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THE
The SpectatorSPECTATOR ESTABLISHED 1828 - NUMBER 6768 - FRIDAY, MARCH 14, 1958 - PRICE NINEPENCE
BOMB AND BALLOT
The SpectatorT HE debates on the Defence Estimates used to fall into a predictable pattern. The Secretary of State for Air would tell of the wonders. to be expected of Hunters, Javelins, and...
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On Presidential Disability
The SpectatorBy RICHARD H. ROVERE New York WE are having a fine law- yers' wrangle over what is to happen if the President, while living and in office, is temporarily or perma- nently...
Tax Reform
The SpectatorT HE Bow Group have produced an excellent short pamphlet on taxation.* It is readable, comprehensive, and closely argued. The authors have wisely assumed that the Government...
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Suicide and the Law
The SpectatorBy KENNETH ROBINSON, MP T HERE is a touch of irony about the fact that, at a time when our chief preoccupation is the chances of mass-suicide, the law concerning individual...
Westminster Commentary
The SpectatorBy HENRY KERBY* IT is a sad truth that millions of young Russians have grown VA/ .1,477////17//01001/// 1 /// / // , up without the means to judge whether their way of life is...
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I SEE THAT THE Secretary of State for War feels
The Spectatorthat battle dress, though it has served its pur- pose in time of war, is not enough; it is time the soldier had something more elegant to wear. Mr. Soames thinks that a smart...
SIR WILLIAM HALEY had some salutary warnings to give in
The Spectatorhis Haldane Memorial Lecture on The Formation of Public Opinion,' particularly about the growing tendency to prevent the newspapers from expressing their opinions not by the old...
WAITING FOR A sus this week, 1 tried to forget
The Spectatorthe north wind which has been torturing the denizens of the Tottenham Court Road by ab- sorption in the New Yorker's advertisement pages. One of them ran : How to see a...
A Spectator's Notebook
The SpectatorLOYALTY to his colleagues is one of the Prime Minister's virtues; but it is one he should indulge more mod- erately, or it may end by making him look foolish. When asked in the...
Taper is on holiday.
The SpectatorWestminster Commentary next week will be by JO GRIMOND, MP Leader of the Liberal Party
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Redressing the Balance
The SpectatorBy GEOFFREY BARRACLOUGH N or a Hope in Hell'! Thus the special H-bomb number of Isis a couple of weeks ago. It was only echoing, in effect, Mr. Sandys's admission in 1957 that...
1 1 is REMARKABLE how little fuss there has been over
The SpectatorMr. J. B. Priestley's television play Dooms- day for Dyson, which Granada put on last Monday. Even five years ago it would surely have been rejected out of hand, with its...
WHEN A MAN burst into Clarence House last week, shouting
The Spectatorabuse of Tories and Roman Catholics, he was pursued by the sentries who were on duty at the time. I am indebted to a correspondent for what he considers the week's most...
IT is SATISFACTORY to hear that the Government intends to
The Spectatorimplement most of the recommenda- tions of the Royal Commission on Mental Illness. The number of such reports which are shelved is notoriously high; often because their...
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2E ht 'pectator
The SpectatorMARCH 16, 1833 THE bribed electors of Liverpool and Stafford are threatened with exposure at least : there is good ground to hope that disfranchisement also will follow. . . ....
John Bull's Schooldays
The SpectatorDead From the Waist Down DEAR MR. ATKINS, By JOHN BETJEMAN I am glad to have this opportunity, after about forty years of nursing a grievance, to tell the public how deeply I...
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War of Nerves
The SpectatorBy CHARLES LISTER ENJOYED teaching Sudanese boys, and it was with considerable regret that I presented my letter of resignation after having served only eight Months of my...
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Webster's World
The SpectatorBy STRIX r iri" EN'SING-TON (ken-sing-tim). Subdivision (est. 1_1 pop. 1,700) of town of BERLIN.' Read on, and you will learn that this particular Berlin is in Connecticut, and...
