HE most natural phrase with which to speed the Queen, when she left on her journey round the world last November was simply—" Enjoy yourself." It has most readily sprung to mind...

1954 PRICE 7d.

Last Saturday evening, the Geneva conference began to discuss Indo-China, twenty-four hours after the fall of Dien Bien Phu. Thus what was presumably conceived at Berlin as an...

After an interval of a few months the chronic problem of Trieste has been prematurely pushed back into the news. President Tito, by making public the scheme which Yugoslavia has...

Mr. Butler's view of the circumstances in which, and the stages through which, sterling and the Deutschmark should become convertible. That is to say, the Germans, who have...

As the Spectator goes to press, M. Laniel faces his second ote of confidence in a week. On this occasion, as on the pre- ious one, he has chosen this device in order to postpone...

superior, also ordered out of Britain. To be caught is bad; to be caught as they were caught is outrageous. As espionage goes, their activities seem to have been pretty small...

I T is pleasant to think that the relative benevolence of members on both sides of the House of Commons this week has been a fruit of the sun. Nothing seemed more appropriate...

Health Service the Labour Party did not run quite true to form. Its usual approach has been to ignore economic realities and concentrate on the political aspect of the service,...

T HE immediate task for the Western Powers is to salvage something from the wreck in South-East Asia. It would be inconsistent not to make the attempt, since the whole of...

The Soviet Government, though dedicated by its dogmas to promoting discord between nations, races and classes, likes to have, as it were, a small saving bet on the horse of...

The principal subjects announced for presentation to th annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Oxford next September include the relationshi...

OU can't organise friendship. Either it happens or it doesn't." So wrote one of the 5,000 American servicemen to whom the Daily Mirror circulated a searching questionnaire about...

, Mr. Bevan's decision not to proceed with an appeal against h is conviction at Beaconsfield on two motoring charges makes It possible to comment in public on a feature of the...

George Hirst had an extraordinary sweetness of character, and at Eton, a place not much given to idolatry, he was dearly loved and deeply respected. Not many cricket-coaches...

By D. R. GILLIE Paris. T HE defenders of Dien Bien Phu are dead, wrote the Figaro the day after that improvised fortress had fallen, " because we did not know how to conduct...

ri y ERNST FRIEDLAENDER T HE legal status of both parts of Germany, of the Federal Republic west of the Elbe and of the so-called German Democratic Republic east of the Elbe, is...

Johannesburg pushed his prize away from him. The Government may be seeking friction with Britain as grist to the republican mill but once South Africa became a republic her...

By BERNARD FERGUSSON I N January, 1939, as an instructor at Sandhurst, I took twenty gentlemen-cadets for a fortnight's attachment to the 6th Battalion of the Chasseurs Alpins...

A MAN, a coming man, whose wife is dying of an incurable disease, decides to help her to die. A mercy killing, in fact. But can he be sure that it is only that ? Not when he...

Go, Man, Go. (London Pavilion.)— Carnival Story. (Leicester Square.)— The Living Desert. (Studio One.) A SERIOUS fault in either the sound-track or the amplifying system at the...

Picasso and Others THERE is new evidence of Picasso's astonish- ing legerdemain at the Lefevre Gallery. The last exhibition of his work there was impres- sive enough, gathering...

"NEO-REALISM is dead!" The glum, bom- bastic cry echoed from Italian critics at the end of De Sica's Miracolo a Milano. Always, in his previous films, hope and humanity had...

A MARKED feature of musical life in the middle of the twentieth century is the giving of practical expression to the findings of in- satiable scholarship. An apparently n-...

to leave the country. This rough treatment did not necessarily condemn them to the dole, as you implied. Thanks to their own efforts, and to the exceedingly friendly and...

SIR,—In your issue of May 7th Dr. Toulmin states that the political views of scientists " tend to be uninformed and naive, when not actually Communist." If he will read the list...

White, Protestants and Parties,' and was particularly glad to note that—in his view—Protestants in Eire are realising, in a greater degree than hitherto, their respon- sibility...

ROAD ACCIDENTS have been away for a few weeks ih countries where the motorist is treated as a normal human being, but I knew my few words in defence of the British motorist...

driving test, I have read your correspondence upon the magistrate and the motorist with great interest. My know- ledge of the Highway Code still fresh in my mind makes me more...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT

SIR,--There has recently been shown it) Birmingham a play entitled The Boss. prey duced and played by the adherents to Moral Re-Armament, This play, one was told on the...

SIR,—In Our Sussex Parish, written by Thomas Geering, of Hailsham, in 1844, there is an amusing reference to the ' Tower Music' of his youth (he was born in 1814): "On a summer...

organising, through the undersigned sub- committee, a limited survey of the problem of male prostitution in London, with special regard to importuning. It is proposed also to...

