T HE Ministerial changes announced on Monday leave the strength of the Cabinet little changed. Lord Harlech is a distinct loss. As Mr. Ormsby-Gore he had a consistently sound...

no doubt had purposes not written on its surface, but it is hardly calculated to increase enthusiasm for the Anglo-Italian agreement in this country. The Duce presumably had his...

admit defeat, and though General Franco's advance continues, it has lost its momentum and his gains are small and slow. Entrenched behind their rivers, swollen by the summer...

Britain and Mexico is greatly to be deplored, most of all because it increases the difficulties of achieving a satisfactory settle- ment of the oil question. The ostensible...

resolved, for the moment, by the formation of a Government under M. Spaak, the former Foreign Minister and Belgium's first Socialist Prime Minister. Fortunately, in the new...

railway appeared to have been held ; but it has been continued with renewed momentum, and the Chinese, after fighting severer than any that has yet been seen in the war, are...

possibly injudicious, confidence at Bristol on Monday on the prospects of a satisfactory settlement in Czechoslovakia. Mr. Churchill had just seen Herr Henlein, the Sudeten-...

new Hungarian Government, under Dr. Imredy, is to suppress the violent activities of the Hungarian National Socialists who, especially after the Ansdiluss, have caused great...

them- selves on the success of the k28,000,000 Defence Loan which, issued this week on very generous terms, was heavily over- subscribed. Yet French public opinion remains...

broadcast. No one would gain more from this innovation than Mr. Buchanan, whose speeches seldom receive the attention from the Press that they deserve. His acquaintance with the...

Lennox-Boyd, blotted his copy-book a few weeks ago when he ventured in a public speech to anticipate the Prime Minister's decision regarding assurances to Czecho- slovakia. But...

the moment, at any rate, the sacrifice of Lord Swinton has strengthened the Government's position in the House of Commons. After last week's debate on military aviation all...

in the House of Commons last week has not entirely dispelled the alarm which is widely felt regarding the use recently made of the Official Secrets Acts. It is true that the...

In the course of last term arrangements were made with a large number of public and secondary schools, for both boys and girls, whereby copies of The Spectator were supplied at...

N O one who has ever believed in what the League of Nations stands for can fail to be profoundly depressed as he turns his gaze on Geneva today. The hundred-and-first meeting of...

T HE Prime Minister, despite his personal convictions, has at length accepted the verdict of -public opinion, and allowed Lord Swinton to resign in face of the criticism that...

The first edition of 2,50o was sold out on the morning of publication (as I have reason to know, since I tried in vain to buy a copy, and only secured one in the end through the...

been invited to the reception at the Italian Embassy on Wednesday actually appeared there, enough came to create formidable traffic jams all round Grosvenor Square and all round...

London, and London (I speak as a Londoner) has rather a way of thinking itself the only city that matters, but actually what is most interesting in his report is the series of...

alleged to be 53 ; that is still some way short of senility. To the two obvious questions, Is the Cabinet strengthened , in average ability ? and Is its general political...

international affairs, opened wide the floodgates of their indignation when the Council of the Women's Liberal Federation met yesterday. Speaker after speaker flayed the...

T HERE can be nothing very conclusive in arguments about what King George V said in 1914, when all that is on written record is what someone said he said. But the story...

By GEORGE EDINGER I ENTERED Spanish Nationalist territory with a list of written questions compiled by my Liberal and Labour friends. I think I am the first visitor with Left...

By MERVYN O'GORMAN I T is a testimony to the interest created by Sir Charles Bressey's Greater London Traffic Survey that it should be out of print on the morning of...

By W. J. ROSE " M Y complaint about the Poles," said a well-known expert. on European affairs not long since, " is that they are too little ready to co-operate." I have pon-...

By OUR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT [This is the second of a short series of articles on conditions in the principal careers open to .boys and girls from secondary schools. Next...

By J. GRANGE RADFORD W HEN the Earl of Meath chose May 24th, Queen Victoria's birthday, as Empire Day, it did not, doubtless, occur to him that it was on this date in the year...

By EDITH HUNTINGTON TOMBES I T was my privilege to be present at both the first and the last nights of Irving's season at Drury Lane in the spring of 1905. No one knew it would...