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Pleasing the Provinces
The SpectatorBy COLIN MASON THE notion of the dissolution of the Sadler's Wells Opera Company is so fantastic that it is impossible to take it in or believe in it. This is no doubt why...
Television
The SpectatorFifteen-Second Plays By JOHN BRAINE The Bell, as any member of my age-group will know, was once Ireland's answer to Horizon. Rather fewer Dubliners would know of its existence...
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Theatre
The SpectatorMethod Schools WARDLE By IRVING He sits down modestly and touches his splayed fingers together. He looks rather like a television newscaster. 'Oh what a mane and peasant slave...
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Cinema
The SpectatorCardboard Pastoral By ISABEL QUIGLY The Seventh Seal. (Academy.) 'COLD, spacious, severe, pale, and remote . . . a vision of huge clear spaces hanging above the Atlantic in the...
April-Fool Days
The SpectatorThe Tenth Chance. By Stuart Holroyd. (Royal Court.)—School. (Princes.) `Ituriatsri."Get out of this theatre.' We'll stamp you out, you wait.' A row like this is just what I've...
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Consuming Interest
The SpectatorIce 'Cream' By LESLIE ADRIAN N Panorama the other night they had an ice- cream tasting session. A housewife, a school- boy, a gourmet, and Richard Dimbleby tasted three types...
374 Art
The SpectatorRomantic Landscapes OF all the varieties of free abstract art so much a la mode the one which seems to suit English painters the best derives from some measure of visual...
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SIR,—As a writer of 'pop' fiction and as an avid
The Spectatorreader of women's magazines, I should like to reply to Lois Mitchison's question as to where their appeal lies. I am sure it is because all women worthy of the name are...
'POP' FICTION
The SpectatorSIR,—It is perhaps scarcely worth while to refute Miss Mitchison's very bold assertion that 'almost all women,' i.e., almost half the human race, enjoy that peculiar form of...
Letters to the Editor
The SpectatorMental Health Dr. Donald Mel. Johnson. MP Tarry or Burn Sir Stephen King-Hall, Edward Bond `Pop' Fiction Rose Macaulay, J. W. Drawbell, The Hon. Mrs. Esson-Scott Tenants and...
SIR,—I suppose what Lois Mitchison is saying in her discerning
The Spectatorletter regarding Woman's Own is that the Colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady are sisters under the skin. 'Are social and educational differences Jess important for women than for...
TARRY OR BURN
The SpectatorSIR,—I am much obliged to you for your reference under Tarry or Burn (March 7) to what you call the 'King-Hall line,' but still more grateful that the Spectator alone amongst...
SIR,—Discussion of the banning of nuclear weapons is unrealistic unless
The Spectatorit faces the problem of what happens after the banning of these weapons. The nuclear bomb is the ultitrwte weapon. This means that if an aggressor attacks the possessor of...
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Sta,—Mr. Raven states that he is 'a perfectly loyal pagan.'
The SpectatorThe Concise Oxford Dictionary defines pagan as 'heathen; unenlightened person'; heathen as `neither Christian, Jewish nor Mohamedan' and 'un- enlightened person.' Is Mr. Raven...
SAKIET
The SpectatorSIR,—As an old French subscriber of the Spectator (more than fifteen years) I wish to express my pro- found indignation at the title of the unsigned leading article in your...
S1R,—Fr. Leetham speaks of 'the sneers' that are directed against
The Spectatorthe Catholic Church as the normal stock in trade' of the Spectator. I have been a regular reader of the Spectator• for some years and cannot recollect any occasion when you have...
SIR.—Mr. Arden's article (February 28) makes Rus- sian tourism seem
The Spectatora vigorous business. I think it gives a wrong impression due to a mistranslation. When I was in Moscow for the Youth Festival last summer I took the chance of going to a tourist...
SIR,—Mr. Raven, who dislikes bigotry, says, 'I hold that all
The Spectatorpublic schools whatever, as a result of the 'nature of adolescent boys, . . . are nine-tenths of the day filthy.' Perhaps the clue to this judgment is found in his confession...
