The devaluation of the French franc, which was decided on unanimously by the Finance Commission of the French Assembly on Sunday, is an essential pan of France's efforts to...

B Y the customary malignity of fortune the final communique of the Moscow Conference was expected an hour or two after this paragraph had to go to Press. But while its details...

While the Foreign Secretaries were holding " frank and friendly talks " in Moscow, and the United Nations are preparing for their first Assembly, the Soviet Union has opened a...

Though a formal note from the Egyptian Government, asking for a revision of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of Alliance, has only just been received, informal exploratory...

No one will derive much gratification from the reparations settle- ment announced last week. The history of reparations after the last war inspires no confidence that anyone can...

When one considers the history of the coal industry, the decisive part it has played in the nation's development, and especially its long and bitter record of labour struggles,...

The Coal Industry Nationalisation Bill, published last week, is one of the decisive measures in the history of the Labour Govern- ment. Indeed, the. Government will, in the long...

T HE outlook is not uplifting ; about that there will be little disagreement. More than six months after the collapse of Germany all the rigours of a war regime are with us...

who was one of the really outstanding soldiers of the war. There were many unattractive things about him, his flamboyance, his sense of show- manship, his rigidly reactionary...

quoting to a symposium on printer's errors. A rather agreeable one is recalled by Canon Anthony Deane in the memories he has just published under the title Time Remembered....

T HE Home Secretary is among the Ministers who are shaping best, and he talked good sense last week about an Oswald Mosley meet- ing, or dinner, of which the popular Press—I...

Eden, P.C., LL.D., has been elected into an honorary Fellowship " prompts a question. Why has Mr. Eden—or shall we say Dr. Eden? —who-attained distinction (a first in Oriental...

on Christmas Day. Having switched on with the expectation of being bored, I found myself greatly impressed. The fragments of talk from the different parts of the...

Passionately eager to prevail on humanity to achieve the colossal saving of time and space involved In writing words like bomb as bon:, Mr. Bernard Shaw manages somehow to pack...

By THE DEAN OF ST. PAUL'S F OR three weeks I have been wandering about Germany in company with two other delegates of the British Council of Churches and under the guidance of...

By LAWRENCE ATIIILL H IDDEN, perhaps, by more immediate issues,, a problem of immense importance lies in wait for us in Africa : the problem of the cultural and political...

By MICHAEL AYRTON T HIS controversy is like old times. Not since the " roaring twenties " has so much sound and fury been spent on an exhibition as on the current one of...

By PROFESSOR HERMANN LEVY A FUNDAMENTAL pre-occupation of the returning Serviceman is to settle down in a suitable job. In most cases, we may assume, the ex-Serviceman is...

By PHILIP CARR W E shall have to go to the black market, that's all," I said. As if that settled the matter. As if that was going to end the standing in queues, and the failing...

Sweden are anxious to know more about what is happening in world affairs and particularly the British view on the subject. Unfortunately the blocking of currency ;n most of the...

of the Belgian people. To their immense vitality in the first place ; to their sense of unity in the second, which, although disturbed by the old linguistic divisions and by the...

by Paul Struye on " the evolution of Belgian public opinion during the German occupation." Mr. Struye during those four atrocious years would from time to time make a careful...

been enlightened and humane, had not been interfered with from Berlin, it might well have been that the intense loathing of the Germans which thereafter developed might have...

By HAROLD NICOLSON T HE steamer which crosses three times a week from Folkestone to Ostend is called the ' London-Istanbul'—a title which is ambitious rather than marine. It is...

A reaction was bound to follow. Although Brussels had been liberated, Antwerp still remained in enemy hands. Even when the great port itself had been occupied by our forces, it...

"The Shadow Factory." At the Mercury.—" Aladdin." At the Cambridge.—" Peter Pan." At the Scala. THE new production at Mr. Martin Browne's season of " Plays by Poets," at the...

Of injury that angels Might dread. The world plunges, Shies, snorts, and curvets like a horse in danger. Then comfort her with fondlings, With kindly word and handling, But do...

readers who would like to send copies of THE SPECTATOR to their friends in Italy can now do so. The post paid subscription rate is 3os. per annum. Send instructions with a...

"Nous les Gosses " and " Today and Tomorrow." At the Academy THE presentation of children on the screen calls for qualities of understanding which appear to be exclusive to...

