keep the headlines. On Sunday morning, while three hundred Methodists were conducting a service in the next-door room, the World Cup was stolen from its display case in the...

congress, while the Americans released a secret message from the Russians to Communist parties in Eastern Europe warning of Chinese plans to force a war between Russia and the...

NOMINATIONS CLOSED at a total of 1,707 candi- dates, five of them standing against the Foreign Secretary at Fulham, although a campaign by Motorists' Action to find a second...

T HE first thing to be said about the elec- tion campaign that (mercifully) now enters its last week is that it is not an elec- tion at all, but a referendum. The country is...

Friday March 25 1966

The Politics of Consensus By ALAN WATKINS Robin Day: This questioner from Crowburn writes, 'Do you consider that the present economic situation is sufficiently serious to war-...

We cannot decide whether to advise the students to accept Mr. Hotta, Sukarno's Vice-President, states the commander of the troops on guard outside Sukarno's palace. We are...

And now, an Election Broadcast . • • DON'T suppose you're any keener than I am to lhave another general election less than eighteen months after the last one. Quite...

Megalopolis at the Polls By J. W. M. THOMPSON la ONDON is 'a nation, not a city,' as Disraeli observed : but fortunately Londoners tend to vote much as the members of the...

Every morning I pray that I will never drop a brick.—George Brown. * One encouraging gesture from the French government and the Conservative leader rolls on his back like a...

De Arte Rhetorica By STUART HOOD A usrortE said that a speaker should make his audience feel that he possesses intelligence, virtue and good will. It would probably be libel-...

Mirror on the Wall By JOHN WELLS M R. QUINTIN HOGG sits gloomily in a char- acteristic pose, jowls sunk in his hands, the famous handbell silent at his elbow, and stares...

By DESMOND DONNELLY Li BOUR looks set for a massive majority in the new Parliament if the public opinion polls are to be believed. Thus 1966 may come to rank, with 1906 and...

March 24, 1866 Very alarming telegrams continue to arrive from Canada. An invasion of Fenians was ex- pected on St. Patrick's Day, 17th inst.; the Government had called out...

last weekend to Oxford—to be precise, to Magdalen high table, where (for a special occasion, at any rate) the food is excellent and the wine even better—and to talk of...

ALF-WAY through the campaign, there are rinow clear signs that Mr. Heath, the un- known man at the beginning of this shindig, is at last getting into his stride and starting to...

little worried about the single-constituency polls that have been appearing in the Economist and the Guardian. Both have been carried out by a relatively new firm in the...

Note: In the January edition of New Out- look A. D. C. Peterson (Liberal spokesman on education) said we must 'for the present reject' vouchers in welfare. . . . His views are...

What, then, should the Tories' theme be be- tween now and polling day? First, the main burden of their attack should be, not on the events of the past eighteen months (which the...

and change the rules of GAIT (the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) to enable him to give tax rebates to exporters should not, I suspect, be taken too seriously. It's the...

An American Dream By MURRAY KEMPTON NEW YORK M R. Dav id id Dubinsky has retired after more than thirty years as president of our International Ladies Garment Workers Union,...

Thirty-three down and more to come? From SARAH GAINHAM BONN rr HE German Starfighter which crashed last I weekend brought the total losses . to thirty- three in fifteen...

ACROSS 1. Stout fellow, he takes a load in his stride (6) 4. They change with the seasons in the houses (8) 9. I vary a seedy haunt (6) 10. Has he feet of clay? (8) 12. Playboy?...

Cockpen. 9 Sugar. 10 Pinker- ton. 11 Anonym. 12 Scorpion. 14 Capri. 15 Privateer. 18 Spindrift. 20 Cliff. 22 Im- polite. 24 Tassie. 26 Cut and run. 27 Grant. 28 Suspend. 29...

The Chalices of Opposition By ALEC NONE MHE twenty-third congress of the Communist I Party of the Soviet Union is opening next week, and delegates are gathering in Moscow. Why...

