The announcement that the withdrawal of the 15,000 British troops in India is to be completed by August 15th is unlikely to prove accurate, but the fact that it can be made and...

Much has been made of the similarities between the measures for the unified planning of industry and agriculture in the Russian Zone of Germany, which were announced last...

0 NE inevitable result of the Marshall offer is that all eyes are turned to the American Congress and people to see how they are taking it. It would certainly be over-optimistic...

Yet another Committee is going over the well-trodden ground of the Palestine question, and once again the old attitudes are being struck . and the familiar arguments are being...

Mr. Herbert Morrison has said that we are in a critical period so far as industrial production is concerned. The effort of the not few weeks will have a lasting long-term...

• In spite of some exaggerations, some irrelevance and occasional slight heat, the debate on Special Powers in Ulster and the House of Commons last Friday had a definite value....

Shortage of timber has already killed the 1947 housing programme, and it is a serious handicap to exporters, who cannot obtain a sufficiency • of the packing cases which, before...

T HE Committee Stage of the Finance Bill is an annual event at Westminster, which brings with it the agreeable possibility a concessions on taxation by the Chancellor and—to...

A jungle of nonsense has grown up around the Ministry of Labour's cost-of-living index and there will be no regrets that it is now being cut away, by the introduction on June...

The Chancellor of the. Exchequer's deCision to adopt a new basis of taxation for private motor-cars is belated but welcome. Argu- ment and discussion about this has been going...

I F the American Secretary of State's Harvard speech brought new hope to a Europe struggling with deprivation and poten- tial collapse, the swiftness of the response made by Mr....

in Tuesday's Times has evoked universal sympathy, some of it taking very practical form, but it is well to be a little slow in drawing a general moral from it. Mr. Clynes, one...

diplomatic methods, is told by the United Nations correspondent of the Manchester Guardian. At a very interesting fortnight's dis- cussion by a certain sub-commission on the...

suicide cases, one comment has reached me which I think is apposite. There is (it is suggested) a clear distinction to be drawn between " Suicide while of unsound mind," which...

T HERE was a certain breathlessness about the dinner Lord Beaverbrook gave to the American editors on Wednesday evening. The visitors, on the first lap of their...

interesting. It is illustrated by the fortunes that have recently befallen three of them within a radius of half-a-dozen miles in Surrey. Wotton House, the historic home of John...

By SARAH GERTRUDE MILLIN Johannesburg. I N 1945, with the war over, the United Nations meeting, a world to be remade, General Smuts was in England.- And, assembling all these...

By W. J. BROWN, M.P. 1 - HAVE more than once observed that much of our politics consists I of misapplied religion. In no respect is this more marked than in regard to what I...

By EVA M. HUBBACK A LTHOUGH Iran—it still sounds more familiar to us as Persia— was a few months ago much in the public eye, attention was centred mainly on its political...

By W. H. EDWARDS (formerly Editor of the " Vossische Zeitung ") Who elected the Lander parliaments? All Lander have introduced universal adult suffrage. Several million adult...

By SIR ALEXANDER PATERSON T HE system maintained for many years by France of transporting a large number of her criminals to her colony of Guiana in South America has become...

By HAROLD NICOLSON T HE Port of London Authority, as we know—or as we ought to know—is a statutory undertaking, publicly owned, self-governing and self-supporting. As an...

THE CINEMA " Stallion Road " (Warner).—" Dual Alibi " (London Pavilion). MR. RONALD REAGAN owns a stallion ranch in California. Miss Alexis Smith owns the ranch next door. Mr....

FULL-SCALE exhibitions by Edward Burra are not so frequent that one can afford to miss his new show at the Leicester Galleries, although many of the pictures are familiar. More...

CARLO ZECCHI, who conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Albert Hall on June 4th, is a new name in this country. His pro- gramme was well designed and reasonable in...

THERE are some good Mozart recordings this month. The E flat horn concerto, played by the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Walter Siisskind and with Dennis Brain playing the...

IT may be only my fancy, but I seem to detect at the moment a certain feeling of emptiness, an atmosphere of bereavement, among those of my friends who are regular listeners to...

THE CHURCH IN FRANCE SIR,--In his interesting article (in your issue of May 30th), which was inspired by, and borrowed its title from, that thought-provoking book La France...

SIR,—The following comments may be made on Mr. Thomson's letter which appeared in your issue of June 6th. (1). The Act of Parliament to which he refers meant that no authority...

SIR,—Mr. W. W. Fletcher's letter in The Spectator of June 13th appears to me to score a bull's eye. The Education Act of 1944 sought to carry out all the possibilities of reform...

SIR, My article on Brahms's German Requiem was not meant as propa- ganda of any kind but as a frank attempt to assess the religious quality of the music and the state of mind...

