T HE decision to remove the headquarters of the Soviet civil government from Moscow to a town farther east is what we have been led to expect in the event of the German armies...

The torpedoing of the United States destroyer ` Kearny' 350 miles south-west of Iceland was announced by the Navy Department at Washington last Friday. It has since transpired...

Those who call glibly for spectacular offensives on the Western front while the Germans are concentrating on Russia are apt to give less credit than is due to the effective...

Indications from Italian sources that the British attack on Gondar, the last centre of Italian resistance in Ethiopia, is being pressed now that the rains are ending, are a...

Lord Woolton's offer to make school-meals available to all children promises to constitute another landmark in the history of the social services—for no one can imagine that the...

There could be no more remarkable evidence of the changed attitude of the workers to this, as compared with any other, war than the resolution passed at a conference of about...

It is often the case that when Marshal Petain assumes the patriarchal role of monitor to his people, requiring them to make atonement for their sins, the measures which he...

The Home Secretary has been sharply called to account by members of all parties in the House of Commons for his action in not allowing Mr. McGovern to go to Northern Ireland to...

HEN Japan changes her Government a good rule is to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. That rule seems particularly applicable to last week's supersession of Prince...

the Minister of Works and Buildings, in a week - end speech, that German casualties on the Russian front amount, " on a conservative estimate," to 4,000,000, is startling , even...

the eve of the anniversary of Trafalgar, I came on a passage which drove home rather vividly the realities of a sailor's life at the turn of the eighteenth century. Three months...

DOW STREET always has been, and no doubt always will be, the most famous police-court in the world. At this moment it is doubly denuded. The death of the Chief Magistrate, Sir...

Nelson himself, who predicted for himself " a peerage or Westminster Abbey," got the former (though only a vis- county, not an earldom) and instead of the latter St. Paul's. The...

m an , villages and towns as receptacles for household waste which has the potentialities of bacon inherent in it. I am in danger of becoming a rather similar...

haps the greatest living Jew, Dr Chaim Weizmann was pay- ing a tribute which many people, including, I suspect, Justice Brandeis, would have paid to him himself. But Brandeis...

THE CAUCASUS DANGER By STRATEGICUS T will be over three weeks since the launching of the fourth I offensive against Russia before this article appears, and it is no easier now...

By SIR JOHN PRATT [" Every effort must be made to implement the unshakable national policy of establishing the Greater East Asia c_ prosperity Sphere by disposing of the China...

By ERWIN III HE news from America is really quite simple. Our I undeclared war against Hitler goes on, with the repeal of parts or all of the Neutrality Act just around the...

By LIEUT.-COLONEL S. J. M. SAMPSON A S a Battalion-Commander in the Home Guard I find myself up against many of the difficulties and problems with which as a Territorial...

ever necessary for readers to place a firm order for The Spectator with a newsagent or direct with the publishing office at 99 Gower St., London, W.C.

sought no scape- goats and have affirmed that our war-innocence is proved by the fact that we were unprepared for war. The injustice which at one moment we did to King Leopold...

By HAROLD NICOLSON UMANE writers, from .Chaucer to Proust, have been fascinated by the mutability of human fortunes, as by the ges wrought, decade by decade, in the fabric and...

whom I met in Constantinople. He was called de Pratt and was in some way connected with the Montijo family. He told me that when, after 1879, the Empress was allowed by the...

period in which it was cast. I realised with something of shock that the book was not merely about the Quartier Latin t about Paris under Napoleon III. Sebastopol and Balaklava...

private school, and second time I was at the University. My first reading ncentrated upon the theme of mesmerism and I derived little om the bc.—k except the entrancing story of...

Trilby and to live for a few hours in the Paris before the Commune and before the first Sedan. The wounds which she then suffered were bitter wounds and left their scars. This...

COME off it cat! I am not fool though For that. Sitting so prim with frilly bib and cuff Like some old woman with her mitted hand Folded in grim self-pleasure in her lap You...

last Sunday afternoon—Weber's fairies and Mendel& sohn's, Dohnanyi's Variations on a Nursery Rhyme, which co tains one of the half - dozen really good musical jokes, and most...

Symphony of Youth A CONCERT of English and Russian music was given recently at the Central Hall, Westminster. The English contributions included William Walton's bright and...

" Claudine." At Studio One. international Lady." At the London and Marble Arch Pavilions. To see a newly-released French film nowadays is like discovering an album of old...

IR,—While it is platitudinous to say that party politics are out of lace at the present moment, it is vital that we should remember that ey are the basis of democracy. To have a...

is not to hold " an unfavourable opinion of Poland,', but only of Polish megalomania. Dr. Ostoja accuses me, however, of distorting historical facts. She challenges my assertion...