THE USE OF LEISURE II By WALTER ALLEN [The writer, aged 27, is a graduate of Birmingham University, a3d has been a Scho3lm2ster, Lecturer and Novelist] IT can only have been...

HENLEIN'S ANTI-NAZI RIVAL FROM A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT IT is commonly supposed that the Germans of the Czechoslovak Republic unanimously support the Sudetendeutsche Partei...

THE THEATRE " People of Our Class." By St. John Ervine. At the New Theatre THREE old ladies sat behind me at People of Our Class. They had come determined to enjoy. Arriving...

At the Lyric Theatre. THE legend of Amphitryon has been a gift to comic writers for centuries, and Mr. Giraudoux's cryptic title makes obscure acknowledgment to some...

[D'un correspondant parisien] La franc ne vaut plus que neuf centimes environ. Les tech- niciens vous expliqueront que nous avons maintenant un franc a niveau minimum, qui...

" Housemaster." At the Regal—" The Challenge." At the London Pavilion IF A Yank at Oxford was in essence American, House- master gratifyingly shifts the balance ; it is nothing...

The Ice-saints see the arrival of the latest migrants. Birds arrive on our shores in all months of the year. There is a to and fro passage that is continual, very nearly...

May-time Disasters The most disastrous of all the frosts that have fallen on England for many years occurred five days before the festival of the Three Ice-saints, of whom...

they do not trouble most gardens, are the ring-doves. Happily they are quite as fond of the early leaves of several forest trees as of cultivated garden crops, though on due...

indeed in most gardens that it frequents, is the jay, whose taste in green peas as well as in small eggs and young it is hard to satiate. Many sorts of devices have been tried...

owed more than usual to the very common flowers. For a number of weeks by far the most beautiful thing in our garden has been a low bank (with a sweet- briar hedge on the top)...

The unpleasant character of the cuckoo is, I fear, further blackened by a modern instance of its selfish behaviour. Last year a pair of water wagtails, whose nest was built in...

further stimulated by a conference en trees held by " the Men of the Trees " at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, from July 16th to 2 St. German trees as well as Empire trees are to...

SPECTATOR] SIR, —I should like to support " Janus " and oppose Mr. C. Boyd Bowman on the question of the roads. The plan of the latter is to make new trunk roads and to "...

Snt,—Canon Barry in his article on the Churches and the Common Life states that a radical rethinking of theology in terms of twentieth-century life and action is the first...

[Correspondents are requested to keep their letters as brief as is reasonably possible. The most suitable length is that of one of our " News of the Week" paragraphs. Signed...

Snt,—Mr. Jeffries' letter in your issue of May 13th is most welcome to those who, like myself, have been interested as members of the rank and file of the Conservative party in...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] Sta,—I was extremely interested to read in The Spectator of May 6th Mr. Burdon's account of the original Thomas Atkins. Following his suggestion...

the position of the King in the Anglo-Irish Agreement, Mr. Jeffries writes : " It appears to me that the absence of the legal title His Majesty's Government in the United...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] Slit,—While sincere effort is being made to localise the Spanish War, and to put a stop to outside intervention, little, if anything, is being...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—The writer of the article under the above heading remarks very truly " there is no good reason why the restric- tions of the Jewish Sabbath...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—The reco,&d of what some graduates do in their spare time, as revealed in the article " The Use of Leisure " is a shocking commentary on...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR, — It seems sometimes that the capacity for moral- indig- nation and moral courage is passing from the modern world. How else can we explain...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SI12,—AS a practising lawyer of some years' standing I must take exception to your statement that the law is often, if not always, an ass. On...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] Six,—Mr. Powys Greenwood is, I think, mistaken in saying in last week's Spectator that : " nowhere does he (Hitler) advocate that Germans should...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] Sut,—Mr. Lawrence gives himself much pleasure in disposing of those with whom he disagrees. He says that I am a " Mr. Dick," the dear old...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR, — May I be allowed to thank Dame Edith Lyttelton for finding a name for a class of book, the origin and purpose of which have hitherto...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—The suggestion of Major E. P. Yeates for the private " home storage " of food supplies in war-time is excellent. The point may have been "...

