N EWS from Moscow is scarce, and in London all the scarcer because of the delayed arrival of the British secretarial and cipher staff, which has been held up by bad weather in...

The Preparatory Commission of the United Nations Organisation h aving decided that the seat of the Organisation is to be in America, there is little to be gained by canvassing...

President Truman's statement last Sunday on American policy in China has been widely welcomed. It provides a basis on which internal unity may be restored in China, and on which...

During the last week some welcome breaches have been made in the elaborate system of controls which is one of the most unpopular legacies of the war. This Thursday all women of...

If the statement by the Prime Minister on Monday that the Ministry of Information is to be brought to an end was explicit, his explanation of what machinery is to take its place...

If they do arrive at discussing the problem of Persia, the Foreign Ministers will find themselves faced with such a divergence of view that it is difficult to see how it can be...

The reform of Service rates of pay announced in a White Paper issued on Wednesday has long been overdue ; and the changes, apart from the general increase in pay, which the...

Mr. Eden very rightly congratulated Mr. Bevin in the House of Commons last week on the agreement which has been reached between France and Great Britain on policy in the Levant....

of Christmas I and the spirit that has largely animated the discussions on the American loan in both Houses of Parliament, but in his most notable speech in the House of Lords...

Friday. The last half-hour of sittings of the House (longer if there is time available) is regularly set apart for an adjournment motion at which some Member who has won his...

Law, that the Board of Trade should be given unfettered power to disallow misleading company titles, is given legal force the better. In the House of Commons on Monday Sir...

I T is long since so brilliant and impressive a speech has been heard in either House of Parliament as that delivered by Lord Keynes in the House of Lords on Tuesday. One of the...

the House of Lords' decision. The question already being canvassed with some vigour in legal circles is whether the four (the Lord Chancellor, Lords Macmillan, Wright and...

to many people who never have been and never•will be Conservatives. The Vote of Censure did the Party in the House of Commons much more harm than good, and the American Loan...

the United Nations Organisation is to be in the United States, the further question— where in the United States?—remains to be determined. As many cities as claimed the...

By THE REV. A. J. BENNITT 11H ERE has probably never in any colony been quite such j . enthusiasm for the British as there was in Malaya in the early days of September, when...

By H. G. DANIELS Berne A LTHOUGH the charter of the United Nations Organisation expressly rejects the principle of neutrality, Switzerland hopes to be admitted on special...

D ID St. Thomas really go to India and found a Church there? Each year St. Thomas' Day, December 21st, brings up the old question ; and still no decisive answer can be given. In...

By CONSTANTIA RUMBOLD T was early in the evening when we left the shadowed walls of 1 Jerusalem and sped down the white road south towards Bethlehem. The eastern sky, woven of...

By PHILIP CARR T requires a certain knowledge of Paris to understand the signifi- cance cance of the imminent closing, as announced by the Paris police, of the police-licensed...

ONCE, in another lifetime I lay clasped by the scent of roses in a shaded walk, And heard slow bells singing across warm fields From the dry brown village, and the faint babble...

was the causes of the revival of French influence from I850 onwards. Our great romantics were almost wholly unaffected by French modes of thought, although Byron was more...

periods when we were affected either by puritanism or extreme moral earnestness, that is during our synthetic periods, we became almost totally un- affected by French literary...

By HAROLD NICOLSON I HAVE been busy this week preparing for the Franco-Belgian Tribune in Brussels a lecture on the subject of " French Influence Upon English Literature." As I...

in suggesting that during our synthetic periods we are obtuse to French habits of thought, whereas during our analytical periods we absorb this " poisonous honey " with delight,...

we mean by " influence "? Obviously, between two such contiguous countries there is bound to be a con- tinuous interchange of thought and feeling. Obviously, also, there must...

PRIDE of place among recent recordings must be given to that of Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas, edited by Prof. Dent, under the auspices of the British Council, in fourteen...

Caesar and Cleopatra." At the Odeon, Marble Arch.—" Intoler- ance." At the New London Film Society. A WALK down Wardour Street is a healthy experience in so far as the sight of...

(AUGUST, 1942.) Far away I heard across a hundred Miles when skies were blazing overhead, Mother Volga to the Blue Don speaking: This is what she said :— " Hail to you, 0 Don,...

the publication of Sir Henry Bashford's letter, but I find myself so completely in agree- ment with it that I hope the delay will be excused. Our Spectators take quite a time to...

Scott, having myself been faced with similar difficulties for some years in my younger days. I believe that to us at such times, who, while admiring the Christian Ethic, cannot...

SCIENCE AND THE HUMANITIES SIR, —As a young physicist who last term returned to Oxford after war service in a government laboratory, I would like to sympathise with your...

SIR,—Now is the time for plain speaking before it is too late. Russia has been asked to make clear what are her demands: other countries, who have narrowly escaped a thousand...

discussed report entitled " Towards the Conversion of England." When this report was debated in the Church Assembly at its November Session, I drew the Assembly's attention to...

