alarming. All, this time, has ended well ; not only did the Mahatma break his fast on the fourth day, but he did so as result of a letter from the Viceroy which had the effect...

week in Spain have finally destroyed the essential basis of Republican resistance to General Franco—the Frente Popular coalition. On Sunday night, after a revolt in Cartagena...

point at which the initiative must lie entirely with the Government ; it has reached the deadlock which was foreseen when it opened, and in the next few days the Government must...

diplomatic activity should be extremely welcome to the Western Powers. Count Ciano's visit to Poland has produced nothing more than a general promise of co-operation, and an...

of Finance, gave an extremely encouraging report on the results of his financial measures. They had, he said, already achieved more in a shorter time than M. Poincares measures...

had failed to form a new Government on the basis of a Catholic-Socialist coalition, the Belgian Parliament was dissolved on Monday ; no other solution has been found possible...

Papal Secretary of State to the Papacy itself is a notable testimony to Cardinal Pacelli's personal qualities. He was, moreover, elected on the first day of voting, and on the...

estimates in the House of Commons on Wednesday deserved the eulogies his predecessor, Mr. Duff Cooper, accorded to it. What the War Minister was able to present was not merely a...

prisons, in the House on Monday Sir Samuel Hoare said that on a site already secured two distinct institutions would be accom- modated—the women's prison to take the place of...

Vienna Legation has been sold to the Nazi Flying Corps for what, to the House, seemed a bargain price. The First Commissioner of Works, from the days when he was at the Air...

when he began his speech on the Army Estimates on Wednesday. The first part, which dealt with high strategy, he took at too fast a pace for the House fully to comprehend. The...

remarkable. Sir Kingsley Wood comes in for the loudest praise. There is no doubt that Mr. Lloyd George's esti- mate of him as the Government's ablest administrator is justified....

Government has been in power since 1931 and another ten years of office is by no means unlikely. What will be the character of Parliament in 1950? Members who were in the House...

preoccupations and commitments it is particularly gratifying to hear the Chancellor of the Ex- chequer express sympathy with those who are protesting against the effect of the...

of Trade laid on the vital needs of Empire shipping was timely and might with profit be followed up. Strategy is one, and a very urgent consideration. It is true, as Mr. Stanley...

T HE British Ambassador in Berlin, addressing the Cologne branch of the Deutsch-Englische Gesell- schaft on Saturday, quoted, as embodying sentiments particularly deserving of...

T HE fall in the February unemployment figures has, in many quarters, been greeted with signs of pro- found relief ; The Times, for instance, says that the fall has removed" the...

America on the very day of his election—not solely, I imagine, to avoid the embarrassment of congratulations. Canon Raven might have had an academic or an ecclesiasti- cal...

the head of his poem on the Paris Morgue. Well, we have just lost one, it seems, in Vienna. Not so very celebrated, perhaps; only the British Legation in the Metter- nichgasse...

because he held a strange, almost a unique, position in the political field. Since the War his health, already precarious, having further deteriorated af the result of his three...

T HE House of Commons, I regret to say, dislikes the Press. The question put on Monday by Mr. Morris, instigating the Prime Minister to "consider introducing legislation to...

a conver- sation with a well-informed, representative and non-political German—not an émigré. "Suppose," I asked him, "Mussolini levelled demands against France unsuccessfully,...

Harlequin 1, Tough Guy 2, Steel Blade 3." Evening Standard, March 2nd. Those don't seem quite the names I saw in other papers, but perhaps they are pseudonyms, though on that...

By WALTER DURANTY T HE paramount factor in determining Soviet foreign policy has, of course, been Munich and its conse- quences. I use the word Munich as a general term to...

By DR. TERRY THOMAS (Headmaster of Leeds Grammar School) O NE of the matters agitating the educational world is the question of school holidays—descriptively known as...

By GEORGE STEER T is the common view in this country, among the experts, that Ethiopia in its present disorder (admitted behind hands) will be a total loss to Italy in the...

By KENNETH NEEDHAM OME of you tell me I am worthless and don't want to work. Some of you imagine that I am an earnest young man, with face emaciated by strain and privation,...

