Portrait of the Week

THE thaw is here at last; and in Washington the ice- jam of speculation about President Eisenhower's future broke on Wednesday when he announced at his press conference his intention of running for a second term. The decision was not altogether unexpected : his doctors had pre- pared the way for his announcement with a zeal not wholly medical. All the President's countless admirers must be glad that his recovery has been full enough to enable him to take this courageous step, but in spite of a heart specialist's assur- ance that he 'should be able to carry on an active life satis- factorily for another five to ten years,' many must also have the gravest misgivings about the political prospect called up by his decision. Much uncertainty inevitably remains and interest now switches to the Vice-Presidency. President Eisenhower would not say on Wednesday whether he had chosen Mr. Nixon to run with him.

Elsewhere the thaw came more slowly. There was an unfortunate plumber in south-east London who had himself to call for help before he went on his errands of mercy because the radiator of his car was frozen. Many of the efforts of statesmen and politicians — there had even to be a statement in Parliament about the number of wandering Ministers—seemed to have this character of rescuers attempting to rescue rescuers, and all finding themselves absolutely stationary. In Cyprus, where Mr. Lennox-Boyd arrived on Sunday evening, there was perhaps the hint of a move forward : someone will perhaps some day be able to write the story of Mr. Francis Noel-Baker's unremitting efforts as an intermediary, for they have been a remarkable exercise in private enterprise at the top level.

Elsewhere everything seemed to be very much at a full-stop. Mr. Selwyn Lloyd, in the debate in the House of Commons on

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El Dr. Sykes's unfolding of this tradition commands confidence because through copious and representative quotations he allows readers to weigh the evidence for themselves, because he is scrupulously careful to call attention to evidence that is inconclu- sive or discordant, and because he makes no attempt to disguise the fact that after the sixteenth century the Anglican estimate of the importance of episcopacy stiffened a great deal. In the light of the evidence set forth in this book the Anglican Communion will have to decide whether it is going to maintain its tradition of comprehensiveness, which was based on well-considered and historically defensible principles, or to retreat into the precarious but strangely seductive citadel of episcopalian sectarianism.

ALEC VIDLER

High Scholarship

YANKEES AND CREOLES. By Richard Pares. (Longmans, 25s.) RICHARD PARES is the only eighteenth-century historian who approaches Sir Lewis Namier in stature. He has produced a remarkable series of books of high scholarship. Written with a fine sense of the complexity of human activity, they have illuminated some of the more difficult aspects of eighteenth-century life. Only an historian with an uncommonly lucid mind could have dealt with such topics to the delight both of the general reader and Of the professional historian. Except in the title—an unnecessarily catchpenny touch—this book displays his powers at their best.