Sut,—Readers of The Spectator will be aware of conditions in Germany and will know of the terrible feelings of despair that fill the hearts of the young people in that unhappy...

SIR, —Surely ,a word of congratulation and of thankfulness should be addressed to the Bishops of Durhafn and Truro flit - their promised .new translation of the Bible. Our...

practice of bringing in verdicts of " suicide while of unsound mind," I think another reason for this is to be found in the rubric before "The Order for the Burial of the Dead "...

A Spectator's Notebook. reference to the verdict on the inquest of Mrs. Mavis Tate that she died while the balance of her mind was disturbed, and the suggestion that she knew...

SIR, — On a recent Sunday evening in the middle of a heat-wave I attended a concert given in a famous theatre not a mile from Charing Cross. A full orchestra and chorus under a...

SIR,—In your exceedingly kind reference to me you say, with regard to the book on that remarkably influential newspaper, the Pall Mall Gazette, which I have had in mind for...

is stated that " subscriptions tent to Friends Relief Society . . . can be received for immediate purchase of food for Germany." On the other hand, we are assured that the...

Snt,—I have no personal knowledge of Lord Simon of Wythenshawe. For all I know Janus may be right in his innuendo that be has a lust for position which has been adequately...

Sm,—In your issue of May 2nd you publish a letter from the Director of Eastern Services 6f the B.B.C. in which he replies to a letter (previously published in your journal) from...

SIR,—I am one of twenty-five Austrian students visiting this country on a British Council scheme. Being the first Austrian students able to do so, and realising that information...

Snt,—I would be obliged if the correspondence concerning the profits taken by the G.P.O. could be closed forthwith. The immediate reaction was the introduction of lid. postage...

" Country Life " column will be resumed on July 4th.

Sm,—Your reviewer of Forty Years In and Out of Parliament by Sir Percy Harris blames the author for wrongly attributing well-known say- ings to the wrong persons, and claims for...

Sts,—I am very glad to see Agnes Fry's letter in your issue of June 6th, and I would like to add that Friends , Relief Service purchases food not merely for Germany but for...

Sut,—By all means give German prisoners drama ; but it would do more to " mitigate asperities and bridge gulfs " if they were allowed a little more than lid. an hour, 5s. a...

Sis,—In considering re-writing the National Anthem, the old first line should be recalled: "God Save great George our King." It was thus printed on occasion in the eighteenth...

WHEN this book appeared in the United States more than a year ago, it was hailed by American critics as a document of first-class importance. Here was an intimate view of....

The Established Church The Claims of the Church of England. By Cyril Garbett, Archbishop of York. (Hodder and Stoughton. 15s.) LIKE the British Constitution, in which it is a...

Oskar Kokoschka—His Life and Work. By Edith Hoffmann. (Faber and Faber. 25s.) Miss EDITH HOFFMANN has written the best study of a living painter that has appeared for many...

THIS collection of essays takes its title from the inclusion of the text of a broadcast talk which Professor Haldane was to have made in 1934 as part of a series of talks on the...

Tins agreeable and well-dressed little volume is welcome for more reasons than one ; though principally on account of the cool and extremely frank examination of Johnson and his...

The Other Theatre By Norman Marshall. (John Lehmann. 15s.) Tins book is a record of courageous effort to redeem the English theatre, and of heart-breaking response. Oxford's...

IT is a shock, when one has heard much of the brilliance and originality of any writer, to encounter his work and to find it mediocre. That, however, is my decided reaction to...

Schubert: a Documentary Biography. By Otto Eric Deutsch. Trans- lated by Eric Blom. (Dent. 63s.) Tins is the main body of the life-work of an eminent Viennese Schubert scholar...

Elizabeth is Missing. By Lillian de la Torre. (Michael Joseph. 15s.) THIS is an entertaining and comprehensive assessment of all the evidence in the notorious...

of John Ruskin and Euphemia Gray as told in their own letters. The story ended; it will be recalled, in - the Ecclesiastical Court where their marriage was annulled. Effie Gray...

Faber and Faber. 10s. 6d.) MANET liked to point out that he had been recording modern Paris when Degas was still painting history under the influence of Ingres. His pioneering...

ANN. F 1.1'.15 I 'A *; IF., e! LA allkarN IA 1 gal Ills R E kV< FAIST 4 4'RO,p, !NT ,unogIONT N T7+, L _U . I R , c, "no 'NI SOLUTION ON JULY 4 The winner of Crossword No....

[A Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution of this week's crossword to be opened after noon on Tuesday week ]uly 1st. Envelopes...

By CUSTOS HOPES and fears are so evenly balanced in the minds of most investors just now that it is scarcely surprising that markets are following a pedestrian course. Even the...