SIR,—Advertising has indeed a legitimate and useful function to serve
The Spectatorin free-enterprise economy. It Is open to doubt, though, whether Mr. Day's straining of advertising raison d'etre to justify operations of the present detergent and soap powders...
THE DAY THE LAMA CAME TO TEA
The SpectatorSta,—As Mr. John Irwin sticks to his statements, the only possible conclusion seems to be that the author of The Third Eye removed his beard on the day of his visit,...
TENANTS AND LEASES SIR,—I suggest that one wrong conclusion was
The Spectatordrawn in your editorial on the Rent Act last week. As you imply, a desired effect of the Act is the creation of a free market in houses and flats to let, but the lack of a pool...
THE REASON WHY
The SpectatorSnt,—The one overwhelming reason why so many people cannot bring themselves to vote Conservative is contained in the following extract from Hansard: 'Taking the internal...
SIR.—Mr. Simon Raven assures us that he is 'a per-
The Spectatorfectly loyal Pagan,' but writes with a rather juvenile and cocksure knowingness which is far from attrac- tive in itself, and which most decent pagans of my acquaintance would...
RUSKIN AND NATURE SIR,—In his review of The Diaries of
The SpectatorJohn Ruskin, Mr. Peter Quennell quotes a description of seagulls in Venice quartering the canal (obviously looking for floating garbage). and 'flapping their wings slowly like...
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BOOKS
The SpectatorThe End of War ? B 5 D. W. BROGAN W HEN in Washington, 1 dine or lunch fairly often (as a guest) in the Army and Navy Club and, while waiting for my host, I have again and...
THE supernatural experience shared by Miss Moberly and Miss Jourdain
The Spectatorin the Trianon grounds in 1901 has now acquired a fair literature. A further shot—interesting but unlikely to win over the sceptics—at explaining the mystery in psychical terms...
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Naval Occasions
The SpectatorVictory at Sea, 1939-1945. By Lieutenant-Corn- mander P. K. Kemp. (Muller, 30s.) 'hilts btiok.covers in one volume the whole story of the war at sea during the Second World War....
More on Jazz
The SpectatorThe Story of Jazz. By Marshall W. Stearns. (Sidgwick and Jackson, 30s.) YET another Jazz book : and yet another g uided tour, one foreSees, among the African origins, the Blues...
They Wish Me Dead
The Spectator(Edith Cavell. By A. A. Hoehling. (Cassell, 15s.) MR. HOEHLING'S prologue promises new light on a fading legend. 'There was never a hint, even by the Kaiser's prosecutors, that...
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Between Two Englands
The SpectatorAt Home: Memoirs. By William Plomer. (Jona- than Cape, 16s.) WHEN he was in his middle twenties, and the century nudging its thirties, William Plomer left Japan and began the...
New Novels
The SpectatorThe Transgressor. By Julian Green. (Heinemann, 15s.) Home From the Hill. By William Humphrey. (Chatto and Windus, 16s.) The Mark of the Warrior. By Paul Scott. (Eyre and...
The Boot on the Other Foot
The SpectatorONE of my earliest memories is of being con- fronted, in a roomful of unnaturally quiet good children, with what I recognised as the uppers of a boot without a sole; and of the...
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Room to Swing. By Ed Lacy. (Boardman, 10s. 6d.) The
The Spectatorprivate eye , is a Negro, patronised by the self-conscious liberals of Manhattan, kicked around when he reaches the Kentucky, border, and framed for a murder into the bargain.'...
The Black Mirror. By Ben Benson. (Collins, 10s. 6d.) A
The Spectatorflood and the State police converge on small, corrupt New England gambling town. Quite brilliantly brisk account of how a town can go rotten-and how exciting the cleaning-up.
The Masculine Intelligence
The SpectatorPeninsula. Edited by Charles Causley. (Mac- donald, 10s. 6d.) THE deaths of poets seldom seem to inspire even good fellow-poets to more than tactful pastiche at best, or...
