Portrait of the Week
FTER the frost the thaw. Householders who have been wrestling with burst pipes and the water boards who have been trying to stop the loss of supplies have been having a bad time this week. Abroad, the same is true of M. Guy Mollet, whose visit to Algeria was the signal for rioting on the part of French colonists opposed to his North African policy. General Catroux has resigned from the position of Minister of State resident in Algiers. and it is difficult to see who is to replace him. This depressing sequence of events has been accompanied by equal depression at the other end of the Mediterranean, where Sir John Harding's negotiations with Archbishop Makarios do not seem to be proceeding with any undue haste. The shooting of a rioting schoolboy in Famagusta as well as the Communist Party demonstrations against the Archbishop for negotiating at all are ominous signs.
More cheerful is the successful conclusion of negotiations on the future of Malaya. As the Chief Minister of the Malayan Federation, Tcngku Abdul Rahman, had announced in a speech, Malaya is to be granted independence on August 31, 1957, and the prosecution of the war against the Com- munist guerrillas will in future be under the direction of a Malayan minister. Another conference has also just opened in London—on West Indian Federation. The Ministers of the various British West Indian islands have assembled to try to push through the decision made at the Montego Bay conference in 1947. It is to be hoped that their work will end as well as that of the Lancaster House meetings on Malaya.
Sir Anthony Eden is back from Washington, having, before he left, indicated that he did not think much of the offer con- tained in Marshal Bulganin's second letter to President Eisen- hower to conclude treaties of friendship with Britain and France as well as with the US. No doubt the Middle East is still preoccupying him. Mr. Dulles at a press conference hinted that America would not sell arms to Israel, in spite of increasingly alarming accounts of Czech war material arriving in Egypt. Another topic at present being raised between East and West is balloons. The Soviet Union and other Iron Curtain governments have recently been putting out a stream of protests about American balloons drifting over their territories— whether for meteorological purposes or to drop leaflets. President Eisenhower has said that by March 1 he would have `enough information' to decide whether or not to run again.
In Berlin there have been the usual kidnappings. Herr Robert Bialek, a prominent East German ex-Communist, was appar- ently drugged and removed from West Berlin. Other raids over the border failed. In Sweden a collective wage agreement has been concluded, giving a 4 per cent. pay rise to members of all trade unions. The Australian dock strike continues to the vast damage of the country's economy. In the state of Alabama there have been riots following the admission of a Negro girl student to the State University under a court order. The Royal tour of Nigeria is being a considerable, if exhausting, success.
At home the Chancellor's appeal for an end to inflation. couched, as it was, in a galaxy of shining metaphors, still does not seem to have affected the latest wave of wage demands. An application for a 2s. in the £ wage increase by Lancashire cotton workers has been rejected by the employers, and pension rises for about 400,000 retired public servants have been announced in a Bill published this week. A more cheering note is struck by a £10 million increase in the gold and dollar re- serves of the sterling area last month. The Government must in any case have been cheered and invigorated by Mr. Aneurin Bevan's attack on his own leaders over the weekend.
This week has seen the publication of the new plan for developing the Elephant and Castle district, and the announce- ment that the last of the Dead Sea scrolls turns out to contain an Aramaic version of several chapters of the Book of Genesis. The great Oxford roads row still goes on, though many of its leading figures have turned their energies to the election to the Professorship of Poetry, where a good intrigue is being had by all. There has been a forest fire near Fort William in the Highlands. In Rome the Vatican has invoked the second clause of the Lateran treaty to cause fig leaves to be inserted over the barer parts of a number of tableaux performed by the Folies Bergere company, which is at present visiting the city.
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