By A BERLIN CORRESPONDENT 1 N Britain thousands of thinking people have long been shaking their heads over the unemployment problem ; abroad they have been doing the same, and...

By BERNARD DARWIN " y WAS wondering what the mouse-trap was for," said Alice. "It isn't very likely there would be any mice on the horse's back." "Not very likely, perhaps,"...

By JEAN-JACQUES BERNARD The registrar's clerk, assuming a genial manner, looked at his clients. These, a father supported by his two witnesses, were delighted to relax....

page thirteen. I turned over the pages hurriedly. There it was. Field-Marshal Goring was about to leave for Italy. " Goring's rustkuur," the paragraph was headed. I read the...

By HAROLD NICOLSON p OLITICIANS share with theatrical companies the fre- quent disadvantage of travelling on Sundays. Few experiences are more dispiriting. So potent is the...

in other countries. I replied that I knew nothing whatsoever about Monsieur Sudan, but that I hoped that the Belgian Ministerial crisis would be settled without an elec- tion....

he explained, no free economy could hope to resist the closed discipline of the totalitarians. The barter system, for instance: did I not regard the barter system as invincible?...

answered ; "which apportions the world between Germany, Italy and Japan." I had heard the same thing that morning from a more authoritative source. I looked at him with...

JUGOSLAVIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS By A DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENT ON February 4th, Milan Stoyadinovitch, Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Jugoslavia was compelled to resign....

THE THEATRE "The Antigone of Sophoetes." At the Arts Theatre, Cambridge. THE Antigone is a magnificent play and one of the few Greek plays in which the conflict is immediately...

"The Son of Frankenstein." At the Leicester Square.—" Le Joueur d'Echecs." At the Berkeley. "Europe In Review." At the Tatler. Firms which set out to be frightening and...

ID'un correspondant parisieni IL s'est fonde recemment A Paris un Centre d'Etudes des Problems Humains. Ce titre indique un programme aussi vaste qu'il soil possible—et sans...

"Der Dreigroschenkavalier " No one can complain of a lack of boldness in the Sadler's Wells management when they offer their audience within the space of a few weeks...

out above th rest. Last year brought a miraculous spring for violets all colours. This year snowdrops have undoubtedly bee' finer than for some years past. Beginning late, they...

as the hop, and in March that assistance can be seen taking its first form in the astonishing straw-coloured pattern of new strings that shines out from behind the twenty-foot...

of increasing im- portance, especially in defence schemes, we imported 50,000 tons last year. This represents something like 25,000 acres of growing flax and, at the 1939...

The Wild Nt. ;:reun Daphne Mezereum, reputed to love chalk but always seen at its best, to my mind, on the clay of the Midlands, has long been listed as a wild plant. Its...

tirea of talking. The deteriora- tion of pastures and damage to afforestation schemes are only two of the many troubles for which the rabbit is re- sponsible in this country....

to return, year after year, to the same subject, but it must now be three or four years since we were promised action against the rabbit pest, and two years since we were told...

OR 1 never doubted that my letter would lead to angry cries from your readers. Uninnunately, reasons of space forbid my answering every argument in the letters you pub- lished,...

[Correspondents are requested to keep their letters as brief as is reasonably possible. Signed letters are given a preference over those bearing a pseudonym, and the latter must...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—Representatives of the various political parties in this country, including the Prime Minister, have recently ex- pressed their...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR, —The paragraph in your issue of Friday last seems hardly to appreciate the inconvenience, if not injustice, occa- sioned by the recent...

[To the Editor of TIM SPECTATOR] SIR,—TO us in this distressed area of South Wales, Mr. Oake- shott's article in your last week's issue, as well as the Prime Minister's recent...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] Sta,—Referring to my recent article, "British and German Air-Power," Mr. Hugh Ledward asserts that I am misinformed regarding the inferior...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] should be very sorry to think that Mr. Derek Verschoyle's unsympathetic review of Mr. Priestley's latest play represents the opinion of those...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—The following is an extract from an official letter issued by the Board of Education on December 30th, 1938: "I am directed to state that...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—I hope you will permit me to remark on certain state- ments in the review of The Navy From Within (The Spectator, February 24th). It...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—The Cynophiles have entirely failed to answer Mr. Vulliamy's letter urging the elimination of the domestic dog. There has been merely a...

me. My own letter was intended as irony, and was surely so absurd that few could have interpreted it any other way. I sincerely hope so. I am much befriended by, as well as...

all things and beings only a certain quantity is wanted. This applies to dogs as well as to human beings, whatever their race or quality. If one had to meet at every street...

