To the constant argument that M. Bidault, of the Moutyment Ripublicaine Populaire, or Progressive Catholic Party, is not the obvious man to lead a French Government, it may be...

The malaise which has affected relations between Britain and Italy in the past few months was beginning to enter a dangerous phase before Count Sforza made his determined...

T HE dedication of the new permanent centre of the United Nations in New York on Monday, the fourth anniversary of the birth of the organisation, arouses mingled feelings....

Relations between this country and Persia are poor and are unlikely to improve markedly before the signature of a new oil agreement. Until that is out of the way there will...

The Government of Czechoslovakia may take what comfort it can from the fact that it has now appointed Mr. Alexei Cepicka to be the head of the new State Department controlling...

On Monday Mr. Nehru, speaking in Ottawa, declared in emphatic terms that India would remain a member of the Commonwealth when, as will soon happen, she becomes a Republic. Four...

The report of the Gold Coast Committee on Constitutional Reforms is the most remarkable document on colonial affairs that has been produced since the war. Here, at its best, is...

While it is satisfactory that the Home Secretary should have acted so promptly in the matter of the sale of contraceptives from slot- machines, it may be questioned whether to...

the De Havilland Comet are more interested in the day provided by the mass of recording instruments—equal in weight to twelve passengers— which the aircraft carried to Castel...

A letter in The Times describing the postal services in an East Anglian town forty years ago draws very necessary attention to the deplorable deterioration in the Post Office's...

There are occasions when the urge to large-scale planning coincides with common sense, realism and enlightenment. Such coincidences are much rarer than the planners usually...

as the climax of weeks of increasing tension. The public relations officers of the Government, amateur and professional, had indicated that great and painful decisions would be...

N EVER has this Government failed the country so utterly as it has this week. There is no excuse for its abdication, and there should be no condonation of it. Knowing what...

which the Concise Oxford Dictionary gives warrant. But I could wish the Treasury, or one of its officials, wouldn't assure a respectable citizen—actually, indeed, a Conservative...

such universal condemnation in the Press as greeted the Prime Minister's statement last Monday. The Daily Herald did its dutiful best to defend what could not be defended, b..it...

policy into 504 pages (of a Penguin Special). This is a very considerable achievement. JANUS.

unhappily, decided the wrong way—by which I mean the wrong way in equity, though no doubt it was the right way in law. The Catering Wages Commission and the Wages Boards...

new appointment. Governorship of the Royal Hospital at Chelsea will in itself give little scope for his qualities, but it should leave him leisure to continue in one form or the...

hand ; c.g., " Most of us will agree with what the hon. member for Kirkcaldy has been saying, not only in respect of corporal punish- ment, in which I, with perhaps a beatable...

at the end of last week can hardly have known what they thought they were gaining. Probably escape from an increased purchase-tax or from clothes-rationing, though the President...

the Spectator, will be regretted equally by his colleagues on the Spectator, the publishers with whom he came into intimate touch and the wide circles who enjoyed the many...

By ROBERT WAITHMAN Washington T HE World's Fair in New York was a remarkable show, and so was the recent Diamond Jubilee Convention in Chicago of the Ancient Arabic Order of the...

By JAMES F. BRAILSFORD, M.D. " The thing that numbs the heart is this, That men cannot devise Some scheme of life to banish fear That lurks in most men's eyes." I T was...

From many a mangled truth a war is won, And who am I to oppose War and the lie and the pose Asserting a lie is good if a war be won ? From many a mangled truth a war is won,...

in going to Tetuan, the capital of the Spanish zone of Morocco, was to have a talk with Prince Moulay Hassan, the heir to the Moroccan throne, who was paying a short visit to...

By EDWARD HODGKIN T HE foundation of a new university college is not in these days a thing of itself to arouse wonder. Universities must to a certain extent follow the simple...

By D. R. Paris HE working basis of every (French) Government must notoriously be the same coalition of centre and right parties " wrote the Spectator last week. What blistering...

B C. M. WOODHOUSE I F you happened to live at the village of Kesh in Co. Fermanagh, as several hundred excellent people have the wisdom to do, the chances are that sooner or...

'4 THE. Parliamentary Paper No. 614 forcibly calls for reflection on the good and evil likely to ensue from the rapid increase of the capital of the empire. . . . It may be...

readers arc urged to place a firm order with their newsagent or to take out a subscription. Newsagents cannot afford to take the risk of carrying stock, as unsold copies are...

Portrait of Lita By STEWART SANDERSON (University of Edinburgh) 46 H! there is an organ playing in the street—a waltz too. I must leave off to listen. They arc playing a waltz...

By HAROLD NICOLSON B EING occupied at the moment with a long biographical labour which will take me two years at least to complete, I have been obliged to renounce my former...

THE THEATRE "Love's Labour's Lost." By William Shakespeare. "She Stoops A RIGHT and left? Not quite. The first barrel brings off a difficult shot beautifully; the second by...

SADLER'S WELLS' new production of Don Giovanni is " an attempt to reproduce as closely as possible the conditions of the first per- formance of the opera in Prague in 1787,...

" Give us This Day." (Odeon.) THIS is a very strange picture, and it leaves one with a numbet of impressions so ill-attuned to each other that it is hard to judge it as an...

Howard. Mr. Howard has a neat, unfrenzied touch. Commended also: The Plain Man's Guide To Music, in which symphonies and orchestras are painlessly dissected, without any...

