1 JULY 1949

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INDEX FROM JULY Itt TO DECEMBER 30th, 1949, INCLUSIVE.

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NEWS OF THE WEEK A GRIcuuruRE : Crisis in Minis- " try ?, 1:i1 ; report on agricultural services .. 21+3 Albania : Offences. 342 ; weakness.. 406 Arabs : Israeli concession on...

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THE SECOND DOLLAR CRISIS

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Any compromise whatever would clearly be in some degree painful to Great Britain. We are already required to grant credits, or, to use the official phrase, " drawing rights " to...

The N.U.R. versus the People

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The only redeeming feature of the national go-slow strike which has been threatened by the National Union of Railwaymen for midnight on Sunday is that it will confront the...

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Business in Buenos Aires

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When the five-year trade agreement between Britain and Argentina was at last signed in Buenos Aires on Monday President Perrin described it as a purely commercial understanding....

The Canadian Landslide

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From the British point of view the most welcome single feature of the sweeping Liberal victory in the Canadian Parliamentary election was the emphatic confirmation in power of...

Advance in the Colonies

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There is always a danger that in the colonies political development may outstrip economic and social progress. The Secretary of State's annual report on the colonies quotes with...

The Belgian Elections

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Of the 5,600,000 Belgians whose duty it was to vote at last Sun- day's General Election (the franchise being obligatory), more than half were women who were exercising this duty...

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Civil Servants and Politics

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In the matter of the participation of civil servants in party politics it is literally, in the view of the committee which has reported on the subject this week, a question of...

AT WESTMINSTER

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S HIRTSLEEVES, a sprinkling of light-coloured tropical suits,' a crowded terrace from which feminine voices drifted up to the Library until past midnight, armchairs filled in...

Steel Battle Joined

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Eight amendments to the Steel Bill carried against the Government in the House of Lords give a sufficiently clear start to the central phase of the battle over this crucial...

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VERDICT ON THE PRESS

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S PEAKING in Oklahoma on Tuesday the Attorney-General, Sir Hartley Shawcross, told his American audience that " we in Britain have an active and vigorous Press, which cannot be...

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The Minister of Health is an ill-starred man. Fate has

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ordained that he shall never mount a public platform without doing himself moral and material damage before he gets off it. Take his observa- tion last Saturday about Lord...

A sound comment on my observations last week on the

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sweet shortage reaches me from a source that commands respect: " If only the smokers would stop eating sweets and the sweet-lovers would stop smoking, I imagine we might all be...

On a case which, having worked its way from a

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Judge in Chambers to the Court of Appeal, may yet move on to the House of Lords • anything like extensive comment would be improper. But the issues raised in the case Krajina...

A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

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T HERE is a good deal moving or pending in the newspaper world, apart from the issue of the report of the Royal Commission on the Press. The report itself, indeed, is the...

When the restoration of the well-known Milton window at St.

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Margaret's, Westminster, is celebrated on Monday (at 6 p.m., in case any reader of this column thinks of going) one of the anthems to be rendered will be Parry's "Blest Pair of...

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HIS FINEST HOUR

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By WILSON HARRIS T O describe Mr. Churchill's second volume* as monumental is to state the incontestable in the form of a commonplace. How could it be anything but monumental ?...

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BONAMPAK

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By E. F. PODACH T HAT paintings should have survived on the walls of Maya; temples in the damp heat of central American jungles, that these paintings should show such a range...

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THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE

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By DAME UNA POPE-HENNESSY N OAH WEBSTER, the famous lexicographer, who published his American Speller in 1823, was visited shortly afterwards by an English traveller, Captain...

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MIME AND PANTOMIME

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By NIGEL TANGYE A Tthe far end of a narrow alley off the Boulevard du Mont- parnasse is the miniature Theatre de Poche. Its three or four dozen hard polished chairs rest...

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THE MINERS MARCH

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By MAURICE WEBB M.P. I RESPECTFULLY make Mr. Gerald Barry a suggestion for his Festival of Britain in 1951. He must try to include a miners' march—with their banners, brass...

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Undergraduate Page

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HONGKONG REMEMBERED By W. J. URMSON (Magdalen College, Oxford) j UST before dawn a breeze begins to blow. Then, as the sun climbs, the massive bastions of the mountains begin...

THE SPECTATOR OF JUNE 30th, 1849

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The Communists of Europe may be divided into three classes. One class consists of Owcnitcs, Fourierites, St. Simonians, and other sects each with its system cut and dried ; the...

