Portrait
of the Week THE Whitsun holiday has passed without any great excitement, and in sheets of rain; for which, since a mere While the earnest were making note of these dreary items, more popular interest was gener- ated by the finding on the Hampshire coast of a headless corpse, dressed in a frogman's outfit, suspected to be that of Commander Crabb. The progress of Mayflower lE has been closely watched and she has finally reached Provincetown. The Queen is to cross the Atlantic herself later IL the year to open the Canadian Parliament, visit Washington, and attend the 350th anniversary celebrations at Jamestown.
The Parliament she opens in Ottawa will be very differently composed from the last one, for Mr. St. Laurent and his Liberals have been de- feated decisively in the Federal elections, losing their majority for the first time since 1935 to the Conservatives who are now expected to form a government under Mr. Diefenbaker. Since they will not have an over-all majority it promises to be an interesting session, though the change is not expected to make any difference to Anglo- Canadian relations. The South African attitude to changes of Commonwealth government has been expressed by Mr. Louw, who remarked in a bitter Moment that the recent Labour Party attacks on South African racial policy would make it very difficult for South Africa to co-operate with Labour government.
A wave of selling on Wall Street is, fortunatrly, the only sequel to a bilious attack suffered by President Eisenhower as a result, apparently, of eating his favourite blueberry pie in Washington. The other summit had for the moment been vacated by Messrs. Bulganin and Khrushchev, on a visit to Finland. Preceded by the sinister figure of General Serov, they. do not appear to have warmed any Finnish hearts; in fact, Mr. Khrushchev's remarks about making the Baltic 'an eternally peaceful zone' produced the, at best, back-banded reply from President Kekkonen that Finland's friendship with Russia was a geographi- cal necessity.
Geographical necessity does not appear to have done much recently for friendship between Israel auci the Arab States, or indeed for friendship between the Arab Sates themselves. Incidents in the Gaza strip have been frequent, and the Saudi Arabian Government has been bombarding the United Nations with complaints of Israeli aggres- sion in the Gulf of Aqaba. King Saud is on a State visit to Jordan, the Egyptian military attaché has been expelled fram Amman and the Jordanian ambassador from Cairo. President Kuwatly of Syria has paid a hurried visit to Colonel Nasser. The results of the meeting of the Baghdad Pact powers in Karachi still remain shrouded. in dis- creet silence. One or two rumours of difficulty and disagreement were almost too vehemently denied, as was the suggestion that the subsequent resignation of Nun i es-Said and his government in Iraq had something to do with the meeting. The French Government crisis is at last ending after three weeks' manoeuvring. M. Lacoste is to remain as Minister-Resident in Algeria, but this news does not appear to have calmed the situation there. A number of terrorist attacks have taken place near Algiers.
In the Birthday Honours List Mr. J. Arthur Rank has been made a baron. Understandably enough the Government has not risked any more by-elections by raising MPs to the peerage, but three Conservative backbenchers, Captain Dun- can, Mr. Hamilton Kerr and Mr. Fitzroy Maclean, become baronets. Sir Thomas Beecham has been made a Companion of Honour, and Mr. Darsie Gillie receives the CBE.
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