Third Programme broadcast of Dallapiccola's Prigioniero, errs in attributing La Torture par Esperance to Barbey d'Aurevilly. The author of that famot..z:, short story was the...

FRANK MA( -BANS

SIR,—The reference to Swift's obsession of cleanliness in Mr. Taplin's review of Mr. Middleton Murry's Jonathan Swift (Spectator, April 23rd) recalls to me a story which I would...

SIR,-1 feel that Sir Compton Mackenzie is to he congratulated for his vigorous defence of the memory of Norman Douglas, Reggie Turner, and Pino Orioli. During the six years...

My friend M. was most anxious to fish, but it was a chilly evening and my usual enthusiasm was missing. At length I agreed to visit the stream we had been talking about, a...

SPECTATOR COMPETITION No. 219 Report by W. May-Byron Work is soon to begin on the restoration of the Albert Memorial. Temperance has a cracked head, Fortitude is broken and...

our cities, competitors are invited (Pr M., usual prize of £5) to compose a street cry fop the vendor of one of the following comma. dities : a detergent, a home perm, a packet...

impudent fellow who is wilfully destruc- tive—tearing leaves from the pear blossoms for the purpose of watching them drift away on the breeze—the hedge sparrow is a modest...

In addition to lime sulphur spraying which can be carried out until the fall of the apple or pear blossom, it is advisable to counteract sawfly with a nicotine, derris or...

A ',Erma from the West Indies reminds me of my offer to introduce the owner of a mongoose to a correspondent troubled by grey squirrels. The writer feared that I was proposing...

Compton Mackenzie T HE Report of the Commission of Enquiry into Crofting Conditions published by Her Majesty's Stationery Office makes good reading for two reasons. One is the...

George Hirst By J. P. W, MALLALIEU N September 7th, 1921, at Scarborough, I saw Georg° Herbert Hirst play what I believe was his last innings, in first - class cricket. It was...

Nye is a left-wing politician; " Keep to the left ! " is his position. But on a certain April night: He swerved and zig-zagged to the right; And at the Beaconsfield approach,...

The Mile of the Century 11 Y DUDLEY REEVES (Pembroke College, Oxford) OW admirably was the sang-froid of the average Englishman expressed on May 6th. How impeccably calm we all...

The Anarchist By MICHAEL OAKESHOTT HERE was something endearing about the bearded bomb-throwers of the past : they were supreme amateurs. Th enjoying an activity (mostly...

Wellington and His Army. By Godfrey Davies. (Blackwell. 18s.) Napoleon and the Awakening of Europe. By F. M. H. Markham , (English Universities Press. 7s. 6d.) THE characters of...

The Royal Society of Arts, 1754-1954. By Derek Hudson and K. W. Luckhurst. (John Murray. 30s.) THE Industrial Revolution, whose waves now lap the coasts of every continent,...

Archaeology from the Earth. By Sir Mortimer Wheeler. (O.U.P. 25s.) Slit MORTIMER WHEELER began excavating, as a young research 8 ,..tudent, at Wroxeter, in 1913: and he has...

Tills review is being written (and really it should be written by a Frenchman) at a time when the whole world is watching the grandeur and miseries of Dien Bien Phu, which seems...

Catherine the Great and Other Studies. By G. P. Gooch. (Long- mans. 21s.) ,,,MR. GoocH is one of the most considerable of modern historians. when compared with his more massive...

The Legal Mind. By Gerald Abrahams. (H.F.L. 18s.) ' LEGAL, literature intended for lay consumption tends on the whole to be singularly unenticing. There are, of course,...

The Spanish Temper. By V. S. Pritchett. (Chatto and Windt's. 15s.) TT is not so much Africa that starts at the Pyrenees, for Mr. Pritchett, as Europe that abruptly stops there....

The New Men. By C. P. Snow. (Macmillan. 12s. 6d.) Heyday. By W. P. Spackman. (Frederick Muller. 10s. 6d.) MR. SNOW'S novel-sequence begins to shape impressively. The outline we...

THIS week, in spite of a subdued gilt-edged market, industrial equity shares again. advanced on a broad front and the Financial Times index touched a new peak for this bull...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT THE Information Office of the OEEC sends Pe from Paris a report of the economic experts' working party which met during the week of April 26th under the...

13 IS P1 RtImmanonn ommmn PI DI In IQ Fl PI E mmmnm mmmnmnmilm ri vi n mon win o arm irontaimm n n 113 innogn i q NnmmR% mmummnmmm v.:mncim The winners of Spectator...

Two prizes are awarded each week- a copy of the De Luxe edition of Chambers's Ts entleth Cen- tury Dictionary and a book token for one guinea. These will be awarded to the...