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MARGINAL COMMENT

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By HAROLD NICOLSON B RITISH journalism has adopted many successive fads and fashions since the now distant day when Alfred Harmsworth realised that popular education had...

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"Daybreak in Urn." (New Gallery and Tivoli.) THIS short documentary

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about the building of a maternity home in a Nigerian village will probably do more than all the other activities of "Colonial Month" put together to give people in this country...

THE CINEMA

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" The Set-Up." (Plaza.)—" Flamingo Road." (Warner Theatre.) —"Impact." (London Pavilion.) Too late to be noticed last week when, alongside Whisky Galore and Kind Hearts and...

BALLET

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THE Grand Ballet de Monte Carlo, which is to be in possession at Covent Garden for the whole of July, has substantially the same team of soloists as it brought to London last...

CONTEMPORARY ARTS

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THE THEATRE " The Male Animal." By James Thurber and Elliott Nugent. (New.) THE war between the sexes has been going on for some considerable time now, but it has attracted few...

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ART

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IT is ten years since Mark Gertler's unhappy death, and a memorial exhibition has been arranged—how appropriately—at the White- chapel Art Gallery. It may be that fresh...

RECENT RECORDS

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CHAMBER music, which has been neglected by the gramophone companies lately, comes into its own in this selection. Haydn's seven slow movements for string quartet, based on the...

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TREE-FELLING IN GERMANY

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SIR,—May I raise a humble voice in defence of the German forests and in protest against the present policy of dealing with the forestry resources of Trizonia ? In the last few...

ORTHODOX JEWS IN PALESTINE

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SM.—There has been in recent years a severe divergence between the average British and the average American view on Palestine. The letter of Mr. Jacob Heller from Boston,...

THE TIPPING EVIL

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StR,—Janus rightly condemns " the tipping evil." There must be many like myself who find tipping both irksome and embarrassing (and is it not so for the recipient as well as the...

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

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LIFE IN ISRAEL should like to make a few observations on Mr. Owen Tweedy's article Solvency in Israel which was published in the Spectator of June 17th. Mr. Tweedy states that...

SIR,—My attention has been drawn to a letter published in

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the Spectator of June 24th under the title "Orthodox Jews in Palestine " over the signa- ture of a certain Mr. Heller, with reference to the Naturei Karta of Jerusalem. I can...

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THE STARS AND STRIPES IN ENGLAND

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SIR,—The flying of the Stars and Stripes in 1783 in English ports referred to in Mr. Cadbury's letter is mentioned by Sylas Neville, a convinced pro- American, in his diary, to...

FAMILY LIFE

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SIR,--The writer of the article on " The Size of the Family " says that "what is needed above all . . . is the exaltation of family life." How are we to achieve this ? Are we to...

TWO RACES IN SOUTH AFRICA

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SIR, — In the Spectator of June 24th, you write, " The split between Afri- kaners and British has been opened wide once more." Impressions gained on a short visit to a strange...

THE MUNICH AND VIENNA EXHIBITIONS

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SIR,—There must be many like myself who, with no expert artistic knowledge, yet find the greatest pleasure in visiting the superb collections now on view at the National and...

Stit,—I read with interest in your issue of June 17th

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the letter from Mr. Henry J. Cadbury of Cambridge, Massachusetts. It may interest him to know that on visiting St. Martin's Church at Bowness-on-Windermere I found the following...

EUROPE'S MINORITIES

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Sta,—As representatives of three parts of Britain which have distinctive history and traditions we recently attended a congress of ethnical and linguistic minorities, convened...

" THE THEATRE "

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Sin, — Mr. Peter Fleming's reviews of plays in the Spectator have given me such unfailing pleasure that I feel it would be ungrateful to refrain any longer from saying so...

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COUNTRY LIFE

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IT IS difficult to settle down to a morning's work in my study above the cherry orchard. The fruit-pickers have camped there, with caravans, lorries, tents, cara, and all day...

" THE CROSSNESS " SIR,—In spite of Mr. Roberts's housekeeper,

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I stick to my guns. If one is to generalise—and Mr. Graves was generalising—then it is true to say that " the crossness " is a predominantly Northern expression "Ind that...

SPECTATOR

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SUBSCRIPTION RATES Ordinary edition to any address in the World. 52 weeks £1 10s. Od 26 weeks 15s. Od. Air Mail to any Country in Europe. 52 weeks ,C2 71. 6d. 26 weeks CI 3s....

