T HE war in Russia has reached a phase critical in two senses. The danger that the Germans may cut Russia off from half her food and four-fifths of her oil is imminent, and such...

T HE so-called second-front demand raises much more serious questions than a great deal that is lightly talked and written about it would suggest. It has divers champions,...

N OW and then a book is published whose influence on contem- porary thought is immediate and manifest. That, I predict, will be true of the volume (not yet published here) in...

By STRATEGICUS C HINA has kept a defiant flag flying for five years, and Russia has so far maintained her threat to the German power by driving her hardest bargain in the sale...

By PROFESSOR D. W. BROGAN A S the war news gets worse there is a natural reluctance to discuss the nature of the peace settlement or the nature of the precautions to be taken...

By G. L. SCHWARTZ The Retail Trade Committee set up by the Board of Trade is now busily formulating proposals for the closing down of shops, and in both the second and third of...

By EILUNED LEWIS O NE of the petitions of the Litany gathers together a small company of oddly assorted people, bound to each other by their common peril. All that travel by...

By HAROLD NICOLSON I WAS talking the other evening to two men upon the future of 1 British politics. Neither of them was a politician, but each of them was eminent in his own...

4 ' Always In My Heart." At Warners.—" The Male Animal." At the Regal. IN Warner productions the family is almost always musical. Scarcely a moment passes without one member or...

" Othello." At the New Theatre.—" King Henry IV," Part 1. At Raynes Park County School. IT will be a thousand pities if the Old Vic Company's production of Othello is limited...

Political Symphonies LAST week's Promenade programmes were unusually rich in interest. Among the novelties were two new symphonies by Benjamin Britten and Alan Bush, both of...

should think he furthers the effort to bring in a better world by discrediting the attempt t o secure co-operation with whatever decent elements there may be in Germany. The...

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR ta,—With reference to the letter " Allies Inside Germany " published in he Spectator on July 17th, 1942, the organisers of this exhibition would . ke to...

Sta,—Mr. Seebohm Rowntree's article on ." The Manager's Function " raises questions of a deeper kind, to which neither he nor Mr. James Burnham appear to give any consideration....

SIR,—Mr. Roger Clarke's article contains so many near truths, and so many glimpses of the obvious dressed up as profundities (e.g., " compul- sory education...

Sta,—A chairman of the Miners' Lodge connected with a large colliery in South Wales' wroteto me the other day and said that not a single boy under 15 had entered the employment...

SIR,—May I encroach on your space to answer my critic R. N. ? A poem should be judged on its merits as poetry, not as a small work of reference. Surely, " Lord's Cricket Ground...

SIR, —May an old reader of The Spectator, and an old lawyer, record his regret at your mild benison on the above regulation? (s) Under it the Home Secretary is at once (a)...

SIR,—Your correspondents who hav written on the subject of the numbers of adherents to the Churches in this country omit, I venture to say, an important factor. Allow me to...

FEW religious teachers in our own day have more deeply moved the heart and conscience of England than Dick Sheppard. If any- one could have converted London to Christianity he...

A Comic Classic Monkey. By Wu Ch'eng-en. Translated from the Chinese by Arthur Waley. (Allen and Unwin. I2S. 6d.) LovEEs of poetry have for long been indebted to Mr. Arthur...

Conflicts. By L. B. Namier. (Macmillan. 8s. tkl.) THE difference between the historian and the historiographer should be so obvious as to need no new emphasis. Yet in these...

MR. GELBER wrote some years ago a solid, useful, academic book on The Rise of Anglo-American Friendship. It is possible that his studies in that field showed him the close...

Marcel Proust : Lettres a Une Arnie. Recueil de quarante-et-une lettres inedites adressies I Marie Nordlinger I899-1908. (Editions du Calame, Manchester. LI Is.) A scAftcrrt of...

English Children. By Sylvia Lynd. (Collins. 4s. 6d.) THIS addition to the " Britain in Pictures " series is a charming, ele- gantly ironic little sketch of the history of...

Nobody's Darlings. By Margaret Iles. (Gollancz. 9s. 6d.) Grand Opera. By Vicki Baum. (Bles. 8s. 6d.) The Three Bamboos. By Robert Standish. (Peter Davies. 9s. 6d.) , Northern...

for one guinea will 63 cwarded so, the sender of the firs: correct s olution of this week's crossword to be opened liter noon on Tuesday week. Envelopes •houll be received not...

The winner of Crossword No. x75 is K. M. DEXTER, Esq., r55 Mag- len Road, Exeter. '

_ IT will be a pity if some real use is not made of the almost un- precedented crop of nuts and, in rather less degree, of walnuts. Bushes of Kentish cobs and filberts are even...

By CUSTOS RAIL, stockholders have good cause for satisfaction with this year 's interim dividends. Fortified by the knowledge that a fixed ne t revenue is assured under the...