interesting to read in your article on " America's Picture-News," that the American picture papers have " got something " in the picture crime-stories they have lately...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR, — As one who has read with great interest the articles on Youth and Christianity which have appeared in recent issues, and as one too who...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR, — May I crave a small space in your columns ? I am writing a Memoir of my father, the late Dr. Cyril Rootham ; and if any of your readers...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] Sm,—In your last issue Mr. Douglas Reed publishes a review of Twilight in Vienna, by Willi Frischauer, and of The Last Five Hours of Austria, by...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] Sut,—I feel I must express to you my thanks for the insertion in your issue of May 6th, the contribution " Can I be a Christian ? "—VIII. It...

PAGE Mr. Gladstone (E. L. Woodward; . . • • 918 The Battle of the Books (E. E. Kellett) . . 919 War and Democracy (Frank Pakenham) 919 The Necessity of Freedom (H. W....

of war and the way to prevent it emanates from a g roup of Labour publi- cists in their early thirties of whom and from whom we shall assuredly hear much in the future. Five out...

of Books. By R. C. B. Partrid g e. (Library Association. 18s.) AMID the crowd of recent books which are often little more than rehashings of old ones, it is a pleasure to li g...

" I have a most zealous esteem and reverence for the constitution of government ; and I believe it to be so excellently poised that if the least branch of the prerogative be...

Wallenstein : Soldier under Saturn. By Francis Watson. (Chatto and Windus. x5s.) THE appearance of this masterly biography is well-timed. Each day sees a sharpening of the...

Without Knowing Mr. Walkley. Personal memories by Edith Olivier. (Faber and Faber. 129. 6d.) WRITING reminiscences is an art all its own. It is not the same as autobiography....

Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. Vol. VI, 1784-1792. By Mary Dorothy George, Litt. D....

Roumanian Journey. By Sacheverell Sitwell. (Batsford. 8s. 6d.) IT must be a matter for marvel to anyone conversant with modern conditions of publishing that Messrs. Batsford...

HERE is a valuable and eminently necessary addition to the somewhat scanty literature on the subject of local government. In this book Lady Simon describes and interprets the...

Walt Whitman. Complete Poetry and Selected Prose and Letters. Edited by Emory Holloway. (The Nonesuch Press. 125. 6d.) THE NONESUCH Whitman has been, to all appearances,...

By KATE O'BRIEN MR. WILLIAM FAULKNER is a writer handicapped and distin- guished by a particular exaction which he makes of readers and which we cannot always place at his...

What seems to me to give special value to this series," says Mr. D. H. Robertson in his appetising introduction to this collection of Halley Stewart lectures (Allen and Unwin,...

Colonel Kitson Clark's history of a century-old " firm and its folk by one of them " is much to be commended (Loco- motive Publishing Company, los.). Such books are of interest...

The narrative of Alvise Cadamosto, the scholarly young Venetian who in 1454-6 made two voyages down the West African coast for Prince Henry of Portugal, is for the first time...

That science owes much to story-telling for light on primitive thought and culture has been proved time and again from The Golden Bough onwards ; here is further recognition of...

The present decade, the " ideological thirties," becomes increasingly manifesto-minded. The impulse to " state where one stands " philosophically, religiously and, above all,...

POST-VICTORIAN POETRY By Herbert Palmer Here is a monument, if not to modern poetry, then to the industry of Mr. Herbert Palmer. His book (Dent, I2S. 6d.) contains 370 pages,...

Edgar Smith Among the profound changes in man's way of living which the machine age has introduced, the complete transformation of life at sea is one of the most important. The...

THE interest of recent recordings has been unusually dispropor- tionate to their abundance. Strangers to the recording list , have been few, and several of the recordings that...

As Lady Simon observes in a preface, Sir George MacMunn's new book (Nicholson and Watson, I2S. 6d.) will serve a useful purpose by reminding readers that slavery is by no means...

The author of this book (Macmillan, 18s.) is Professor of English History at Cornell University. He covers his ground from prehistoric times down to the abdication in a little...

BELGIUM Belgium are of two classes : either they are IT is often argued that those who visit day-trippers and week-enders who go to places like Ostend and Blankenberghe, or...