I MET last week an enthusiastic farmer—and farmers are not famed for enthusiasm—coming from the last of his threshing. He said: " The figures arc the best we have ever had. Both...

remember—was tele- vision's production of Antigone, to which Alexandra Palace incom- prehensibly gave only one performance. There may well have been good practical reasons, but...

LAST week there were three most interesting programmes on The Technique of Acting, which I had missed when they were first broadcast in the early summer. It may well be that I...

the best of all shrubs seems to be Rhus Caninoides (from North America). It outflamcs R. Cotinus (from South Europe) and is found to be hardier in garden hollows ; and it...

has a certain biological interest. Threshers are ordered to surround the stack in question with a wire, with the aim of destroying the rats and mice that are evicted. I noticed...

October was well advanced, when at last Red Admirals, Painted Ladies and Clouded Yellows began to appear, but Commas, which have been numerous of late years, were wholly absent....

of Field Studies has proved itself to be of really national value, and its work is likely to be greatly enlarged to include younger students. The four chief centres— at Flatford...

the Form, in which two teams of schoolboys and schoolgirls round and about the country play General Post with general knowledge. Half the time I find these children woefully...

The Church of South India sm,—Thc position of the Church of South India is grave, and the present attitude of the Church of England is having disastrous effects on Indian...

Sta,—Owing to unfortUnate circumstances I have only now seen, in the Spectator of October 7th, the letter by " Viator " in reply to my article Germans and Dismantling. May I...

Stx,—To comment adequately upon Fr. Cary-Elwes' most interesting article on Spanish affairs published in the Spectator of October 7th would require a gloss at least as long as...

23rd and the reply by " Viator " in the Spectator of October 7th were read by me with much interest. An American point of view might he appro- priate. " Viator " gives no reason...

SIR,—India's election to the Security Council is a landmark in her career as a free and independent State. It has immensely pleased the Indian people, who see its it much more...

StR,—I am interested to read the favourable review on Sir Harold Bellman's latest book Bricks and Mortar, which should, of course, be Bricks and Mortals. I remember some years...

SIR,—When Drake sailed out against the Spanish Armada more than half his men and ships came from the Cornish port of Fowey. It is often said that the adventurous spirit of Drake...

SIR,—I have read with indignation Sir Charles Webster's insinuations against Lord Perth and the late Sir Eric Phipps in the Spectator of Sept- ember 30th, which are completely...

sm,—Further to Mr. Wilson's letter in the Spectator of October 21st, I should like to point out that, in addition to being a nuisance in Cambridge, the Eastern Regional...

Sta,—I was interested to read Mr. Philpott's article on Varsity, but as an old member of the staff I feel I must comment on his remark that " several London newspapers arc...

SIR,--I must hasten to apologise for having misunderstood Canon Raven's reference to a "one-in-twelve" acceptance as applying to the university as a whole instead of only to his...

Sta,—The figures given by your contributor, Dr. Nelson Jackson, in 11 , -T article on The Able-Bodied Old are not quite correct. At least one of the "Big Five" banks compels...

SUBSCRIPTION RATES. Ordinary Edition by post to any part of the world. 52 weeks f 1 105. Od. World-wide distribution by Air All Up " service to all countries in Europe (except...

Oscar Wilde in Prison De Profundis. Being the first complete and accurate version of "Epistola: in Carcere et Vinculis," the last prose work in English of Oscar Wilde....

de l'Allemagne. Lea Eglises en Allemagne. Education in Occupied Germany. (Royal Institute of International Affairs. 5s. each.) EIGHT institutes of international affairs made a...

The Green Beret. By Hilary St. George Saunders. (Michael Joseph. 15s.) MR. SAUNDERS seems to be well se, on his course of recording successively the war-histories of all the...

The Healing Touch. By Harley Williams. (Cape. I5s.) THE three first character studies in Dr. Harley Williams's book are of court physicians, little known today, who were...

THIS is the final volume of a most important work of scholarship, which has been in progress for more than twenty-five years. It wzs in 1926 that Ernest de Selincourt published...

New Light on Pope. By Norman Ault. (Methuen. 30s.) The Pleasures of Pope. Selected and introduced by Peter Quennell. (Hamish Hamilton. 15s.) IN face of a mixture of fact and...

The Oratorios of Handel. By Percy M. Young. (Dobson. 18s.) FOR nearly two centuries the vocal music of Handel has been repre- sented in England, for all practical purposes, by...

The Navy and the ‘ Slave Trade. By Christopher Lloyd. mans. 21s.) " . . AND may humanity after Victory be the predominant feat in the British Fleet." When including this...

Matter, Mind and Meaning. By Whately Carington. (Methuen. Ps. THE late Mr. Whately Carington's Telepathy broke new ground psychical research. In the association theory he...

Rowlandson Drawings. Edited and introduced by Adrian Bury. (Avalon Press. 25s.) No artist is in greater need of protection from his friends than Thomas Rowlandson. His output...

". . WHAT dreams may come." Nothing very agreeable according to Mr. Bowles and Mr. West, but they write with power and beauty and so their books come first. All the people in...

1 .1 Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct of this week's crossword to be opened after noon on Tuesday week, s.-t.other 8th. Envelopes...

SOLUTION ON The winner of Crossword No. 16 Pembroke Square, London, W.8. NOVEMBER II , 551 is Miss PENN SPARROW,

By CUSTOS WITH its superb capacity for staging an anti-climax the Government has announced its much-heralded economy plans to a waiting world. In the City the verdict is " too...