1T is possible to welcome wholeheartedly the Anglo- rt German naval agreement and at the same time to understand the hesitations of the French in regard to it. The French set...

The most important piece of news that has issued from Tokyo in the past week is the warning of Mr. Takahashi, the Finance Minister, that a naval military expenditure which at...

fact that a voluntary limitation agreement has actually been concluded—the only one since the War except for the Washington and London naval treaties, and the only one in which...

news of the railway disaster at Welwyn Garden City last Saturday was all the greater because of the consistently high level of security achieved by British railways, which...

subject of prolonged and heated discussion between the workers', employers' and Government delegates at the Interna- tional Labour Conference, and has resulted in the adoption...

can be looked for under present world conditions, but it is satisfactory to note that the improvement of the last year was main- tained in the month of May, in respect both of...

Labour Conference dealt with the special subject of hours of work in coal-mines, and also adopted unanimously, after interesting speeches from representatives of British...

expressing himself with some vigour on the wastage of effort resulting from , the failure of various persons and organizations, particularly the schools, to take full advantage...

had the rare oppor- tunity of hearing the future of India discussed by a Secretary of State with personal experience of Indian administration. Lord Zetland, in his first speech...

have been curiously " dead." In the days before the War they afforded the greatest liveliness of the summer session. They continued over many weeks, there were all night...

has stepped from a Parliamentary Private Secretary- ship to the Parliamentary Secretaryship at the Ministry of Labour, probably the most important of the Under- Seeretaryships....

series of questions were answered by a Junior Whip. It occurs to me that a much better practice in the absence of the Minister of a Department, where as in the case of the...

the Chancellor of the Exchequer should on Tuesday have declared himself ready to consider in principle a small reduction of the entertain- ment-tax on theatres where an...

observer of Parliament soon becomes an expert on the varying notes of enthusiasm, polite indifference, merciless irony or downright dislike conveyed in the " hear-hears " with...

Leeds Universities has Made recommendations which may be the ,beginning - of the end of the tyranny which Matriculation exam- inations have exercised in secondary schools. An...

have accepted conversion into Anti-Aircraft Defence Units have made no small sacrifice in cutting themselves off from their associates in their divisional organizations. On the...

T HE sanctions problem is gradually forcing itself on public attention in discussions on war and peace. That is no new thing. Article XVI of the Covenant of the League of...

IT must be no small grati fi cation to Sir George -I- Newman, lately retired from the post of Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education, to see the principles for which he...

Cambridge is getting near enough now - to quicken up speculation on the result. Whether there is any precedent for a double election I do not know. There are certainly not many....

W HAT strikes the eye about Mr. Baldwin's list of junior appointments is that the so-called Young Conser- vatives have come off rather badly. The Prime Minister put their...

in London, and by no means all his time and energy were devoted to the naval negotiations. lie has .taken the opportunity to inform himself very accurately about British...

reputation, which was con- siderable, in the last few weeks. It is a pity, for he is a most able journalist. He was that before the Fascist regime canie into existence, and...

rather remarkable passage in the recent Life of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Wester Wemyss, by Lady Wester Wemyss. If so, I have missed the reference. Lady Wester Wemyss, after...

with the fine and simple things of life—birth, love and death. The plot 'is concerned with the strange repetition of the same situation from generation to generation. Yes, they...

been expressed more than once, and the death of his close friend Sir Horace Avory while still in active work as a High Court Judge will no doubt strengthen it; The inference is...

By PETER GURNEY T HE future of the B.B.C. is in the melting-pot. There is nothing sensational about that observa- tion. It is a plain statement of fact. The Corporation's Royal...

By PROFESSOR A. BERRIEDALE KEITH I T is surprising how little appreciation has been shown of the far-reaching character of the decision delivered by the Privy Council a...

By J. R. GLORNEY BOLTON N OW that the Government of India Bill is to reach the Statute Book, a few people will bewail the passing of the British raj. In English life, however,...

By HORACE G. ALEXANDER O NE of Herr Hitler's main demands is that Germany should be assured of " full legal equality." And people are asking what he means. Equality has been...

