The announcement of the votes cast in the elections for the "People's Congress" in the Soviet Zone is an interesting com- mentary on Russia's decision to lift the Berlin...

T HE Communist tide has already lapped in some sectors over the outer defences of Shanghai, which consist for the most part of a deep belt of pill boxes, arbitrarily sited and...

Failure to reach agreement on the former Italian colonies is a triumph for no one ; it is, rather, a humiliation for each individual member State of the United Nations and a...

The debates of the past week on Ireland ended better than they began, with the unopposed passage of the Ireland Bill, conferring notable privileges on Eire citizens, through its...

The determination to treat the recent local elections simply and solely as an indicator of possibilities at next year's General Election will not be denied. Perhaps in a...

It is just about a year since guerrilla warfare started on a serious scale in Malaya, and it is now clear that, while the original Com- munist rising may have gone off at...

Sir Malcolm Trustram Eve, the Chairman of the Central Land Board, renewed this week an appeal which he has made publicly more than once before to property-owners to make their...

The economics of State trading are not at all straightforward. But one thing is perfectly dear, and that is that prices in the vast deals in which the State normally indulges...

I T is probable that more eloquence and passion have been aroused by Irish Debates than by any other class of parliamentary activity during the last hundred years. Monday's...

A committee of experts at the International Socialist Conference at Baarn in Holland last Sunday presented a report to the full con- ference, in which were laid down the...

T . the waiting public the meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers which begins next Monday is an unopened ' book. Once it is opened, anything might happen. It might easily...

five Parliamentary Private Secretaries (not actually enforced in one case) and the expulsion of two M.P.'s, Messrs. Solley and Zilliacus, from the Labour Party. The latter...

are issuing next week, with an eye no doubt to events a year ahead, three volumes on the three main political parties by prominent members of each of them—Mr. Glenvil Hall,...

for myself when I suggested last week that it was a pity that the Cambridge captain declared the University's innings closed when Dewes and Doggart needed only 29 more runs to...

so many on whom the present predominantly farinaceous diet has the same effect. It still begins with Aaron, Richard Thomas (for I decline to countenance A.A. ; see Willis, A....

T HE discussion in the Upper House of the Convocation of Canterbury on Tuesday on the question of permitting women to conduct prayers, at mattins and evensong, or give an...

By REGINALD COLBY RUSSIAN colonel who supervised the removing of the barriers between the Russian sector and the rest of Berlin is reported to have declined a suggestion made...

By WILSON HARRIS T HOUGH public discussion of the morals of the National Service man in the British Army of the Rhine has tended to die down, there is no doubt that the...

By KATHARINE WEST O N May 22nd, 1849, Maria Edgeworth died at the age of eighty-two in the arms of her third stepmother, who was a year younger and lived to write her life. Not...

By DR. DAVID THOMSON HE bogy of educational specialisation has haunted most recent controversy. The Ministry of Education, in its circular describing the new "General...

By EDWARD MONTGOMERY New York tf HIS is the goldarndest trial I ever saw." That is how, in a moment of exasperation, the presiding judge himself described the proceedings in the...

By IVY PINCHBECK B EDFORD COLLEGE, the oldest of the university colleges for women, is celebrating its centenary this month. A search through the more important newspapers of a...

By JOHN R. TOWNSEND (Emmanuel College, Cambridge) F OUR years ago the student from the wars returning with a wife and perhaps a couple of children was a figure who caught the...

By HAROLD NICOLSON I N the Figaro for April 14th and April 23rd appeared two successive articles from the pen of Monsieur Andre Siegfried upon the subject: "What sort of French...

" Ditte—Child of Man." (Curzon.)—" La Maison du Maltais." (Studio One.)—" Every Girl Should be Married." (Gaumont and Marble Arch Pavilion.) Ditte — Child of Man, is a Danish...

may be that I owe my taste for the preposterous to a fairy god- mother, who, after making several dummy runs across my cradle, crash-landed and wrote off more important freight....

THE THEATRE The Lady's Not For Burning. By Christopher Fry. (Globe.) PEGASUS and Parody are both good horses, but no owner should enter them for the same steeplechase. On...

on The Ring for the first time since pre-war days. It is being sung in German, and most of the chief parts are taken by foreign singers—Brunnhilde by Kirsten Flagstad, Wotan by...

IT is just over a year since I asked in these columns whether London was to see the art treasures from Vienna. Now that the Arts Council have brought them to the Tate, I am a...

the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, was remarkable for the stress laid on the undoubted truth'that the threats which called the Council into being are to- day...

loses an artist of whom it has reason to be proud. Practical, resourceful, ambitious, he was, above all, a master of his craft, who applied himself to painting with unswerving...

Among orchards in which experiments have been tried is one—in Worcestershire—consisting of morello cherries. The trees were not doing well, so the ingenious owner sank a number...

three days, and this may be called punctuality in the list of standard prognostics about the weather. They did a good deal of harm, not least in the Worcestershire valleys. On...

fir trees touched the sky. Some small boys of today have an alternative to conifers. Two of them, aged about five years, while playing golf on a common were addressed by a...

he generally accepted that the spindle, that beautiful wild shrub, is the chief host of the abominable, foul black fly that attacks the broad beans, now at the height of their...

PAKISTAN AND INDIA Sit,—Amid the general, and in my opinion mistaken, rejoicing over the condescension of Mr. Nehru in keeping his republic in the British Commonwealth, a note...