SIR, —The Church's primary message is to call men and women to follow Christ, just as Christ himself called the first disciples with the words, " Follow Me." While this, of...

he insists that the existing etate of affairs in R.A.F. Transport Command " is due to errors of Air Ministry policy " and . to their " stubborn reluctance to appoint anyone but...

the troubled in mind enjoys great rewards, and faces great difficulties. He pleases his God by snatching the weak from the jaws of hell, he satisfies himself by doing good work...

AIR TRANSPORT AND THE R.A.F. Ini,—The contention of Mr. Anthony F. West that air transport is too dangerous and wasteful to have any commercial justification has the bouquet of...

to you he says: " I do not believe that there is such a thing as non-credal Christianity." If by this he means that refusal to subscribe to any fixed creed is unchristian, then...

SIR, —Your reviewer is well able to mind his own business, but you have allowed Mr. Wiener to raise in your columns a matter of technical scholarship and theological...

Student " asks, " are we to believe that, because Christ lived nearly 2,000 years ago, the last word has been said about religion? " The answer is that we are not asked to...

who tells us that he is an undergraduate of is an encouraging sign of rare intellectual independence in the young, who generally like to feel themselves in the swim of whatever...

SLR,—Up to yesterday (November r9th) I had taken a fairly tolerant view of our new Labour Government. I reasoned that the passage of time must bring changes, coal in the earth...

Sta,—Bathrooms were installed in middle-class houses earlier than Mr. Shelford thinks. There was a great deal of building going on in South Kensington in the 187o's, and the new...

A courrrity gardener, who has a fondness for such censuses, cpunted . .just fi fty sorts of flowers in his garden and paddock in mid-December. Christmas is more often open than...

suggest that the cruelties inflicted by the setting of steel-toothed traps in the open have greatly increased. bigger birds have lost parts of their limbs, smaller birds have...

B.B.C. comes in for much criticism, and I regret adding to the chorus. I suggest, however, that it should issue, in a cheap edition, • new Dictionary of Pronunciation to cover...

The salient headline in a large advertisement by a seed-Merchant is the single word Corn. Underneath are listed various types of barley and oats, but no wheat. Most urban...

SIR, —Jewish immigration into Palestine is nut and never has been free and unrestricted. It has always been subject to what the Government consider to be the economic absorptive...

Ayrton, for a long time, has made no effort to conceal his vehement contempt for Picasso, and his recent review of the Victoria and Albert Exhibition was in his best style,...

wondered whether to be ruthless with the chrysanthemums, still lending a certain gaiety to the bed; but tidiness, the standard gardener's most inveterate sin, won the day. A...

Subscribers are reminded that notification of change of address should reach the office of The Spectator seven clear days before the alteration is to take effect

A Manual of Tuberculosis. By E. Ashworth Underwood, M.D., D.P.H. (E. and S. Livingstone, Ltd 15s.) FORTUNATELY, during the last fifty years, there has been a steady decline in...

Spirits in Prison HERE is a book sensibly but most interestingly written by a man who did three years in various Irish prisons. He tells us a lot of his experiences and his...

The Wisdom of the Fields. By H. J. Massingham. (Collins. 12. 6d.) IT was a favourite device in early books of moral precept to follow the pattern of Observation, Application and...

FiFry years ago an organisatkm called the National Union Women Workers came into being at a conference in Nottingham . It was not, as might be supposed, a trade union, nor was...

GOOD first novels are never very common at the best of times and during the war years they were even more infrequent than usual. A Journey to the Interior is a really excellent...

Time Remembered. By Anthony C. Deane. (Faber and Faber. 18s.) EVERY autobiography is in some degree self-revealing. 'Sometimes the revelation is attractive, sometimes not....

for one g uinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution of this week's crossword to be opened after noon on Tuesday week, January 8th. Envelopes must be...

4111111. E R A S:S]E. Li As PINSUA , T s E R % , 6T•Ett t11-11.1 v SOLUTION ON JANUARY 11th The Winner of Crossword No. 353 is Miss K. M. HANBY, 12, Ellesmere Avenue, Hull.

By CUSTOS Mum sober reflection on the provisions of the Coal Industry Nationalisation Bill must precede any final judgement on its impli- cations for colliery shareholders and...

EX FROM JULY 6th TO DECEMBER 28th, 1945, INCLUSIVE. OF Tar WEEK' Ar I lnited Nations Charter : Secretaries of State, 26 ; ign Relations Corn mittee, 26 , Atomic Bomb, Th 142,...

SPECTATOR HE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-FIFTH. 1945.