By STANLEY UNWIN I CELAND ! Whatever makes you want to go to Iceland? was the question invariably put to me when I mentioned where I intended spending the summer holidays....

By BARBARA WORSLEY-GOUGH I HAVE often wondered what people mean when they say, " I am very fond of music." It always seems to me that one might as well say, " I do like books,"...

By ROSE MACAULAY W HO, I wonder, are those stirrers of storms in tea- cups who devote themselves to picking up the words which drop from the lips of public utterers and...

"G Men." At the Regal WHAT impression of modern American life would this film give to a Robinson Crusoe, newly returned from twenty years on a desert island ? He would stagger...

Russian Ballet at Covent Garden DE Bits' es Russian ballet season at Covent Garden is now in full swing. For a time both opera and ballet were occupying the theatre. It is easy...

Old Masters THE June crop of Old Master exhibitions is abnormally large this year : miscellaneous collections at Knoedler's and Colnaghi's, English eighteenth-century...

comedy. It belongs to the sane class as Shakespeare's historical plays, though it has less coherence even than the most episodic of his " Chronicles." Igor goes off to the wars,...

that science has discovered and producers have employed none has advanced so steadily in range as the dust of the derris. Some fresh details of its peculiarly interesting...

Science and the Farm That greatest of all agricultural stations, Rottamsted, near Harpenden, enjoyed its annual function this week with that ardent and expert husbandman, Lord...

of the wholesale severity of the May frosts quite so official as a notice from the National Rose Society that it has been forced to abandon the June show. This, as French...

the fewness of the swallows appears in the Bath Chronicle, which is one of the most pleasantly edited of local papers. A few swallows were with us very early, but the great...

A plant of the same genus, with like properties, has been found also in Peru. Derris, pyrethrum and tobacco are the plants which supply the best defences against insect plagues....

we make a grave mistake when we feed our tits with fat or coconut at this time of year. A very acute observer has in her garden a nesting-box full of very greedy youngsters. The...

This discovery of dcrris was of course a minor event, a mere by-product. Dr. Durham was a member of the Ross expe- ditions, whose joint discoveries, as someone said, have saved...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] Sra,—In reference to your leading article I suggest that the Joint Committee take a wholly unjustifiable line on the question of admission to...

[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...

article on Marriage and the Church of England a sort of regretful surprise is expressed that Convocation does nothing to bring its ideas of marriage into line with the most...

as to your reasonable chal- lenge to the equity and common sense of the majority report of our Bishops on the new ruling with regard to divorce. It will only lower the prestige...

[To the Editor of TILE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Signor Mussolini tells the world that, " We will imitate to the letter those who are giving us a lesson. They have shown that when it was...

Sin,—Your cogent article on " The Church and Divorce " might have carried 'its argument even further by pointing out the essentially materialistic attitude of the Church in this...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Many of those who have read and admired Mr. G. T. Garratt's new Life of Brougham must, like myself, have regretted that it was reviewed in...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—May I as an Australian be permitted to comment on a few points in Mr. Ammon's letter in your issue of June 14th ? Mr. Ammon, citing the...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR, What are the chief drawbacks in modern life ? Surely " noise "is one of the greatest. Who has not been unpleasantly aroused by the early •...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Illness has prevented me from writing earlier in strong support of your correspondent, Mr. F. W. Tanner, of May 17th. He emphasizes the...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—On Thursday, June 27th, at the Royal Albert Hall, London, we are to learn the final figures in the Ballot on the League of Nations and...

[D'un correspondent fran5ais] L'AVENUE triomphale de Paris, Is celebre voie des Champs,. Elysees, subit actuellement une evolution exceptionnelle, laquelle parait d'autant plus...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Mr. Thompson's reply to my review of his biography of Ralegh calls for comment in a few particulars. The misspelling of Berrio's name as...

[To the Editor of TIIE SPECTATOR.] SIR,--I am glad to see that you published my letter about. the Listener in your June 7th issue. But someone changed my " censorial " to "...

