—Portrait of the Week— IT SNOWED, it froze and it
fogged. And the weather forecasters got it wrong right down the line. Shivering, the country could work up little enthu- siasm for the new (if that is the word) Soviet proposals on Germany, little sympathy for the Suez last-ditchers' distress (if that is the word) at the imminent Anglo-Egyptian financial agreement and little horror at the summary justice (if that is the word) being meted out in Cuba to supporters of the fallen dictator Batista. It thawed.
MR. MIKOYAN'S triumphant progress through the United States had many Americans and some newspapers in this country rolling over asking for their tummies to be tickled; the refugees who booed the emissary of the regime which murdered their relatives were sternly rebuked. Mr. Mikoyan entered enthusiastically into the pantomime, say- ing that in Russia 'we believe in freedom from hoodlums,' a sentiment which was vigorously applauded by his audience of American business- men. When he got to Hollywood he kissed an actor, which seems to have delighted the ground- lings rather more than the Soviet Ambassador. Meanwhile the American Government has placed an order for a space-capsule in which a man might be successfully fired into outer space and brought back alive; it should be ready in two years. Mr. Mikoyan said nothing, but was later observed shaking some laughs out of his sleeve.
WINTER PRODUCED the usual traffic chaos. Villages were cut off, roads made impassable, trains late. Ski-ing broke out in Scotland and a prisoner broke out of Nottingham jail while watching a football match. Snowdrifts of up to ten feet were reported, but a slow and halting thaw eventually made con- ditions easier. Easier conditions, too, were promised for London Transport sit-down strikers, who have at least managed to extort from London Transport a promise of more Information, through more loudspeakers, when there are delays in future.
THE LATEST Soviet Note on the future of Germany proposed a 31-nation peace conference, with an agenda...roughly similar to that put forward in 1952 and again in 1954 (and rejected by the West on both occasions). The note left the door open for counter-proposals by the West, and as yet nobody had made any move either to slam it or pass through it.
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THE BRITISH delegation in Cairo, headed by Sir Denis Ricketts, approached the end of the job started by Mr. Eugene Black. The way seemed to be open to a gradual resumption of diplomatic relations with Egypt, and even for a realistic approach to that country by the Foreign Office. At the same time, Sir Hugh Foot hinted that the way to a resumption of diplomatic relations with Archbishop Makarios was also open, if the 'truce' -could be metamorphosised into a 'peace.' The atmosphere of comparative calm existing on the island lent hope to this view, but farther west in the Mediterranean there were ominous puffs of smoke to be seen emerging from the Maltese volcano.
THE ERA of peace, freedom and brotherly love in Cuba, ushered in by the forces of Fidel Castro when they overthrew the hated regime of President Batista, was inaugurated by a wave of mass executions, bulldozers scooping out graves into which' the victims were then machine-gunned. Senor Castro's representatives did not actually say that it was impossible to make a cigar without breaking tobacco plants, but they hinted at it.
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