SWARMS AND TRESPASSING SIR,-If Mr. R. J. Taylor reduces his neighbour's fowls into his pos- session, he may have to face an action for the tort of conversion. There is a...

NOTHING BUT BEETHOVEN SIR,-In his notice of the first of five Beethoven concerts to be given by Herr Wilhelm Furtwangler with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra Mr. Martin...

SIR,-I have inherited a Continental recipe for keeping alien fowls in their places and should be glad to pass it on to Mr. R. J. Taylor. When you find them in your garden...

EUROPE'S REFUGEES SIR,-I differ from the Rev. Henry Carter's opinion that there is no essential difference between his and my approach to the problem of Europe's refugees. Mr....

Clearing the Decks After a short delay, due mainly to French reluctance to see an insular commander-in-chief given chief responsibility for the conduct of a continental war,...

NEWS OF THE WEEK THE Berlin dispute continues according to its depressing plan. A majority of the Security Council has agreed that the situa- tion in Berlin constitutes a...

More French Strikes After last week's reports of Communist-Gaullist clashes in Franco comes news of a fresh Communist offensive in the shape of a French miners' strike and a...

THE POST-WAR GENERATION SrR,-I am afraid I am an exception to the young people referred to in Mr. Nicolson's Marginal Comment of October 1st. I am far from imagining that Mr....

ANGLO-FRENCH UNION, 1940 SIR,-Dr. David Thomson's wise review in your issue of last week of The Private Diaries of Paul Baudouin raises the interesting point of the part which...

SIR,-May I develop Mr. Nicolson's theory that gaiety is partner to self-respect and suggest that self-respect springs from satisfaction in a difficult task well done? Young...

THE CHILDREN OF GREECE SIR,-I have not visited the camps in Russian satellite countries where the abducted Greek children are held nor the Greek villages from which they have...

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR THE FUTURE OF SOCIALISM SrR,-The Triple Challenge, by Francis Williams, recently reviewed in The Spectator, gives an able, but partial, summary of the...

MUSIC ON September 29th Aida was added to the repertory at Covent Garden. Owing to the last-moment indisposition of the Italian Radames, Franco Beval, who was to have sung in...

THE CINEMA The Fallen Idol. (Empire.)-Esther Waters. (Gaumont and Marble Arch Pavilion.) A PICTURE directed by Mr. Carol Reed is always something to which one can look...

CONTEMPORARY ARTS THE THEATRE Medea. Freely adapted by Robinson Jeffers, from the play by Euripides. (Globe.) A THUNDEROUS metallic clanking sound, as unseen bolts are drawn...

The Kid From Stratford. A Merry Musical. (Princes.) IT was a good idea to postulate the discovery at Stratford of the MS. of I'm Telling Thee, a musical play written by...

Hogarth, lbbetson, May Hogarth's Drawings. Edited and introduced by Michael Ayrton. Notes - on the plates by Bernard Denvir. (Avalon Press. 21s.) - Julius Caesar Ibbetson....

BOOKS- OF THE DAY Report on Current Events The West at Bay. By Barbara Ward. (Allen & Unwin. 12s. 6d.) No better report on current events could have been written than this...

Dr. Brunner on Christianity Christianity and Civilisation. Part I.: Foundations. By Emil Brunner. (Nisbet. lOs.) THIS is the first series of Gifford Lectures delivered at...

Mystics and Systems The Happy Issue. By Warner Allen. (Faber and Faber. 12s. 6d.) ONE closes this second book on mysticism by Mr. Allen with a faint feeling of distaste. Why...

To Solve the Jewish Problem Australia-The Unpromised Land. By J. N. Steinberg. (Gollancz. 9s. 6d.) THE story of the attempt to solve the problem of European Jewish refugees...

The Poems of Richard Church Collected Poems. By Richard Church. (Dent. 15s.) THERE are people who love biography or autobiography more than any other writings whatever. They...

Shorter Notice Frangois Villon. A Study. By Cecily Mackworth. (Westhouse. 9s. 6d.) FOR any of us who are disposed to feel that we live in an uncomfortable age, the picture of...

FINANCE AND INVESTMENT By CUSTOS FROM a mood in which they were prepared to do little or nothing investors have now recovered to the extent of being willing to buy gilt-edged...

Why is it that the English find Russian proper names intrinsically funnier than those of any other country except possibly their own ? Listening by ill-chance the other night...

I am pretty sure there is no good reason for the inordinate length of the advertisements which local authorities put in the papers when they want to fill a vacancy on their...

It is with deep regret that I note the disappearance from the pages of The Author's and Writer's Who's Who of that versatile and much-loved character, Walter Bertram Tizzard,...

To judge from their entries in the latest edition of The Author's and Writer's Who's Who, Dr. George Bankoff and Mr. George Sava have a lot in common. Both were born in I903....

A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK THIS week's Communist attempts to interfere with the recruiting campaign ought to help the Territorial Army. Less calculated to do so was a recent...