OTTAWA frEIE so-called Munsinger sex-and-security case I is the odorous climax of vendetta politics between the Canadian Prime Minister, Lester Pearson, and his Conservative...

On Fluoridation By JOHN ROWAN WILSON l N controversies concerning the public health it often seems that no resolution is possible, since the two parties to the argument are...

The Skin Game By ALAN BRIEN The classic description of psoriasis I have encountered so far however is in fiction, though fiction that shows all the signs of being thinly-...

Sherman, M. G. de St. V. Atkins, C. G. Lynam. B. Evans, Edmund Crispin, B. Engert: Oliver Stutchbury. M. J. Fennessy, David Buckton, A. G. F. Farquhar, T. Griffiths, John Other...

is there any hope, do you think, that editors will go through their contributors' work, substituting 'ambient' for it throughout? The latter noun has been with us for some time,...

issue for March 11 Nicholas Davenport in his first paragraph refers.to .. this sort of irrational fear ...' which he intimates would echo round the City during the election...

quality should have fallen for the trick of lending one of your men to take part in what was obviously a faked interview, asking questions which were supposed to be spontaneous,...

don't believe it.' That seems to be the Government's attitude towards the Ian Smith regime; but it is time to forsake wishful thinking and personal animus and face harsh facts...

bluff? If they in Rhodesia are 'rebels against the Crown: those in this country who aid and comfort them are principals in an act of treason and within the juris- diction of...

Sut,—Mr. Boswell, in his defence of the present Government's economic policies, speaks approvingly of 'the vigorous curtailmeot of public expenditure plans, desperately needed...

school where the cane is still frequently used, and having been one of the more adventurous pupils, consider myself reasonably experienced in corporal punishment of today. I...

SIR.—I agree with many of the points made by John Rowan Wilson in his article, 'Morality and the Health Service,' in your issue of March 11. But a very important point he...

SIR,—Mr. Wyllie has discovered that opinion is not proof, but goes on to quote Dr. Synge's very tentative doubt as though it were a hammer-blow. Actually from the two...

SIR,—In the last sentence of Strix's article 'D-ANOY' (SPECTATOR, March 4) there is a query regarding the fate of Herr von Gablenz and his crew. May I, there- fore, state the...

for dear money which otherwise sane people still advance.' The argument is that in times when the economy is at over-full stretch it is of crucial import- ance to induce...

SIR,—Leslie Adrian's article on rice (March 4) said that Basmatti rice- -described as the best for boiling —is 'not cheap' and costs 2s. 3d. a pound. This is not necessarily...

SIR,—Professor Bullocke is apparently unaware (Letters, March 11) that the Minister of Pensions has, in fact, referred the question of the earnings rule to the National...

SIR,—Tragmatidal). In the diplomatic, historical, and philosophic senses, the -ic form is usual. In the general sense of officious or opinionated, -ical is commoner. In the...

Sta,—I wonder if the following lines: will turn out to be a prescient comment by Yeats on this election : A Statesman is an easy man, He tells his lies by rote; A journalist...

Unfair to Insects W EEK after week, to right and to left of me, other people are scrupidously weighing foreign films, foreign sculpture, foreign paintings. foreign orchestras....

Cosier than Corbusier By TERENCE BENDIXSON I IKE other kinds of girdle, London's green ,.,belt is meant to be an aid to glamour, but it also has a violent effect on the guts...

Space in Search of a Site F ever inclined to view with patronage, as we ifrequently are, the severely restricted range of style and content countenanced within the official art...

Godardphobe Alphaville. (Academy One, 'A' certificate.) W M th I his dark, dense personality in the ser- vice of a few pea-sized ideas, Jean-Luc Godard arouses extremes of...

Europe Agog rr HE new Falstaff at the Staatsoper in Vienna I has Europe mildly agog for three main reasons. In the first place, it is a Luchino Visconti production, with sets...

By PHILIDOR No. 275. Specially contributed by Brig. C. E. H. SPARROW, Slimbridge (after Ruicx) witrrE to play and mate in five moves ; solution next week. Last May I pub-...

