24 JUNE 1949

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The Chinese and the West

The Spectator

The Nationalist forces in China, owing allegiance to no one quite knows whom, having sustained decisive defeat in the field, are now assisting their enemies by alienating any...

A PROMISE FROM PARIS

The Spectator

- The results of the Paris meeting, although consistent with a Russian wish for a minimum settlement to ease the growing economic difficulties in Eastern Germany, have curiously...

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South Africa Boiling Up

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It becomes clearer every day that the Nationalist Government of Dr. Malan has decided to drop even the pretence of moderation. It is pressing on with its iniquitous Citizenship...

Tourists and Holidays

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If the numbers of visitors arriving in Britain were the only criterion, then it would be true to say that the tourist industry deserved all the applause that it gets as this...

Coal Costs

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By the crudest standard of all—the tonnage of coal produced— the performance of the nationalised British coal industry in 1948 as set out in - the report of the Coal Board was...

New Push in Eastern Europe

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Once again a slight Communist retreat in front of the Iron Curtain is being accompanied by a ruthless strengthening of the prepared positions behind it. In Hungary the purge of...

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AT WESTMINSTER

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The House then passed to a debate raised by the Liberal Nationals on the Tourist and Holiday Industries. The President of the Board of Trade agreed that it was a valuable...

Colonial Citizens

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The "Colonial Month" inaugurated by the King on Wednesday will no doubt fulfil its purpose reasonably well in imbuing a section of the people of Great Britain with fuller...

The Unions Hold Their Fire

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For the moment the railwaymen have stopped all strikes and go-slow movements while their unions negotiate with the Railway Executive. But it would be a short-sighted...

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THE SIZE OF THE FAMILY

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V ALUABLE and comprehensive as the report of the Royal Commission on Population is, it is not very clear why it should have taken five years to produce it. The reason for the...

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The appointment of Mr. John Coatman, North Regional Director of

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the B.B.C. and formerly Director of Public Information in India, to be Director of Research in the Social Sciences at St. Andrews University is of interest both in itself and...

With all the to and fro of argument about the

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de-rationing and possible re-rationing of sweets no one seems to know what the real explanation of this unlooked-for rapacity for sweets is. The increase of the ration from...

A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK

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HEN the Dean of Winchester said in the Church Assembly on Monday that the overwhelming majority of Church- men were profoundly grateful to the Archbishops of Canterbury and...

" A plain and sober formula enabled Sir Stamford Raffles

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in 1819 to transform the desolate island of Singapore into a world market- place almost overnight. Some twenty years later at Hongkong, the formula worked no less magically. Its...

One of the most agreeable aspects of the visit of

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a Dominion cricket team to this country is the effect it has on Sir Stanley Holmes, National Liberal M.P. for Harwich. Sir Stanley ascribes his pas- sionate interest in cricket...

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THE CANADIAN ELECTION

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By J. A. STEVENSON N EXT Monday Canada's eight million-odd voters will elect a new Federal House of Commons, whose member- ship has been increased from 245 to 262 by the...

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DOCTORS AND ARBITRATION

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By A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT A NEW crisis is blowing up between the Minister of Health and the doctors which may well have repercussions for professional workers in general....

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FRANCE'S COMMUNISTS

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By TANYA MATTHEWS Paris A SOVIET Russian, observing the Communist Party of one of the countries outside the Iron Curtain, feels rather like a grown-up who, having found by...

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Colonial Prospect

The Spectator

PROJECTING THE COLONIES By EDWARD HODGKIN K ITH a very few exceptions the colonies are tropical or sub-tropical." This is one of the earliest snippets of information gleaned...

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ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO

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" England " I why, who cares for her—except the Chartists? Perhaps Lord John Russell does ; because the House of Bedford stands upon England, as the world does upon the tortoise...

AIR, EAR AND EYE .

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By KENNETH BAILY CCUSING the Government of dilatoriness in advancing British television may soon become an electioneering gambit, as Mr. Brendan Bracken indicated at Dumbarton...

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HEREDITY THE lines of his young face Stained by brief

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April tears Show how love's features thrust Up from the long-dead years, And in his eyes I trace The resurrected dust ; The same remembered grace Lives on through flesh and...

