27 MAY 1955

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THE WELFARE STATE

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O subject dominated more conversations about politics during the period of the last Parliament than the future of the Welfare State, yet it cannot be said that the election...

FRANCE AND NORTH AFRICA T HE mounting figure of assassinations and

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outrages in , Morocco over the last few weeks as well as the French Government's decision to reinforce their troops in Algeria calls attention to the crisis in French North...

No, 6621 ESTABLISHED 1828 '

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FRIDAY', MAY 27, 1955 PRICE 7d,

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T HE report of the Archbishops' Commission on the nullity of

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marriage, published last week, raises some of

STRYDOM'S 'PRECEDENTS'

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actions. The Minister of the Interior, Dr. Dtinges, sought to justify the Nationalists' behaviour in attempting to pack the Senate by 'referring to the creation of peers in 1713...

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demagogues on the other. It was left to the Daily

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Sketch to pull the real scare story of the election. In huge headlines it told its readers that, were Attlee put in, the kingdom of Bevan would be nigh, and accompanied this...

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Political Commentary

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BY HENRY FAIRLIE AVE us from our friends.' This was the Labour Party reaction to the last-minute gimmick which was thought up by the political boffins of the Daily Mirror. For...

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A Spectator's Notebook

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I DREW attention a fortnight ago to the odd collection of indi- viduals whom the News Chronicle invited to contribute to its election series, 'Off the Party Line.' Mr. Kingsley...

he: was convicted in 1948. He has therefore been under

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sen- tence of death for no fewer than seven years. It can be argued of course that the delay is his own fault. A brilliant prison-cell lawyer, he has taken advantage of every...

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AS A POSTSCRIPT to Norman St. John-Stevas's article in this

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issue, it may be mentioned that the Irish, Censorship Board have given yet another proof of their prowess in their last list of banned publications, which include Nine Novels...

EVERYBODY KNOWS that Sir Hartley Shawcross is adept at reconciling

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party differences, but he broke his offvn magnificent record with ease when he made his conciliatory contribu- tion to the grammar school-comprehensive school controversy. `We...

FOR SOME TIME I have heard it said soberly enough

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that science fiction would take the place of the detective story as relaxing reading for tired business men and intellectuals. But it was not until I heard of the Science...

POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE

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MR. R. A. BUTLER : `The only thing I have not been able to do is reduce the price of beer, and that I would like to ao before I die because I would like to think it would be on...

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The Roman Index

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By NORMAN ST. JOHN-STEVAS T HE censorship debate has now raged for over a year. and amidst the denunciations of 'horror comics' and pleas for more 'obscenity' an occasional...

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BY K. B. McFARLANE* W HAT later came to be known

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as the Wars of the Roses began shortly before noon 500 years ago last Sunday in the streets and gardens of St. Albans. Historians might find it hard to agree how many wars there...

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Racial Prejudice

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BY MICHAEL CROWDER (Hertford College, Oxford) M R. STRYDOM'S appointment last year as successor to Dr. Malan, and the recent implementation of the law of 1945 for further...

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Jai Alai

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By FRANK LITTLER V ' EINTE, colorados! Veinte, colorados!' It was midnight in the Fronton Novedades, Barcelona's major pelota court. The shout came from a white-coated book-...

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Country Life 13Y IAN NIALL

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COTTAGE TO LET 'It wasn't just that the place was

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runnin' with damp,' I heard the gossip say, 'but when they opened the cupboards the mould and cobwebs wafted about like ghosts. Nobody wouldn't've kept a dog in it, an' that...

FLY MENACE Qne of the disappointments suffered by the vegetable

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gardener is when the cabbage, onion or carrot flies attack his young plants. Infected plants should be put on the bonfire immed- iately. BHC (benzine hexachloride) dust is...

The other day, while going through a small copse of

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hazel, thorn and holly, my attention was drawn to a nest from which protruded a wisp of a tail. It looked like the tail of a vole. It could have been the tail of a weasel. The...

City and Suburban

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BY JOHN BETJEMAN cancelled all my engagements and gave myself a Church for rebuilding it. It consists of three old streets which wind to the waterside, with narrow alleys...

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Sophie and Satan •

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HAVE before me as I write . . .' The old formula is 1 obsolete, Equally serviceable to the narrator of actual or of imagined events. it stood generations of writers in good...

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LABOUR PARTY IN TRAVAIL

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SIR, — Mr. Richard Feilden may well describe the present dissension within the Labpur Party as 'pathetic,' but he should not call the empiri- cism of the Right-Wing Socialists...

Letters to the Editor

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The Future of Germany Frank M. Fowler Labour Party in Travail Roy Hazed Mr. Gladstone R. F. [Wiley, F. C. Tippetts A Mayor's Nest Robert Nott Ring Around the Words W. L....

too, and also at seven years of age, saw Mr.

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Gladstone in 1896. It was when he arrived at Brighton to address a great, Liberal meeting in the Metropole Hotel. There was very little cheering, the crowd holding him, as it...

A MAYOR'S NEST

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SIR, — Strix has got this wrong. As a very minor municipal gent. (who is unlikely ever to be accompanied by a mace-bearer) I have a good deal of sympathy with the nine Mayors of...

M.R. GLADSTONE have often stayed in Hawarden and the neighbourhood

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during the last seventy years, and can add a few touches to the Provost of Worcester's portrait of the GOM. On one occasion he was upstairs packing his bag, when Mrs....

99 Gower Street, London, W.C.1

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Elusion 3221

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the other Canadian, but both were irrevocably Scotch and their

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presence together on the screen said all that anybody needs to know about the Commonwealth. Mr. Menzies wisely made it clear that there is 'superficially a mystery' in the...

