T HE Lynskey Report will be received with satisfaction or dis- content according to whether it was conceived to be the function of the Tribunal to cleanse Augean stables or to...

The signs that a major change in Communist tactics is about to be made—or has been made already—are getting too numerous to be ignored. The speech by M. Marcel Cachin, the...

The habit of saying that the sellers' market must come to an end has become general in the past two years or so. A few exporters— some exporters of motor-cars are said to be...

The peoples of the world, including the Americans, have had so much difficulty in deciding upon the exact significance of certain highly important passages in President Truman's...

Mr. Bevin's statement on European unity to the Foreign Press Association on Tuesday should satisfy everyone who is not committed irretrievably to one stereotyped form of...

The best news from China for some time is that peace talks between the Communists and approved emissaries of the Central Government are to open shortly in Peking. Shati Li-Tze,...

The appointment of a Royal Commission on Capital Punishment, limited by the terms of reference announced by the Prime Minister last week, will not satisfy most of the Members...

The elementary economic rule that, when demand outruns supply, prices tend to rise, has always seemed more than usually shocking when the commodity in question is that basic...

The Spectator of February 4th will contain, in the "Colonial Future" series, an article by Dr. Audrey Richards on " Social Science in the Colonies " ; in preparation for the...

T HE knowledge that in any event we are now in the last full year of the present Parliament has been reflected in the political atmosphere this week. There has been a...

I T was natural and right that Mr. Bevin should have dragged Wednesday's debate on Palestine in the House of Commons back to first principles. The abuse which has been heaped on...

Office, President Wilson used to say, made the man. Let him leave the office, for good reason or bad, and four times out of five he relapses into obscurity. That is probably...

dinnet, but was allowed to stay. Mr. Stanley professed great interest in the [Freedom and Democracy] Trust, and borrowed a cheque from Mr. Gibson and filled it up for L50...

T HERE is room for two views about the propriety of the Govern- men's assisting the Daily Worker by advertising in its columns. Sir Stafford Cripps holds one view and Mr....

with sympathy and mild satisfaction that I see the impeccable Times slide occasionally into the same abyss. The writer who on Monday produced casi belli as the plural of casus...

not be able to comment on the debate Viscount Simon was initiating in the House of Lords on that day on the affairs of U.N.E.S.C.O. It is extremely desirable that .a critical,...

Nazis had not kept it alive during the war by their raids on Bath and Exeter and other towns that could have had no importance for them except that they were mentioned in the...

that private patients shall not have free medicine seem to me fully justified in their attitude. Under the National Health Act every citizen is entitled to free treatment and...

PLANNING AND AUTONOMY By LORD MILVERTON T HE Colonial Empire, now getting to an increasing degree the attention it has always merited and never received, has in the part few...

By DR. SIDNEY M. BERRY* M ANY observers of life in the United States confidently char- acterise American society as materialistic in its motives and spirit, and no doubt there...

By HUGH TREVOR-ROPER O N January 3oth, 1649, King Charles I was executed, and cries of horror arose from an outraged world. There had been revolutions before, and kings had...

By EDWARD MONTGOMERY New York, January 21 W HEN Harry S. Truman stepped to the massed microphones yesterday to deliver his first Inaugural Address as elected President of the...

By the MARQUESS OF READING A FTER-DINNER speeches, in most respects unlike Thomas Hobbes' description of the life of man, are normally solitary, frequently poor, sometimes...

By MICHAEL BERRY "The Spectator" last week published an article by Mr. Anthony Greenwood, M.P., in support of the Blood Sports Bill which a group of M.P.s are hoping to...

By DAVID STEELE S OMETHING exciting has been happening in Newcastle-on-Tyne and has largely escaped the notice of the national Press. The "little man" has served notice on the...

By HAROLD NICOLSON y AM glad to see that Messrs. Routledge and Kegan Paul are this week publishing .a revised edition of Dr. Lempriere's'Bibilotheca Classica or Classical...

" The Sm all Back Room." (Empire.)—” Eureka Stockade." (Gaumont and Marble Arch Pavilion). REPIUMANDED the other day for blowing neither hot nor cold enough on the films I...

TILE name of Strindberg, the centenary of whose birth we celebrated last week, woduces on all save the most earnest type of playgoer a sense of foreboding. Compared with this...

THE THEATRE The School for Scandal. By Richard Brinsley Sheridan. (New.) It is easy to forget that this admirable comedy was written by a young man of twenty-seven, for it has...

LONDONERS should say thank-you to Birmingham for the Richard Wilson exhibition, which has now arrived at the Tate but lightly depleted. In Wilson, the classical and romantic...

MOZART'S Marriage of Figaro was given at Covent Garden on January 22nd, wholly in English. Figaro was sung by Geraint Evans, whose voice is well suited to the part, though it...

SPECTATOR SUBSCRIPTION RATES Ordinary edition to any address in the World. 52 weeks Li 10s. Od. 26 weeks Igo. Air Mail to any Country in Europe 52 weeks £2 7s. 6cL 26 weeks LI...