Undergraduate Page

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NEVER AGAIN By IAN CRICHTON, King's College (Cambridge) T HE creamy whiteness of parachute silk against a background of deep-blue sky is a beautiful and inspiring sight. To...

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MARGINAL COMMENT

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By HAROLD NICOLSON I HAVE been reading this week, and not without pity and terror, the Erinnerungen, or Memoirs, of the late Richard von Kiblmann, which have been published in a...

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Two MUSKETEERS? Two * Blind Mice? It would be perfectly possible, yet

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even as we concede the possibility we are conscious that there lacketh something still. " We take no note of T4rrie," the poet Young remarks, " but from its loss." Can this be...

CONTEMPORARY ARTS

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THE THEATRE The Tempest." (Performed by the O.U.D.S. at Oxford.) THIS is by no means the first summer in which Shakespeare has established a bridgehead on the bosky littoral of...

THE CINEMA

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,‘ Whisky Galore." (Gaumont and Marble Arch Pavilion.)---- Kind Hearts and Coronets." (Leicester Square Theatre.) " A RED-LETTER day," noted my colleague not much more than a...

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MUSIC

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DURING the last week we have heard two works of which their com- posers said that they contained the best of which they were capable. Elgar's Dream of Geronlius and Satie's...

ART

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THE face of Europe has changed since Sir Francis Rose was dis- covered by Miss Gertrude Stein, and the face of Sir Francis's painting has changed scarcely less. As one or two...

Traditional Art of the Colonies THE exhibition of the traditional

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art of the British Colonies which was opened at the Royal Anthropological Institute, 21, Bedford Square, on Tuesday, and will remain on view until July zoth, is not only an...

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

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THE RIVAL MINDS Stn,—There must be many weary readers in this weary world who (even before they may have read Mr. Alexander Werth's delightful brochure, Musical Uproar in...

A GERMAN YOUTH GROUP Sin,—Talking and writing about the "

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problem of German youth" continues, and it has become a commonplace that one of the major difficulties in the rebuilding of Western Europe lies in the Allies' approach to the...

ORTHODOX JEWS IN PALESTINE SIR, With the discussion now going

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on with regard to the inter- nationalisation of the entire area of Jerusalem is bound up the matter of the rights of minorities, Moslem and Christian. I would urge that the...

GERMANY'S TIMBER RESOURCES sift,—It is not only the dismantling of

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industry which causes economic wastage and a growing sense of frustration and bitterness in Germany. The dismantling of the forests acts in the same way. Deaf ears have been...

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FAMILY PLANNING

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Stn,—The Royal Commission on Population, in its recently published report, accepts the principle of voluntary parenthood as not only inevitable but desirable, since any return...

THE STARS AND STRIPES IN ENGLAND

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Snt,—In the Spectator of June 17th Mr. Henry J. Cadbury writes from Boston, Massachusetts, where, he informs us, the tradition prevails that the ' Bedford,' owned by the Quaker...

THE 'FRENCH COMMUNISTS

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SIR, —May I intrude , on your space once more, just to vindicate myse from the charge that I think myself " entitled to give suggestions to tt French Government " ? In my...

FAR EASTERN POLICY

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Sm,—Until I read the letter to the Spectator of Mr. Ashton Greene, of Princeton University, I had considered the principle of self-determination so firmly established in the...

IMPROVING THE BIBLE

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SIR, —Some fifty-odd years ago, when I was the navigator of a sailing ship, my old• friend the boatswain had a Cromwellian aptitude for always finding a suitable quotation from...

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Prickly Defence This play was interrupted recently by real drama.

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The dog was on ahead. I could heat him snuffling, nose forward through the grass, some fifty yards down the lane. The night was calm after wind, and my ears were accordingly...

COUNTRY LIFE

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HABITUAL practices are as fruitful in the country as elsewhere. It is my custom to take a stroll down the steep lane between the cherry orchard and the apple orchard every night...

EXAMINATION FEES

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Sra,—I am glad that in his reference to examination fees, in the Spectator of June 10th, Janus mentioned that these are payable at independent schools but that no charge is made...