The Double Frame. By Craig Rice. (Hammond, 10s. 6d.) Breezy
The Spectatorfrivolity in which Chicago's Mr. Crook-John J. Malone, the lawyer who takes his breakfast eggs in gin-and assorted Runyonesque evildoers sort out a slight case of murder and the...
It's a Crime
The SpectatorMarion. By John Bingham. (Gollancz, 12s. 6d.)' Sadistic killer of nice young women crosses path of another man's unfaithful wife. London and Sussex setting; matter-of-fact in...
Death Against the Clock. By Anthony Gilbert. (Collins, 10s. 6d.)
The SpectatorMr. Crook, a shady lawyer, is just in time with his proof that it was not the young spiv under sentence of death who had done in the old lady : he has to move fast to see that...
Run for Cover. By John Welcome. (Faber, 12s. 6d.) Fast
The Spectatorcars, gun-play, and canasta on the. Cote d'Azur, background for the better-bred British four-letter men, where a gentleman-rider tangles with a very upper-middle-class renegade....
Arbiter Nugarum
The SpectatorSUPPOSEDLY a volume of reminiscence, this little book is in fact a series of homilies based on Mr. Harding's experience of various occupations- Occupations which include...
Uncommon Cold. By E. H. Clements. (Hodder and Stoughton, 12s.
The Spectator6d.) Preposterous plot about Soviet agents let loose in English seaside town is a disappointment from the talented author of Chairlift, but admirers will salvage some agree-...
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Dead or Alive
The SpectatorA Victorian Eminence: The Life and Works of Henry Thomas Buckle. By Giles St. Aubyn. (Barrie, 25s.) WHO today has read Buckle's History of Civiliza- tion in England? Its...
AT 17s. 6d. Rathbone Books have brought out a number
The Spectatorof magnificent descriptive books, simpli- fied and illustrated accounts of subjects like Medicine, Power and Food, by such well-known authors as Ritchie Calder, Lancelot Hogben...
SOLUTION OF 981 ACROSS.-1 Flying column. 9 Acanthous. 10 Liner.
The Spectator11 Peseta. 12 Mess-mate. 13 Roll-on. 15 Pinfolds. 18 Pampered. 19 Orford. 21 Cassocks. 23 Cantab. 26 Loire. 27 Atavistic. 28 Adhesive tape. DOWN.-1 Flapper. 2 Years. 3 Not at...
SPECTATOR CROSSWORD No. 983
The SpectatorACROSS 1 Snub for the manicurist about polish? (6) 4 Remove from the board in a drag (8). 9 Twice 28 (6). 10 Maybe he won't be one when he's done some space-travel! (8) 12 Puss...
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Chess
The SpectatorBy PHILIDOR No. 144. 0. STOCCHI (1st Prize, Union of French Problemists Comp., 1955) BLACK 00 men) WHITE (9 men) WHITE to play and mate in two moves: solution next week....
The usual prize of six guineas is offered for an
The Spectatoracrostio poem with the initial lights forming the word 'Easter' and the end lights 'Sunday.' Entriei, addressed 'Spectator Competition No. 422,' 99 Gower Street, London, WC],...
Doing It Yourself
The SpectatorThe usual prize was offered for either a 'Do It Yourself calypso or a work song for 'Do It Your- self' husbands and wives. If any conclusion is to be drawn from the quantity...
Good Heavens !
The SpectatorCompetitors were invited to submit the ideas of Heaven entertained by any three of the following: charwoman, lawyer; dock labourer, shop steward, burglar, journalist, policeman...
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TAXATION AND SAVINGS
The SpectatorBy NICHOLAS DAVENPORT IN a speech recently—whether post- / prandial or not I cannot remember —the Governor of the Bank kindly informed us that the battle against in- flation...
COMPANY NOTES
The SpectatorBy CUSTOS THE end of the Stock Exchange account on Tuesday and the worsen- ing 'depression' news from America brought the market recovery to a mere temporary halt. With over...
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A Doctor's Journal
The SpectatorTranquillisers KITING in a recent issue of the New York State Journal of Medicine, Dr. J. N. Muller remarked that if present-day estimates are cor- rect, a quarter of a...