The Pre-War Lloyd George U. A. Spender) • 411 Meet the Prisoner (Col. G. D. Turner) ... ••• 4 1 4 Union Now (Wilson Harris) . . • 412 Poems from the Irish (Sean O'Faolain)...

los. 6d.) IT is a strange thing that no one between Alexander Hamilton (1787) and Mr. Clarence Streit (1939) should have understood how the relations of States need to be...

The Lawless Roads. By Graham Greene. (Longmans. los. 6d.) I FIND it impossible to write of The Lawless Roads in any but personal terms, for I have been awaiting its publication...

munich and the Dictators. By R. W. Seton-Watson. (Methuen. 5s.) Jr is not agreeable to be reminded of the humiliations of last autumn, yet there is so much matter of first-rate...

Meet the Prisoner. By John A. F. Watson. (Cape. 8s. 6d.) EVEN such admirable articles on our prisons as have appeared in The Spectator do not dispel altogether the uneasiness...

Alexandria : a History and a Guide. By E. M. Forster. (Whitehead Morris. 7s. 6d.) IF our civilisation ever collapses, which seems most unlikely, and historians of the future...

"INSTEAD of springing from a philosophy," says Mr. O'Connor, in his brief introduction to the poems in The Fountain of Magic, " this poetry springs from a situation; it is...

By FORREST REID On The Night of the Fire. By F. L. Green. (Michael Joseph. 78. 6d.) Portrait of a Man. By F. W. Lister. (Muller. 7s. 6d.) St. Michael Puts His Foot Down. By...

A People's Car Very enviable publicity has been given to the German Vo_kswagen which Herr Hitler has ordered for his obedient followers. New models of old-established makes...

THIS is Recovery with a capital R in the stock markets. A week ago I was just sufficiently impressed by the political signs and portents—and their economic implications—to give...

Sir William Firth, the chairman of Richard Thomas an3 Company, the sheet steel and tinplate makers, seems to ha‘ done some really good business in Canada and the Unite.! States....

In the light of the gross traffic receipts to date it is ad- mittedly difficult to get very enthusiastic about home railway prospects. All four companies have already fallen...

Like home-railway stocks motor shares have moved up quite sharply during the past fortnight, but I would advise holders not to sell. Here again it is a case of recovery round...

UNITED KINGDOM PROVIDENT INSTITUTION Si V: ERNEST BENN O N THE N EWSPAPER MENACE THE 98th annual general meeting of the members of the United Kingdom Temperance and General...

be published of Allen West and Co., the switch-gear and electric-control gear manufacturers. For the year ended January 31st, 1938, this company's net profit rose sharply from...

Fntsr news of the fortunes of the great Lever Brothers and Unilever combine during 1938 comes from the group of retail provision companies which are linked to it through Allied...

LONDON BRICK COMPANY RECORD PRODUCTION BOARD'S POLICY OF NATIONAL DISTRIBUTION THE annual general meeting of the London Brick Company, Limited, was held on March 7th at the...

The Refuge Assurance Company is among those under- takings which specialise in both Industrial and Ordinary life assurance, and the chairman, Mr. J. Wilcock Holgate, re- ported...

making their appearance. National Gold Share Certificates is being launched by National Fixed Investment Trust. In its original form the unit which is divided into 4,800...

Hopes of sustained market recovery are based largely on the thesis that very substantial funds were withheld from in- vestment during the recession, and may be invested as con-...

not of the type which insph unanimity, but they do make people think. It is therefore pleasure each year, as the annual meeting of the United King- dom Provident Institution...

sales it was perhaps natural that Sir P. Malcolm Stewart, the chairman of the London Brick Company, should have warned stockholders not to pitch their hopes for 1939 too high....

[A prize of a Book Token for one guinea will be given to the sender of the first correct solution of this week's crossword puzzle to be opened. Envelopes should be marked...

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