The Great American Visionary By ANTHONY BURGESS B R ITIS H musicians have been better Whitman publicists than British men of letters. Whit- man, a hard poet to quote (as Uncle...

One in Twenty. By Bryan Magee. (Seeker and Warburg, 21s.) THE one in twenty of Mr. Magee's title repre- sents the supposed number of homosexuals— male and female—in our...

IGNOMINIOUS is not an epithet which the British, or indeed any other nation, care to apply to enterprises undertaken by their forebears, how- ever resoundingly these may have...

The Literary Elite and their Electors By M. L. ROSENTHAL TT would be nice if we Americans had some- thing—apart from Presidential campaigns, I mean—to match the glorious...

By ERIC LINKLATER O N February 1, 1692, Captain Robert Camp- bell of Glenlyon marched into Glencoe at the head of two companies of Argyll's Regiment. He was a handsome man of...

The Last Analysis. A play by Saul Bellow. (Weidenfeld and Nicolson : paperback, 12s. 6d.; hard cover, 21s.) IN an excellent piece on Isaac Bashevis Singer, published in...

By PATRICK ANDERSON TN June of 1816, when Byron and Shelley were 'living by the lake of Geneva, a rainy spell led them and their party to reading ghost stories. The discussion...

WITH Never Call Retreat Bruce Catton has com- pleted his admirable three-volume Centennial History of the American Civil War. There is no need to repeat the many compliments and...

Speaking European. By W. Horsfall Carter. . 28s.) Lewis J. Edinger. (Stan- and Tomorrow. By Peter , 52s. 6d.) BRITAIN'S second application to join the Com- mon Market is now...

Language of Fiction. By David Lodge. (Rout- ledge and Kegan Paul, 35s.) • THE last few years have seen a remarkable up- surge in university studies of linguistics. After the...

Cornered in the big house, all night all Four in one room on the Lee side thinking to windward at The gale of the decade and Our dead pine . . . Two days later it was We found...

Day of Shame. By Senator Charles E. Potter. (Coward-McCann, New York, $5.95.) A FEW weeks ago the edited film of the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings, Point of Order!, brought back...

The Watchers on the Shore. By Stan Barstow. (Michael Joseph, 25s.) The Fetch. By Peter Everett. (Cape, 21s.) A Dream of Fair Children. By Jean Morris. (Cassell, 18s.) I HAVE not...

High Rents and Dear Mortgages By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT this election debate is about anything, which 'some people are beginning to doubt, it is about the dearness of money; in...

THE HONGKONG AND SHANGHAI BANKING CORPORATION RECORD PROFIT Tim Ordinary Yearly General Meeting of The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation was held on 18th March, 1966,...

new issue Of IMPERIAL METAL INDUSTRIES (now 8s. 9d.) offers a good opportunity for holders of YORKSHIRE COPPER to switch into a company with similar interests but with a higher...

By CUSTOS rrHERE has been some recovery in gilt-edged I stocks, which had been unsettled by reck- less talk of a coming rise in Bank rate. This week the Savings 2+ per cent...

Last of the oil leaders, BURMAH OIL, has stated that it will pay not more than Is. 10d. gross for its final, making 2s. _1144. gross for the year. This is equivalent to 19.1 per...

this week in such thin markets that it can only be described as technical. Steel shares were notice- ably firmer. In the original steel White Paper shareholders were given the...

By LOTHRURY H ICKSON AND WELCH (HOLDINGS) cover the field of manufacturers of organic chemicals, textiles, paper and board, detergents, industrial explosives, rubber and...

For Services Rendered By LESLIE ADRIAN But the Daily Mail's revelations a few weeks ago of the imaginative service charges made for repairs to domestic appliances come into a...

Special Polling Day Issue Publication of next week's SPECTATOR will be twenty-four hours earlier than usual. One year's subscription to the 'Spectator: £315s. (including...

The Bitch Goddess By LORD EGREMONT NAPOLEON made a mistake about Fortune: he said that Fortune was a ." woman : he went on to ' say that the more she did for him, the more he...