/ T is clear that the visit of the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary to Paris has completely fulfilled its purpose, which was not to conclude new agreements—there was never...

The gesture of recalling the Egyptian Ambassador in London has been made, but the only result of it will be to weaken Egypt diplomatically. It is illogical that, at a moment...

As December 27th draws nearer, and the 30 days allowed for the conclusion of an armistice on the present battle-line run out, the Panmunjom talks take on the character of a race...

Indo-China is one of the subjects which have come up for dis- cussion between the British and French Ministers in Paris this week. It is undoubtedly true that a close...

The conversation between Dr. Donges, recalled from his leader- ship of the South African delegation at the United Nations Assembly, and Dr. Malan this week may affect more than...

The two cases which have come into the news this week of a clash between the authorities interested in the preservation of natural beauty and those charged with the supply .of...

and instalment of principal on the American and Canadian loans will be paid in full sounded like news from another world, so unfamiliar has become the conception of a...

OR a moment, perhaps a week, thoughts of Christmas take F priority over thoughts of the cold war. The two are closely linked. This is for many people a hard Christmas because of...

Daily Mirror seems a new idea. Is it going to mean a new Daily Mirror ? Is it, in particular, going to mean a weakening of the Mirror's consistent support of the Labour Party ?...

deficiency is inconsistent with a - high degree of education and culture. Spelling, good or bad, one of them suggests, js a congenital quality ; if you can't spell you can...

or two volumes of the new Baedeker on Germany have, I believe, appeared already. But the one on London was only published last week (by Allen and Unwin at 15s.). It has the old...

on successive days will throw many people's minds back to the earliest phase of the League of Nations. The former, I think, will live in history by his earlier name of Sir Eric...

I T may be necessary sooner or later to co-ordinate the various organisations existing to promote Anglo-German friendship in one way and another. Meanwhile it is encouraging to...

same thing and get totally different impressions of it. The versatile and anony- mous " Atticus " in the Sunday Times asserted categorically this week that to switch 'on...

By D. R. GILLIE Paris T HE French National Assembly's vote approving ratifica- tion of the Schuman Plan Treaty (officially Treaty for the Creation of a European Community of...

By GEORGE BRINSMEAD I T is now midsuthmer in the South Atlantic, and a busy time on the windswept, moorland sheep-ranches of the Falkland Islands. This is the season, too, when...

By G. W. MITCHELL* M AN-POWER in our mines has been steadily falling for the past thirty years. Sufficient new entrants into the mines are not forthcoming (particularly from the...

By Dr. F. BRITTAIN U NTIL some, quarter of a century ago our village church was lighted entirely by paraffin, except that there were, of course, candles on the altars and that...

1. Where do ? a. Men dye their beards alizerine. b. The old plain men have rosy faces. c. Thousand eyeballs under hoods Have you by the hair. Where are ? d. Things done...

By PROFESSOR D. W. BROGAN HAT has been for years a subject of bitter controversy among the leaders of the international air-lines has, apparently, been settled. The air-lines...

THOU who didst not scorn the Manger .For Thy bed ; Thou who findest the world's Inn Still tenanted By self and pride, by passions thronged And sin— No room for Thee within:...

By HAROLD NICOLSON I N a newspaper the other day I read a report that the directors of. Madame Tussaud's exhibition of waxworks, being desirous of producing a portrait group of...

A Place in the Sun." (Plaza.)--“ Double Dynamite." (Gaumont • and Marble Arch Pavilion.)—“ M." (London Pavilion.) A Place in the Sun received panegyrical notices in America,...

THEATRE C010Mbee " By Jean Anouilh. (New.) MANAGEMENTS cannot import M. Anouilh's plays fast enough, and that is all to the good ; in many respects he is ate most consistently...

ODE ON THE LATE COUP D'ETAT IN FRANCE Let loose thy hell-hounds, man of blood, But not against the foe- 'Gainst those who in thy quarrel stood Not three short years ago ;...

The hooters drove away the hooves, outside ; The policeman changed his uniform and shed His beard: but inside, through the years, still dwelt The rosy priestesses who baked and...

"Donald of the Burthens." (Covent Garden.) MASSINE'S eagerly awaited Scottish ballet, Donald of the Burthens, was presented at Covent Garden last week. With such good material...

LAST Sunday's concert in the excellent series of Museum Gallery Concerts at the Victoria and Albert Museum, being shared this year by the English Opera Group and the Boyd Neel...

of f5 was offered for ostensibly seasonable Christmas greetings, in Christmas-card form, for two of the following : the Income-tax Collector, your M.P., your Secretary, a Modern...

Set by John Clarke In 1620 Isaac Duckett bequeathed a sum of f400, the interest from which was to be distributed annually for the benefit " of poor Maid Servants (within the...

Sta,--I have no desire to enter into the discussion regarding the future of Cyprus. Lord Winster's letter, however, compels me to ask the hospitality of your columns in order to...

Rent Tribunals Sm.—Parliament is shortly to examine the Furnished Houses (Rent Con- trol) Act. In 1946 an Act was necessary. Its purpose was to fix reason- able rents. It...

Sut,—In your article Badgering Britain you do not mention M. Spaak's patience over the last few years_ Because he feared Britain would not come into a European federation he did...