The " Automatic Speed Limit"— That somewhat weatherbeaten suggestion, the automatic control of engine-speed, was brought up again the other day before the House of Lords Select...

By HARTLEY WITHERS Utsar TRUSTS, or Fixed Trusts as they were originally called, have been opportunely invented to help investors to solve their problem in a time of exceptional...

days to excite much enthusiasm in Throgmorton Street, and even Burmah Oil's 5o per cent. scrip bonus has proved rather a damp squib. Burmah Oil was my choice a year ago in the...

RECESSION ? Yes, but major or minor ? This is the question to which the City is now searching for the answer. The April figures of steel production and oversea trade and the...

Having taken a firm line against the original reconstruction proposals put forward by Plan Brothers (Holdings), the textile machinery makers, I cannot resist the temptation to...

To recommend an electrical engineering share at this stage of the trade cycle may seem to be inviting trouble, but I will take the risk and outline the merits, purely as a...

strated a striking adaptability to investors' needs—and desires—and one cannot therefore be surprised that current conditions should bring forth a new trust catering for...

THE LONDON AND MANCHESTER ASSURANCE COMPANY LTD. MR. WALTER H. BROWN'S REVIEW THE sixty-ninth annual general meeting of the London and Manchester Assurance Company, Limited,...

A SATISFACTORY YEAR Ti E eleventh ordinary general meeting of the British Match Cor- poration Limited was held on May 18th in London. Mr. C. E. Bartholomew, O.B.E., the...

MENDARIS (SUMATRA) RUBBER AND PRODUCE CONSERVATIVE DIVIDEND POLICY THE twenty-seventh ordinary general meeting of the Mendaris (Sumatra) Rubber and Produce Estates, Ltd., was...

THE IMPORTANCE OF NATIONAL ECONOMY MR. WALTER HOLMAN, F.S.A.A., London, President of the Society of Incorporated Accountants, presiding at the annual general meeting of the...

Among the company chairmen who have recently uttered a warning about the present level of taxation is Mr. Clarence (Continued on page 942) FINANCIAL NOTES (continued from page...

The presidential address which Mr. Walter Holman delivered on Tuesday to the Society of Incorporated Accountants will be widely studied. His review, as an accountant, of the...

THE British oversea trade returns for April have been received with little satisfaction. At a time when leading industrialists are agreed that a growing volume of foreign trade...

With'the decline in the rubber consumption of the U.S.A., which dropped by a further 2,503 tons in April, rubber chair- men are naturally laying more stress on the development...

At the meeting of another company within the Harrisons and Crosfield agency Mr. Miller also foreshadowed an in- creased replanting programme. Mendaris (Sumatra) Rubber and...

Mr. Walter H. Brown, who is retiring from the chairmanship of the London and Manchester Assurance Company after over So years' service, had some interesting figures to give the...

RECORD PROFITS THE third ordinary general meeting of Engineering Components Limited, was held on May 12th at Winchester House, London E.C. Dr. P. G. Griffith (the Chairman),...

PATALING RUBBER ESTATES, LTD. GOOD RESULTS BUT OUTLOOK UNCERTAIN THE eighteenth annual general meeting of the Pataling Rubber Estates, Ltd., was held on May 13th at 19...

In announcing a record profit for the past year, Dr. P. G. Griffith, the chairman of Engineering Components, expressed the view that 1937 was an exceptional year, and that 1938...

A distinctly hopeful view of 'the future of rubber was expressed by. Sir Francis Vouks at the meeting of Kepong (Malay) Rubber Estates. Although he regarded the severity of the...

KEPONG (MALAY) RUBBER ESTATES THE thirty-third annual general meeting of the Kepong (Malay) Rubber Estates Limited was held on May 18th in London. Sir Francis Voules, C.B.E....

The - wirnier" of Crossword No. 294 is Mrs. L. Lotke, to Manor Court, Aylmer Road, Highgate, N.2.

AIF' PI EIRI TIH OlUlt, HI 11 ,7 13 1 Ej R TI ED Ul Trr CI II LI E ICI ETD! NI IN ASISauk Sill NI EIS 1 IN / I 17 - rlir3TTLS El RI OJLAI C AIMI 11 CI El R . T AI B.. E...

BY ZENO [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...