SIR,—May I be permitted a brief last word to my letter of November 24th after reading the correspondence in your columns and a number of letters personally received? All are...

SIR,--When I started job-hunting towards the end of my time in the army, I expected to find my war service some slight advantage. After all, as I'd entered my home town on...

Sra,—I was amazed to see published in the issue of The Spectator of November 3rd, 1945, a letter from "Ram Singh" containing baseless Insinuations against certain individuals...

Sm,—As Bishop Stephen Neill referred to the activities of the Yeast Group in The Spectator of November 3oth as an " encouraging begin- ning," we, who are members of that Group...

ordinands and parish priest, as celibate and family man, as analyser and analysed, I may have some understanding of it. It is not merely a matter of two groups of workers who...

Sm,—There is a statement in Mr. Hugh Gaitskell's article " The Price of the Loan " in your issue of December 14th that must have puzzled many economic ignoramuses besides...

Janus," commenting on the figures revealed by Mr. Hall to the effect that only a little over too British Jews a year had emigrated to Palestine in the years 1922-1944, said: "...

Stit,—There is hardly a line of your contributor Nigel Tangye's article on Air Transport and the R.A.F. which does not call for comment. Let us first consider the...

Sm,—On every side we hear of the crying need of Europe for food and clothes. Are we so over-organised that the individual response to this cry is stale-mated? There are many in...

not have thought of a better and more valid explanation for the smallness of Jewish emigration from Britain to Palestine than the one which he has offered. Thus he enabled "...

DISCOVERIES in the department of biology that has been oddly called dietetic botany, have multiplied of late, and some of them, if small, are surprising. For example: though it...

Sta,—This correspondence about bathrooms interests me, as I remember hearing that my grandfather had one in this city round - about the years 1840-5850. When friends came to his...

In some particularly acute and interesting notes on changes in Scotland, both historic and new, Julian Huxley (in the Countryman) suggests, indeed proves, that the red deer have...

SIR,—May I attempt to explain in a few words why I think that Mr. Michael Ayrton has misinterpreted the true meaning of Picasso's ex- hibited pictures at the Victoria and Albert...

and unfair to the Archbishop of Canter- bury, especially as his Grace can hardly enter a defence. I wonder if those who are full of perplexity and consumed with regret really...

Most of us order our seeds for both potager and the flower garden round about Christmas, and the date is quite late enough. The question usually arises: which of the rarer...

increase, not wholly assisted even by the war, in the making of new sorts of fruit, though some of the old have been allowed to vanish. For example, in the best of all the...

of the afflictions of readers of The Spectator. When he pontifically tells Mr. Sevin or Mr. Churchill how to do better what they are already doing very well, it may be endured....

A Too Public Life Tins two-volume biography of the first Lord Reading by his son is a convincing argument in favour of one-volume biographies. It is rarely indeed that in such...

• The • Laurel and the Thorn: A study of G. F. Watts. By Ronald Chapman. (Faber and Faber. 18s.) THIS is a readable and interesting biography, but one cannot help feeling...

God and the Atom. By Ronald Knox. (Sheed and Ward. '78. 6c1.) THE debate about the unannounced use of atomic energy to destroy Hiroshima—a debate already raging among our...

THE sub-title of this book is rather misleading. Mr. Melville deals with the events it indicates little more adequately than at least one other war correspondent. His record is...

The Dorking Thigh. By William Plomer. (Cape. 3s. 6d.) Tins collection of Mr. Warner's poetry includes poems selected from an earlier book published in 1937 and a new sonnet...

NOTHING is harder to achieve than the complete resume of a country's art in twenty-five quarto pages, even if one is aided by forty repro- ductions in monochrome and some rather...

THERE are two themes in The Readiness is All, separate but closely interwoven. The one is the character sketch of Rupert, Lieutenant, captain of an M.T.B., tall handsome,...

Nu field College Social Reconstruction Survey. Voluntary Social Services. Edited by A. F. C. Bourdillon. (Methuen. 16s.) THE editor of this important volume and its numerous...

The Living Thoughts of Clausewitz. Presented by Lt.-Col. Joseph I. Greene, U.S.A. (Cassell. 3s. 6d.) IN his introduction to this book General Fuller rightly says that few...

the sender of the first correct solution of this week's crossword to be opened after noon on Tuesday week, yenstary ist. Envelopes must be received not later than first post...

winner of Crossword No. 352 is W. T. WOOD, ESQ., 12, Leyburn Grove, Shipley, Yorks.

By CUSTOS IT is now clear that those who hoped that the dollar loan agreement would set the stock markets on fire were thinking wishfully. So far from showing exuberance,...

THE NATIONAL BANK OF SCOTLAND, LIMITED ANNUAL MEETING The 120th annual general meeting of the proprietors of Thi National Bank of Scotland, Limited, was held in the bank's...

BARCLAYS BANK (DOMINION, COLONIAL AND OVERSEAS) NEW OVERSEAS CORPORATION THE ordinary general meeting of Barclays Bank (Dominion, Colonial and Overseas) will be held at 29,...