RING AROUND THE WORDS SIR,—In a letter to the press,

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a tyre manu- facturer has pointed out that anyone who had experience in marketing tyres which bore a brand name not well known to the public would quickly realise that to sell...

SIR,—I am completing a book on the Titanic disaster and

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would like very much to get in touch with any survivors, or anybody on the rescue ship Carpathia. If any of your readers can help, I would greatly appreciate it.— Yours...

LONDON'S TRAFFIC PROBLEM SIR,—If Samuel Johnson lived today I fancy

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that he would support any proposal to abolish the street lamp post, even if he did not notice the traffic problem! Recently it took me an hour to go by bus from Piccadilly to...

PISCATORIAL POTENCY Snt,—In my humble opinion, Ian Niall and subsequent

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correspondents have based the problem of eating live fish and its reputed determinism of se.x upon altogether a funda- mentally unsound premise. Some years ago, while...

the top third hollow as a drum, crack in two

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and just miss a schoolboy playing below. Your readers may like to know what is to happen when the last tree is removed. The earth will be allowed to rest for a few months and...

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THE DIARY OF A NOBODY. By George and Weedon Grossmith.

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(Duchess.) — Tln REMARKABLE MR. PENNYPACKER. By Liam O'Brien. (New.) THIS week's theatre brings us two comedies, one of which we had already seen at the Arts. There The Diary of...

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FOUR British artists, and an clement of melo- drama in

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each of them. Mr. John Piper's new paintings at the Leicester Galleries arc mostly of Wales, or the strange landscape of Portland — sea-girt, littered with quarried blocks of...

VIOLENT SATURDAY (Rialio)—.--THE LOVERS OF LISBON (Carnet) - Poly)—SHAN-F0 AND

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YINO-TAI (Berkeley). Violent Saturday is an extremely well con- structed thriller directed by Richard Fleischer. It is the ,story of a bank robbery in a small American town,...

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BOOKS

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Stendhal's Diaries By MARTIN TURNELL T HE Syndicat d'Mitiative at Grenoble is an enterprising body which deserves its name. It has erected signs along the main routes leading...

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Carpet and Curtain

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TUE RED CARPET. By Marshall MacDuffie. (Cassell, 18s.) OUTLAW. By Voinov..(Harvill Press, 16s.) MR. MACDUFFIE is, one feels, a hundred per cent American and he has written a...

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THE DECISIVE BATTLES OF THE WESTERN WORLD. Volume II. By

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Thirty Years War as terribly as any country in history, neverthe- less survived and grew again into the powerful state which we have known. As for warnings, one may be drawn...

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Illyria

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ONE would never guess that this book was a translation. Miss Naomi Walford has done a very fine job. It is comparatively easy to make it literal rendering of one language into...

Paris, France

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ART BUCHWALD'S PARIS. (Chatto and Windus, 10s. 6d.) EN VOYAGE. By Emile de Harven and M. J. MacDonald. (McGibbon and Kee, 10s. 6d.) TRAVEL GUIDE TO PARIS. Ed. Dore Ogrizek....

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New Novels

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THE GOOD SHEPHERD. By C. S. Forester. (Michael Joseph, 12s. 6d.) WOMEN facing a solitary and penurious old age, living out their drab present on dreams : these occupy two of the...

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OTHER RECENT BOOKS

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IT is one of the hurts done to American reputa- tion abroad by the antics of Senator McCarthy and Mr. Scott McLeod that one can easily forget that plenty of sense has been...

THE ENGLISHMAN. By Richard Steele. Edited by Rae Blanchard. (Oxford,

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50s.) CENTURIES-OLD political controversy is dreary stuff, scarcely worth reprinting, and this cdl- lected edition of Steele's newspaper. published in 1714 and 1715, is no...

COUNTRY LIFE PICTURE BOOK OF WALES.

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(Country Life, 12s. 6d.) SHELL GUIDE TO DEVON. By Brian Watson. (Faber, 12s. 6d.) SHELL GUIDE TO DEVON. By Brian Watson. (Faber, 12s. 6d.) MR. FLETCHER'S book, the first of two...

THE HISTORIES OF GAROANTUA AND PANTA- GRUEL. By Francois Rabelais.

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Translated and with an introduction by J. M. Cohen. (Penguin, 5s.) NOT only is Mr. Cohen's translation of Rabelais excellent in itself, it is a translation. One cannot hope...

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FINANCE AND INVESTMENT

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By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT dock strike was over, bought at the top of the market. Then came the public agitation agdinst dear tea and the rude remarks of the Prime Minister of...

COMPANY NOTES

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By CUSTOS If Labour voters had studied the full 1954 report of the directors of IMPERIAL CHEMICAL INDUSTRIES they might well have dismissed the demand for nationalisation as...

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SPECTATOR CROSSWORD No. 836

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4 Part of the hosemen's costume? ( 8 ). 9 Watch dispatched by rail (6). 10 Cat ruins these hangings) (8). 12 Was this the school of Constable? (8) . 13 With this the writer...

SPECTATOR COMPETITION No. 276 Set by Joyce Johnson 1 have

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a cookery book consisting of recipes supplied by well-known people. One compiled from recipei by fictional characters might provide more enjoyment for the mind than for the...

A Cabinet of Heroes

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SPECTATOR COMPETITION No. 273 Report by W. Norman Dixon A prize of f5 was offered for a list of ten posts in a modern Cabinet filled by heroes of Greek story, with a few words...