SIR,—No one admires your contributor, Janus, more than I do, despite his habit, periodically, of disconcerting me by an irruption of what I can only describe as Plymouth...

COLONIAL AIMS SIR, I hope that Col. Stanley's article of January 21st does not indicate that the Conservative Party is considering an alteration in the policy of working...

series of articles on Colonial aims. In the 1914-18 war I was engaged in instructing the American troops, who came over in large numbers to be incorporated in our formations, in...

series of articles on Colonial affairs and upon its leading article, The Unknown Colonies, may I point out that one reference in the latter almost suggests that the Colonies are...

SIR,—I was surprised to see you advocating (in The Spectator of January 14th) a halt to the continual rise in food subsidies—now running at £500,000,000 a year. Surely it is the...

SIR, —Having recently returned from the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, which Mr. Close so admirably describes in The Spectator of January 7th, I should like to...

Snt,—Would it not be more just to all concerned if Mr. Greenwood was to ascertain the facts with regard to the conduct of foxhunting before he presumes to make categorical...

SIR, —The exception which I took to the view that citizenship might appropriately be taught by a parental Government, using the Ministry of Education as its instrument, depended...

SIR, —Near the spot where, succeeding the legendary Guy of Warwick, the old Warwick historian, Rous, made his home five hundred years ago, and close to Blacklow Hill; on which...

Sta,—" Lestrian " must not take me too seriously. I do not really expect the present " generous " Government fo. grant me £1,000 a year, or even £1, when they are this year...

SIR,—I am collecting material for the authorised life of H. G. Wells. I would be most grateful if anyone who has unpublished recollections of him, or who has any letters or...

An indirect controversy is proceeding among our more theoretic agriculturists on rival policies: should we try to be self-sufficient all round, so far as maybe, or so arrange...

How much cleverer are wild birds than tame! Opposite the windows of a houseful of bird-observers hangs from an apple-bough a frequently replenished allowance of fat. It is...

SIR,—I read with much interest the excellent article From School to Army by the headmaster of Tonbridge, in The Spectator of December 31st. There is one small point, however, on...

Modern garden experts begin to urge earlier and earlier sowings of both flowers and vegetables. We are advised to sow peas (whether for the flower or the fruit) in January, if...

In a charming narrow valley in North Devon, known to me as a nesting haunt of both raven and buzzard, there was picked up the other day the body of a little auk. The great auk...

SIR,—Such a letter as that from your correspondent and the fact that you will print it are an indication that book-tokens have come to be regarded more in the nature of a public...

SIR,—The reply to Mr. David Savory's question is " William Pitt the Elder in 1741 " as in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. But the O.D.Q. should have quoted from the D.N.B.:...

Food and Population Road to Survival. By William Vogt. (Gollancz. 15s.) Ir the world were endangered by a widespread outbreak of a terrible epidemic, a new Black Death, for...

IN recent years quite a number of books intended for the general rather than the specialised reader have been published in English on Byzantine art and history, so filling a...

Joseph Lister. By Hector Charles Cameron. (Heinemann. 17s. 6d.) A coon many years ago one of Lister's nieces—herself already then an old lady—told the present' writer that...

Parliament and Foreign Policy in France. By J. E. Howard. (Cresset Press. 10s. 6d.) MR. HOWARD'S theme is extremely important, not only for students of modern France but for...

CLASSICAL antiquity offers no more exciting field of study than its geography, the theory and practice of which are Professor Thomson's subject. It seems slightly absurd in the...

Kevin O'Higgins. By Terence de Vere White. (Methuen. 18s.) FOR many of the younger generation of Irishmen the memory of Kevin O'Higgins is either one of awe at the horror of...

guinea will be awarded so the sender of the first correct solution of this week's crossword to be opened after noon on Tuesday week, February 8th. Envelopes must be received not...

The winner of Crossword No. 512 Beaconsfield. FEBRUARY 11th. is : MR. T. HORNE, The Tiled Cottage,

A Tour in Westmorland. By Sir Clement Jones. With a-Poem by Margaret Cropper. Illustrated. (Titus Wilson, Kendal. 25s.) 'IF you wish to make a memorable record of a journey, it...

Children's Illustrated Books. By Janet Adam Smith.. (Britain Pictures. Collins. 5s.) Our of the whole excellent Britain in Pictures series it would be hard to find one capable...

" You ought to read something more modern than Conan Doyle for a change.' " A damned fine writer. He could teach you boyos a thing or two. At least he had a story to tell, and...

of a distinguished architect, could, it might seem, be nothing but domestic and structural. But Mr. Bossom is also a well-known Member of Parliament, so that his sub-title—" An...

THERE have been a great number of books about individual counties published recently which are neither guide-books nor works of scholarship. Most of these fail to justify their...

By CUSTOS ALTHOUGH there are differences in emphasis, the bank chairmen's statements this year show a remarkable parallelism in their approach to the nation's economic and...