In My Garden I recall nothing of the works of

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the eighteenth-century woman novelist, Regina Maria Roche, except a phrase worth recording." In a novel called The Children of the Abbey (1798), she writes of the garden, and...

ENOSIS

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SIR,—What is " Enosis " (June 24th, p. 849)? My books of reference give no clue. Has it anything to do with the uplift given by Eno's Fruit Salts, or with R. L. Stevenson's " to...

THE RECORD OF MIHAILOVICH

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SIR. —Your reviewer of Mr. Stephen Clissold's book on Tito states that fairly soon in the Yugoslav struggle it became clear that Mihailovich " was not in fact seriously fighting...

FORGOTTEN FORMULA

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SIR, —Janus quotes "a plain and sober formula enabled Sir Stamford Raffles in 1819 to transform the desolate island of Singapore into a world market-place almost overnight. . ....

Another Encounter What a contrast in social consciousness this is

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with another rustic meeting which I had during the hot April weather. We had climbed up from the village of Varenna to the alpine foothills behind Lake Como. The sun of noonday...

Social Evidences What is most noticeable, however, is the improvement

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in the social con- duct of these amateur nomads who invade the fruit-growing country. The fawning semi-gipsy is scarce. The human lurchers who steal and light, worrying farmers...

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BOOKS OF THE DAY

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John Ruskin IT is not without a certain sense of pain that even the most detached monster can regard the grotesque tragedy of Ruskin's life, the agony of the struggle, the...

Creative Activity—A Formula

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MR. KOESTLER has given us something to think about. It is true that there is a long-windedness about the book which is unexpected from so practised a writer ; it is...

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An American Historian

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The Journals of Francis Parkman. Edited by Mason Wade. (Eyre and Spottiswoode. 2 Vols. 50s.) IT is nearly a century since (so the story goes) a learned Bostonian was baffled...

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Mine Warfare

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CHIVALRY being as dead as it is, the ethics of mine and other forms of underwater combat are no longer fiercely debated. By modern standards minelaying is a comparatively humane...

The Soviet State v. Musicians

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Musical Uproar in Moscow. By Alexander Werth. (Turnstile Press. 6s.) FOR some years now the attitude of the Soviet Government towards music and musicians has been one of the...

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" THE SPECTATOR " CROSSWORD No. 536

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[A Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution of this week's crossword to he opened after noon on Tuesday week, 7uly 12th. Envelopes...

SOLUTION TO CROSSWORD No. 534

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■ 2 u.RISR 'Ale tie 'Alder PS RINE MoIRF r( LILL v , E • N SOLUTION ON JULY 15 The winner of Crossword No. 534 is Miss M. KEMP, 15 Saxe Coburg Place, Edinburgh.

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The Traveller in Italy

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The Land of Italy, By Jasper More. (Batsford. 18s.) MR. MORE begins his introduction with the sentiment that them are only two good reasons for going abroad. The first is for...

On Architecture

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Buildings and Prospects. By John Piper. (Architectural Press. 18s.) ONCE the reader has penetrated beyond the volcanic ashes that fall dismally on the buildings and prospects...

English Fun

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Say Please. By Virginia Graham. Illustrated by Osbert Lancaster. • Marvin Press. 7s. 6d.) Tuts ebulliently feminine little book is the work of a professional humorist : one of...

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An Opportunity Missed

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Odette. By Jerrard Tickell. (Chapman and Hall. 15s.) WHEN the great achievements of human courage come to be recorded, there are really only two satisfactory alternatives. One...

Fiction

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Winter Landscape. By Neville Brand. (Hale. 8s. 6d.) Just a Song•at Twilight. By John Lodwick (Heinemann. 9s. 6d.) IN these three novels there are deaths. The first, with its...

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FINANCE AND INVESTMENT

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By CUSTOS SOONER than most people predicted the known difficulties of the country's economic and financial position have assumed the pro- portions, in the public mind, of a...

Shorter Notices

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THE "woman's question" has become old-fashioned ; is vaguely taken as settled ; and yet there are still injustices, still sex barriers. Miss Haslett sums the position up as it...

THE author of this record-collector's vade-mecum is a lecture in

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psychology at Edinburgh University, and in his final chapter he neatly combines both his interests to give a short analysis of the record-collector's psychology. The history,...