Portrait of the Wee
THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT'S REPLY to the Soviet Note on the RB47 affair deplored the unprovoked Soviet attack on an American aircraft and denied allegations of Anglo-American aggressive inten- tion. Mr. Macmillan read to the House of Com- mons his personal letter to Mr. Khrushchcv, asking him what he thought he was up to in these critical days. Mr. Macmillan could have said, but didn't, that he expected the answer, 'fishing in troubled Cuban and Congolese waters'—though the Soviet Union abstained, and did not exercise its veto, when the Security Council voted to refer the Cuban problem to the Organisation of Ameri- can States. In the Congo, Belgium agreed to with- draw her troops from the Leopoldville area at the request of the United Nations, and the Soviet Union protested to the United States against the arrival there of American troops, all twenty of them. The Irish Government introduced a Bill to make it possible for Irish soldiers to serve abroad, and thus support the United Nations forces in the Congo. In Southern Rhodesia, police and plain clothes men searched the houses, read the letters and apprehended the persons of mem- bers of the National Democratic Party and the Capricorn Society. Mr. Kennedy became a candi- date for the United States presidency. Mr. Suhrawardy, the former Pakistani Prime Minister, was barred from political life for six years, and Mr. Kishi, the former Japanese Prime Minister, Was stabbed. The Imperial Cricket Conference ruled that a ball shall be deemed to be. unfairly thrown if either umpire considers it to have been so, and Etna erupted.
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TEE QUEEN OPENED the birthday celebrations of the Royal Society, which is 300 years old, and Welcomed to London King Bhumibol of Thailand and his Queen, Sirikit, who is a good deal younger than the Royal Society. And a lot prettier.
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THE SEAMEN'S STRIKE was on again and off again and on again, but the London Transport power station shift workers went back to work, and the Underground trains to normal. Mr. Macmillan told the Association of British Chambers of Com- merce, the Federation of British Industries, and the National Union of Manufacturers that we've got to export mere. Mr. Brooke said that he Wouldn't let the green belts go, and the House of Lords said the same about the chiming devices on ice-cream barrows. Dealers cut the retail price of new Vauxhall motor-cars, and pro- duction stopped at the Ford works at Dagenham because of a walk-out by soma workers and a send-out of others by the management. Trade unions disagreed about whether investing their funds in unit trusts would benefit the unions or the capitalist system the more, and whether which Was how much desirable. A number of vast electrical manufacturing firms struggled for con- trol of the Telephone Manufacturing Company, and the right to sell rather a lot of stuff, rather Profitably, to the Post Office.
A SPOKESMAN for the Manchester Guardian and Evening Ncws Ltd. said that arrangements for the Proposed joint publishing of their Manchester Everting News and Mr. Roy Thomson's Man- chester Evening Chronicle had not yet been finalised,' which suggested that the influence of Mr. Thomson's prose style, at any rate, was already at work in the premises once hallowed by C. P. Scott. The Daily Telegraph announc d that next year there will he a Sunday Telegra confirming many recent Fleet Street rumours, and confounding those who had been saying that on the Telegraph it was always Sunday afternoon anyway. In the Times agony column an adver- tpc- offered for sale at £25 o.n.o. a twenty-foot bison, mounted by Rowland Ward as a lamp- atandard. The advertiser later declared that it was a Python, not a bison, and a telephone mis- hearing was responsible. There the matter rests at present.
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