By SIR FREDERICK WHYTE ASIA escapes all our categories. And, of the Asiatic countries none is more baffling to measure by Western standards than . Japan : peculiarly so,...

In Defence of Democracy. By J. S. Fulton and C. R. Morris. (Methuen. 5s.) IN the last year or two many knights errant have been has- tening to the rescue of democracy, but...

Quack, Quack ! By Leonard Woolf. (Hogarth Press. 7s. 6d.) Ma. LEONARD WOOLF is an attractive writer on any subject. When he lets hiniself go as a satirist, calling in the...

Anglicanism : the Thought and Practice of the Church c f England, Illustrated from the religious literature of the seventeenth century. Compiled and edited by Paul Elmer More...

Toynbee Hall : Fifty Years of Social Progress. By J. A. R. IN a preface to Mr. Pimlott's admirably written history, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was himself closely asso-...

idealised a very different type of mistress, was the living human Jane and not the creation of Balzac's fertile brain, is certain." My sympathies are with the printer who, in a...

" A wurrra," Mr. Maugham declares in these " variations on some Spanish themes," " is not made by nne -book, but bbr a body of work. It will not be of equal value ; his boo*;...

RILKE is an impOrtant modern poet, and it is to be hoped that this translation will extend his influence to modern English poetry. Mr. Leishman has patience, understanding,...

By WILLIAM PLOMER IT is a good test of a novelist's merit to find out exactly what power he has to transfigure the commonplace ; to isolate it, as a picture is isolated in its...

By Ethel Carleton Williams But not, to be frank, an ideal companion. For one thing Miss Williams never writes about Oxfordshire, but only about churches and great houses and...

By William H. Ukers These .two--bulky volumes- (New--fork : Tea and Coffee Trade Journal,. $25) form a companion study to the monu- mental treatise on Coffee that Mr. Ukers...

POEMS OF TOMORROW Compiled by Janet Adam Smith This well printed and 'carefully produced book (Chatto and Windus, 5s.) is an anthology compiled from poems printed in The...

_ By R. A. J. Wallin - Devon is crowded with history, and Cornwall crowded with romance, and Devon and 'Cornwall together make 4 the Westeountry—in one word; pace_Mi. -...

By Osbert Burdett Mr. Burdett's new book (Chapman and Hall, 12s. 6d.) is not an autobiography of an ordinary design. Mr. Burdett is now in his fiftieth year, and in " these...

have received by a single post no fewer than four letters from readers of The Spectator, asking me the same questions about certain types of Continental and American cars, and...

-Trade Improverhent - THERE is rather a .tendeney just. now in the ,popular Press to emphasize every favourable point in the economic situation and to ignore or to minimize...

INVESTMENT STOCKS STRONG. CONSIDERABLE activity has characterized the Stock Markets during the past week, and although prices have moved some- what irregularly, a feature has...

Sir Stephen Killik, the Present Lord Mayor, can be con- gratulated on the report just issued of the Colthrop Board and Paper Company, of which he is Chairman. The profit for the...

A considerable stimulus to the market for _Oil Shares was given some few weeks ago by the increase in the dividend of the " Shell " Transport and Trading Company from 711. per...

Not the least hopeful point in the present industrial situation is the recovery which is taking place in the Iron and Steel Industry. The Report recently issued by Guest, Keen...

Foreign competition notwithstanding, Mr. A. Ralph Reed, Chairman and Managing Director of Albert E. Reed and Co., was able, at the recent annual meeting, to present a very...

The fortunes of Willoughby's Consolidated Company are so closely linked with those of Southern Rhodesia that it is encouraging to note that at the recent annual meeting Colonel...

The latest report of the Norwich District Provident Permanent Benefit Building Society is a satisfactory one, showing an expansion for the year ended January 8th last which is...

Considerable steadiness has characterized the record of earnings of Scribbans and Company. Last year the profit was £228,944, compared with £226,163 in the previous year. The...

present time is the number of excellent reports issued by the leading home industrial concerns. In particular, I would draw attention to the very fine report just issued by the...