Ten years ago, if we had heard that the Lord Chancellor had ordered an enquiry to be made into the conduct of certain senior officials of a Government Department, what would...

The Odeon Empire A ray of light on the mysteries of film finance in this country has been shed by the publication this week of the consolidated balance sheet for Mr. Rank's...

Not Enough Coal A year ago the Grimethorpe strike was just over, the miners were presenting an assortment of new claims, the Coal Board was saying that there was really nothing...

Palestine Waits With a good deal of luck the subject of Palestine may possibly come up in the General Assembly next week. If the British delegates had had their way Palestine...

Limbering Up at Llandudno The annual, conference of the National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations is meeting at Llandudno in the flickering light of dawn....

ATOMIC BOMBS FIRST IT must be years since the subject of atomic energy achieved so much prominence in the news as it has had during the past week. Such a sudden access of...

THE BOMB SiRAfter Mr. Vyshinsky's speech the other day is it not obvious, even to the benighted, that the atomic bomb is at the bottom of the whole trouble between ourselves...

THE HUNT AND THE TRAP SIR,-Mr. E. G. Barlow evidently approves of the idea that " the farmer cannot be blamed for resorting to getting rid by any method of the foxes which are...

COMPENSATION DELAYS SIR,-There must be hundreds of cases similar to the one mentioned in your issue of October 1st. One I know of concerns a man of 76, whose considerable...

CONSCRIPT SERVICE SIR,-I wonder how many readers of The Spectator have heard of a little-known English word which will most probably be added to our dictionaries in the near...

MARVELLOUS FRENCH SIR,-May I, with all due respect, point out a small mistake which crept into A Spectator's Notebook last week? It is one which can easily be forgiven except...

SIR,-In The Spectator of September 17th, under the above heading, Mr. Henry Carter showed that the narrow limitations of the regulations and the funds of U.N.O.'s International...

EMPIRE ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION SIR,-The enthusiastic response to the eloquent speeches of Mr. Eden and Mr. Menzies at Tuesday's great Empire Rally at the Central Hall,...

Sense and Sensibility Dostoyevsky. By Stanislaw Mackiewicz. (Orbis. 12s. 6d.) MOST writers of genius have been concerned with saying as tellingly and unambiguously as...

Americana The Last of the Provincials: The American Novel, 1915-1925. By Maxwell Geismar. (Secker and Warburg. 16s.) THE "provincials " are five American writers of the...

What Next? A very characteristic country house was put up to auction the other day, and, though the reserve price was not high, not a single bid was offered. In the immediate...

COUNTRY LIFE THE newer theories concerning what Coleridge called the " secret ministry " of frost have been remarkably illustrated this September. Two nights of frost,...

In the Garden More ardent corroboration reaches me of the praises of the annual carnation recently referred to. One Essex gardener, bearing a famous name, writes: " I have...

Craftsmen All It was bravely written the other day that rural craftsmen were far from being a disappearing race. The optimistic claim was hotly, even angrily, disputed by some...

FRENCH BOOKS THE exhibition, A Thousand Years of French Books, which Sir Duff Cooper opened at 7 Albemarle Street on September 30th, can confidently be described as the most...

ART To any person of normal sensibility the Pre-Raphaelites must always appear as utterly lacking in taste. They are the pre-eminent example, in painting, of not being able to...

Bird Behaviour Territory in Bird Life. By Eliot Howard. (Collins. lOs. 6d.) JULIAAN HUXLEY and James Fisher, who contribute an introduction, are rightly agreed that this book...

Fiction That Winter. By Merle Miller. (John Lehmann. lOs. 6d.) Headless AngeL By Vicki Baum. (Michael Joseph. lOs. 6d.) The Fifth Child. By James Courage. (Constable. 8s....

STEEL'S SILENT WAR-II By WALTER TAPLIN IF it were enough to refute the arguments advanced in favour of natioipalising the British iron and steel industry the matter would have...

STAR TIGER DOWN By RICHARD HUGHES 6MCC ORE people in the United States were kicked to death by donkeys last year than died in air transport" (so runs a report of Mr. Peter...

THE COMEDIE-FRANCAISE By PHILIP CARR THE Comedie-Franqaise-habitually written with a hyphen-is often referred to by Parisian journalists as " la Maison de Moliere." Both...

EIRE'S FINAL BREAK By RAWLE KNOX A FINE, soft rain was settling on the Dublin streets last Saturday night when a thousand or so citizens gathered outside the Mansion House to...

MARGINAL COMMENT By HAROLD NICOLSON HOW sane and useful would it be if the members of the Security Council were to hold at least one of their meetings in Berlin. The Palais de...

Ministers as They Are III.-EMANUEL SHINWELL By FRANCIS WILLIAMS Mr. Francis Williams contributes today the third of his character sketches of certain Ministers. The view he...

THE CHURCHILLIAN EPIC By THE RT. HON. L. S. AMERY MR. CHURCHILL is not the first great leader of men who has M shaped history, not only by his actions, but by his own version...