Sit,-It is, unfortunately, impossible to reply exhaustively to the many points raised in Mr. Taylor's review of The Cambridge History of Poland, but, as an historian who in...

FACTS AS FOUNDATIONS sm ,—air. Osborn would surely not suggest that the kind of housing w hich has been provided in the past twenty years has been freely a dopted by elected...

read with interest Mr. Geoffrey Bowles' letter on " In- vading " and agree fully with the first part, as it has always seemed to me that an invasion en masse — by either Great...

Ste,—Planters of pears (as also of apples) should if possible supple- ment such a list as Mr. H. E. Bates gave by getting information from growers in the same district and soil....

Sk—The remarks.of " Janus " regarding the ability of the purvey ors of pornographic filth to piocure ample paper supplies to meet th e i r disgusting needs demand attention. The...

Sk—Lord Gort's despatch on the Dunkirk evacuation deserves the closest study, and stresses again the fact that speed of action is of the utmost importance an effecting military...

Sirs, — " Russia has some way to go towards religious freedom yet " (fast page of The Spectator of October roth, 1941). The Christian religion has been for far more than a...

A writer who tries to look at country life in an anu-sentimental way, and writes accordingly, makes more friends than you might suppose. For that reason alone it is hard for me...

sm,—The pedestrians and the pedal-cyclists cannot share the admira- t i o n of the Report of the Lords' Committee on Road Accidents which is expressed on behalf of the...

on the upper fronds. Elderberries show clusters of red stripped fingers when the berries have gone. Beech nuts, not often so fat and sweet as this year, make coffee-brown drifts...

moment, more important than the flower garden. Put in the last batches of spring cabbage ; dig up beetroot, carrots, early-sown turnips, the last potatoes, storing the first...

stit, —In your issue of October roth, Mr. Griffin asserts that the panacea for India's ills is democracy, by which he apparently means Government by the Indian National...

Tomato Subjects The whole subject of tomatoes, particularly the ripening and keeping of them and their failure from disease, has produced a large correspondence, which, for...

m this country to save electric light for ten to fifteen minutes every day. If everybody switched off their lights when the nine o'clock news began and kept them off till it was...

Whither Japan ? Japan Unmasked. By Hallett Abend. (The Bodley Head. I2S. 6d.) THAT any country should need unmasking is shocking in these days of excessive communications,...

Soviet Russia. By E. Strauss. (The Bodley Head. I2S. 6(1.) " By isolating Soviet Russia and cutting the connecting links to the outside world, the period of civil war and...

THOUGH the story of Drake has often been told, and his character and campaigns analysed by more than one skilled writer since Sir Julian Corbett's monumental work of research on...

Cape Horn. By Lieut.-Comdr. Felix Riesenberg. (Hale. 18s.) COMMANDER RIESENBERG'S book is a 500-page miscellany about Tierra del Fuego, the Strait and Cape Horn, a miscellany...

MR. PHILIP TOYNBEE'S second novel A School in Private gives a detailed account of a full term in what might be described as a fairly average type of English prep. school. Mr....

A REVIEWER in The Spectator recently complained about the inordinate bulkiness of works on India, which, he said, was the chief reason why the subject is so distasteful to the...

Over Welsh Hills is uniform with Mr. Smythe's Peaks and Valleys and other quarto volumes in which the text is subsidiary to the illustration. The photographs in the present...

Whymper who have earned their living directly or indirectly through their climbing. Whymper was an engraver ; Mr. Smythe is a writer and a photographer, and there are periods...

War in the Air. By David Garnett. (Chatto and Windus. 7s. 6d. MR. GaaNErr's book is not the hastily compiled record of heroics in the air which any volume with the title of his...

No. 1 Squadron, which was one of the two original Hurricane Squadrons of the Air Component in France. The book is based on a diary which he kept from September, 1 939, to June,...

By David Masters. (Eyre and Spottiswoode. 6s.) "No trouble has been spared," writes Mr. Masters in his fore- word, " to ensure the accuracy of these, pages. . . . It may be...

By CUSTOS IF markets have lost some of their buoyancy since the Russian news took an unfavourable turn, they are showing a remarkable resiliency. Only the merest suggestion of...

Book Token for one guinea will be given to the sender of the first rnect solution of this week's c r ossw ord puzzle to be opened. Envelopes should be eke d with the words "...

The winner of Crossword No. 135 is the Rev. R. H. J. Steuart, 114, Mount Street, W. I. NOVEMBER 7th