SIR,—Janus is a trifle hard on people who would like to spell, but simply cannot. May I use myself as an example ? Because my visual sense is far more highly developed than my...

SIR, —Mr. Hincliffe has plenty to say about what may be called the decor of imported foreign fruit, but nothing at all about its taste and quality. Nor does he mention the fact...

SIR, —Your contributor in.Country Life, December 7th, makes this state- ment: "A light Ferguson tractor would obviously have been far the better implement against packing [the...

SIR, —I was much interested in the letter which appeared in the Spectator • of November 23rd. I am writing froM Wales, and this letter has reminded me of the disestablishment...

MONSIEUR L'EDITEUR,—JC me permets de vous faire connaitre .que nous sommes des millions de Francais " Unrepentant Petainists." Nous n'en conservons pas moins une profonde amitie...

Sat,—Twenty years ago, my son, aged six, and my daughter, aged four, both needed for the first time in towel " to spend a penny." I -pressed the penny into my son's palm, and...

A straw, they say, shows which way the wind blows. I use straw on my little property for many other purposes than mattressing straw- berries, but for the first time over many...

Sia.—The National Union of Students views the Ministry of Education circular 242 with very considerable conbern, not only because of specific points contained therein, but more...

is not self-righteous, and safer, to hit a man when he cannot reply, after previous praise?—Yours faithfully, ALBAN F. L. BACON. The Malt House, Burghclere, Newbury', Berks....

ONE result of dyeing the tail-feathers of the wild geese caught in rocket nets by the Severn Wildfowl Trust on the Dumbles has been to discover the extreme variability of their...

Silt,—Referring to Mr. Pardey's record in your issue of December 7th, I am able to claim an even longer record. My grandfather (who was baptised and married at St. Margaret's...

My mention of a thunderstorm in late November upsetting the birds provoked a comment as to whether winter thunderstorms are not abnormal. Possibly, but what of the following...

SIR,—When playing Piquet last week there occurred, in the first two consecutive parties, a carte blanche, a pique, a repique, a capote and a rubjoon. Does this constitute a...

Though I have not yet been challenged, I think I was mistaken in my autumn note that the clematis flammula or Maiden's Bower, belonging not among the ten main groups_ but to the...

Canada (Canadian ' Magazine Post) Id.

Last Enchantments Speak, Memory: A Memoir. By Vladimir Nabokov. (Gollancz. 16s.) tr is always agreeable to read about the childhood of the rich. A childhood of the...

Principles of Social and Political Theory. By Ernest Barker. (Oxford University Press. 2 ss.) SIR ERNEST BARKER suggests that this elaborated version of the course of lectures...

Drink. (An Economic and Social Study. By Hermann Levy, (Routledge and Kegan Paul. 2Is.) IT is not drinking (except when one is about to drive a car) but excessive drinking that...

THERE was a time when biographies were wfltten piously to com- memorate the lives of great and worthy men, or men believed to be great and worthy. Today they are sometimes...

IT is surely time that Oscar Wilde ceased to be treated either as a pathological specimen or as a noble (if heretical) martyr, a kind of modern Albigensian. What is really...

Memoirs of the Life of John Constable. By C. R. Leslie, R.A. Edited by Jonathan Mayne. (Phaidon. i zs. 6d.) CONSTABLE is one of the few famous painters about whose private life...

ON March 6th of this year Ivor Novello died. The loss to our theatre cannot yet be estimated ; it is too soon to assess the value of his work or measure his stature as an...

THERE is nothing in the world so rare as a popular novel for educated women. For men there are available • detection and adventure at the highest cultural levels ; but if we...

(Christmas, 1894) This 'ere's a blink in' place, 221-B: You carn't do nothink right, mostly because 'Oo wants when, and what ? Cawfee ? Early tea ? When I listened, snoring a...

From the Angle of Eighty - Eight. By Eden Phillpotts. (Hutchinson. los. 6d.) • IN a book of reminiscences which tells us next to nothing about himself, Mr. Eden Phillpotts...

is its dust- jacket. With its bad reproduction of a singularly uninspired "still," it might have been designed for one of those reprints advertised as " The Book of the Film."...

Timber Building in England from Early e , Times to the end of the 17th Century. By Fred H. Crossley. (Batsford. 3os.) THIS is a long account, profusely illustrated, of the many...

on showing that the captains who served under Nelson were, in more than a sentimental sense, " a band of brothers," Mr. Kennedy selects for his purpose the records of fourteen...

Elkin has made an entertaining little book, which Mr. Robert Turner has decorated, out of the ludicrous synopses of opera plots written in extraordinary "Foreigner's English "...

(Harrap. r Es.) Miss BOWEN'S choice of the principal hotel in Dublin as the subject for a history, or perhaps the hotel's choice of Miss Bowen as historian, is not happy. The...

By CUSTOS AFTER the storm, a calm. At long last the gilt-edged market is able to 'take a much- needed breather and, at the moment, is .attempting, with some success, to...

IA Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution opened after noon on Tuesday week, January 1st, addressed Crossword, 99 Gower Street,...

o Et rimm M onmn om n mnmn ori nri ti© n rl m mmonnm a mnrrannmm onnormn anommmmnemmn !.4 VII VI 71 11 ininnurnmonim mmmonmvi rinmarrinma `.:IfJ2A7 1 .0 rimtimsm e . 1mnmura...