Snt,—The Spectator of May 6th reached me belatedly. But, if you will allow me, I -should like to comment on Miss Pascoe's letter. Those of us who have studied the progress of...

Si,—Recent discussion of the minimum age prescribed for the General Certificate Examination prompts me to state some of the thoughts that have occurred to me in this connection....

SIR,—In laying the foundation-stone of the first of the new secondary modern schools in Devonshire, the former chairman of the County Council observed: "If by the time the...

SIR,—A word with Janus, please allow me. In Chelsea art schools I might term myself a " matista " and thus place myself within reach of the sculptors and modellers. The...

SIR,—A lot of nonsense has been talked and written recently about The Naked and the Dead, and it is distressing to find in England such bour- geois, old-maidenish hypocrisy as...

SIR,—Mr. Speakman raises two points in his letter in the Spectator of May 6th which might deter the Englishman from emigrating - Canada. Firstly, the fact that Canada's natural...

SUBSCRIPTION RATES Ordinary edition to any address in the World. 52 weeks £1 10a. Od. 26 weeks 153. Od. Air Mail to any Country in Europe. 52 weeks 42 7s. 6d. 26 weeks fl 3s....

Snt,—Mr. R. H. Cecil's thesis is, in part, 'that the official Criminal Statistics " are quite valudless as a guide to the incidence of larceny" and provide us with no conception...

SIR,—A small point perhaps, but I was surprised to see Jiffich and Duren described as "villages" in Mr. Wilson Harris's most interesting article German Impressions. Not much of...

Si,—With reference to the note in the Spectator of May 13th, in which it is pointed out that Members of Parliament are required to take an oath of allegiance to the King,, may...

Sta,—Record-hunting is a curse of modern sport, and it is "startling and discomforting," to use his own adjectives, to find Janus suggesting that Messrs. Dewes and Doggart...

SIR,—The suggestion made in Mr. P. A. Shaw's letter that, if the Liberals prefer to remain apart from the Conservatives, the resultant three- cornered contests will most...

Snt,—In last week's A Spectator's Notebook Janus wrote of Manchester Grammar School as "the largest and most important institution of its kind." Will he please tell us how he...

A Hungarian in America • 'Strangers Here Ourselves. By Adam de Hegedus. (GoLlancz. 12s. 6d.) Or writing travel books about the U.SA. there is practically no 'end. But Mr. de...

The Quadruple Alliance and After. Horace Walpole's Correspondence. Volumes XIII and XIV. Correspondence with Thomas Gray, Richard West and Thomas Ashton. Edited by W. S. eorge...

The Mystical Element in the Metaphysical Poets of the 17th Century. By Itrat-Husain. (Oliver & Boyd. 25s.) Tins is a valuable and, in spite of its academic appearance, an...

THERE are many approaches to demonology. There is the old- fashioned orthodoxy which positively believes, with Peacock's Mr. Toobad, that the devil is amongst us having great...

IN every county of England and Wales the Church authorities are confronting problems of repair and restoration of ancient buildings. Regular survey and maintenance were for the...

THIS book, so scholarly and lively (Mr: Morris is a master of the significant instance and the apt quotation) is bound also to be rather melancholy because it is a record of...

An Introduction to the History of England from the Earliest Times to 1204. By Douglas Jerrold. (Collins. 21s.) THE publishers' " blurb " describes this book as "highly important...

Harpsichord Music. By Max Kenyon. (Cassell. 18s.) THIS book is designed, as the author explains in his introduction, for "reading in the evening at home with one ear...

Gainsborough. The British Painter Series. By Mary Woodall. (Phoenix House. 16s.) IN an age when "taking sides" has become one of the most un- pleasant manifestations of art...

A Clouded Star. By Anne Parrish. (Heinemann. 9s. 6d.) WE are, quite rightly, continually repeating that the proper business of Literature is Life. We cannot then complain if,...

airlITIA rE N S I . fii,14 alga._ DC N A - ell5 • 4!e!0ale ssialv . 1 1 ) C t I SOLUTION ON JUNE 3rd The winner of Crossword No. 528 is DUNCAN COOMER, Esq., 12 Elgin Road,...

(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, May 31st. Envelopes...

Diplomat in Peace and War. By Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen. (John Murray. 18s.) EVERY professional diplomat ought to have a tale to tell worth telling, but by no means all are...

7s. 6d.) I'm royalties from the sale of this attractive little miscellany of seventy-five pages are to be given to the Keats-Shelley Memorial in Rome, which alone is sufficient...

By CUSTOS IT is difficult, in these days, to distinguish anything worthy of being described as an investment pattern in the stock markets. Gilt-edged, it is true, look firmly...

a collection of seven erudite essays, dealing with such sub- jects as early editions of Messiah and the Water Music, the authen- ticity of various portraits of the composer and...

of information on matters of which the public is too ignorant. Mrs. Neville-Rolfe has helped to found, among other societies, the Eugenics Society, the British Social Hygiene...

6d.) BRITISH reserve may flinch a little at the project of describing, in minute detail, the long Illness and death of a much-loved only son. Occasionally this memoir is...

MR. WILLIAM KENT is an industrious compiler of books about London (" the great literary Mecca"); his knowledge is wide, he is anxious to share it, and he is properly disturbed...

since pre-war days, it is still necessary to place a firm order with a bookstall manager or newsagent to ensure regular weekly delivery of THE SPECTATOR. Newsagents cannot...