard for literary graces. This little book is no...

A Survey of Primitive Money. By A. Hingston Quiggin. (Methuen. 45s.) THIS is the seventh of Messrs. Methuen's series of Handbooks oi Archaeology, and it is at once evident that...

Lowland Lairds. By James Fergusson. (Faber. 16s.) The Seven Sons of the Provost. By Henrietta Taylcr. (N Ison. 2Is.) THE Scots " laird " occupied socially as well as...

An Army In Exile. The Story of the Second Polish Corps. By Lt.- Gen. W. Anders, C.B. (Macmillan. 2Is.) THIS is a simple, straightforward and valuable account of General Anders'...

Serge! Rachmaninov. By John Culshaw. (Dennis Dobson. Bs. 6d.) "TELL me," said Tolstoy after Rachmaninov had played for him at Yasnaya Polyana, " has that kind of music any...

Woodland Crafts in Britain. By H. L. Edlin. (Batsford. 15s.) OF the materials that are suitable for construction, wood is more easily worked than stone, and was known before...

The Tormentors. By Richard Cargoe. (Gollancz. 9s. 6d.) Boys and Girls Come Out to Play. By Nigel Dennis. (Eyre and Spottiswoodc. 11 s. 6d.) Love in a Cold Climate. By Nancy...

Guns Wanted. By J. K. Stanford. (Faber. 15s.) Is there a Surtees of the dirt-track ? Does somebody write as engagingly about ice-hockey or all-in wrestling as Miss Dorothea...

1'714 'PR 111:111 n ROM % CI a " • I.- riCirifiEl SOLUTION ON AUGUST 19 The winner of C.rossword No. 539 is Alts. A. LYLE HARRISON. Bogrevor, Co Down.

IA Book Token for one guinea will he awarded to the sender of the first correct solution of this week's crossword to be opened alter noon on Tuesday week, August 16th. Envelopes...

Old English Furniture. By Therle Hughes. (Lutterworth Press. 21s.) AIMED at the small collector who wants furniture and other house- hold goods for use rather than for ornament,...

literature has consisted of descriptions of the insects accompanied by pleasant chatter and assisted by coloured plates. Happily the trend now is towards natural history and...

By CUSTOS IT is one of the defects of so-called planning that when the plan goes wrong everything is left in the air until the planners make up their minds about the next step....