SPECTATOR

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SUBSCRIPTION RATES Oseinary edition to any address in the World. . . 52 weeks Ll 10s. Od. 26 weeks 15s Od Air Mail to any Country in Europe. 26 weeks £1 3s. 9d. 52 weeks £2 Ts....

In the Garden The drought of last winter is making

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itself felt now that the hot weather has come. The cherries look harsh and crabbed, and I am wondering how sparse the crop will be, in spite of the miraculous way in which the...

The Nightingales An the protests died away, Ise June night-sounds

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returned, like the reflections to a pond that has been disturbed by a stone. Once more the night-jar, the crickets, the faint eolian lipping in the telephone wires—and the...

SONGS AND ANNOUNCERS

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Sin,—I wish to protest against the growing custom of the B.B.C. of supplying a sort of precis translation of foreign songs. It is becoming more irritating every day. If the...

" THE CROSSNESS

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Sm,—Your reviewer of ht. Charles Graves's book . on Ireland contradicts his statement that the troubled times in Southern Ireland were known as " The Crossness." Our Irish...

ENLARGED SHEDS

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cannot follow Mr. Nicolson's argrment about our railway termini. He seems to disapprove of their resemblance to enlarged sheds. But he approves of the principle that industrial...

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Whirlwind. By Stephen Clissold. (The Cresset Press- .1.5s),,

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MR. CLISSOLD is to be congratulated on this boolt. Without over- "; complicating or over-simplifying the issues he has made the Tito, Mihailovich conflict intelligible. This is...

BOOKS OF THE DAY

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Going, Going . . . ? The English Middle Classes. By Roy Lewis and Angus Maude. (Phoenix House. 15s.) NOBODY," say the authors of this excellent book, "has ever found a...

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Blake Marginalia

The Spectator

Blake Studies. By Geoffrey Keynes. (Rupert Hart-Davis. 42s.) BLAIC.E scholarship owes more to Mr. Keynes than to any other living writer. It is fair to say, indeed, that without...

King's Friend

The Spectator

The Jenkinson Papers, 1760-1766. Edited by Ninetta S. bicker. (Macmillan. 28s.) "ABLE, shrewd, timid, cautious and dark ": so Horace Walpole summed up Charles Jenkinson, for...

Page 22

The Health Service Explained

The Spectator

THOSE who, seeing the name of Dr. Charles Hill on the title-page of this book, look for the earthy humours of the Radio Doctor, will be bitterly disappointed. In all its 433...

The Groundlings and the Great

The Spectator

IT is no disrespect to the dramatic critic of the Daily Telegraph to say that this is a surprisingly good book. Works dealing with the theatre and written by dramatic critics...

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The Russian Enigma

The Spectator

Stalin's Russia. By S. Labia. Introduction by Arthur Koestler. (Gollancz. 21s.) MME. LABIN'S Stalin's Russia is a work of enormous and painstaking erudition. It runs to nearly...

A French Boy

The Spectator

As Little Children. By Marc Bernard. (Dennis Dobson. 12s. 6d.) THIS book of boyhood memories, which earned the Prix Goncourt in France, is written in a fiction technique of...

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Selected Reprints

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THE Cresset Press has done good service to literature by undertaking the publication of the series of reprints supervised by Mr. John . Hayward' under the title of the Cresset...

Fiction

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The Moment of Truth. By Storm Jameson. (Macmillan. 7s.6d.) A Sort of Traitors. By Nigel Balchin. (Collins. 9s. 6d.) Chit of a Girl. By Georges Simenon. (Routledge. 9s. 6d.) Two...

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SOLUTION TO CROSSWORD No. 533 SOLUTION ON JULY 8

The Spectator

The winner of Crossword No. 533 is: N. C. MORTON, ESQ., 6, Crescent Road, Stafford.

c‘ THE SPECTATOR " CROSSWORD No. 535 [A Book Token

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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, 7uly 5th. Envelopes must be received...

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FINANCE AND INVESTMENT

The Spectator

By CUSTOS ONCE the stock markets begin to crumble there is no telling how far the weakness will spread. This week the liquidity complex of investors has brought heavy falls,...