The American economy is in an exuberantly healthy state foe coping with the tremendous demands which are about to be Made upon it by the rearmament programme. But an expenditure...

Mr. Bevin went to The Hague this week to attend a meeting of the Consultative Council of the Brussels Treaty on defence questions. The deputies of the Foreign Ministers of the...

Prince Myshkin, the hero of Dostoyevsky's novel, The Idiot, was seized by an alarming presentiment that at the party he was about to attend he would knock over a valuable china...

Having decided that the armed forces need strengthening, the Government is now considering what mixture of rewards and exhortations can be devised to bring about the desired...

Persia is being mentioned with increasing frequency as the possible site for another Russian probe in strength if, as may well be the case, the Korean excursion is intended to...

In the Commons debate last December on the ill-treatment of children in their own homes there emerged a general demand for an inquiry, and the Home Secretary promised to set Up...

The general verdict on the first session of the Council of Europe last year was that, in view of the imperfections of its initial organisa- tion and the vagueness of its powers,...

I F the sudden Russian decision to send Mr. Malik to take his turn as president of •the Security Council of the United Nations had no other good effect it at least reminded the...

little flocks of green plover on the grass beside the runway. Our wing-tip almost passed over the nearest ones as we taxied past None of them moved or showed the slightest...

of rubble where (if I identified the spot correctly) a jeweller's shop used to stand. I remembered very clearly buying a wristwatch in this shop thirteen years ago, and how the...

island. But I have noticed before that, whereas true islands breed in their inhabitants a certain insouciance towards the surrounding sea, these figurative, land-bound enclaves...

the next major military campaign would be won by infantry against an enemy with complete command of the sea and air, he would not have been taken very seriously. But, though the...

soldier in the fiergarten, but the new one in Eastern Berlin—is a characteristic specimen of Soviet monumental art. It consists of an enormous sunken terrace (which may sink...

A T Gatow on Monday morning I watched fifty-four Yaks, in successive flights of nine, peel off and go down to land on an airfield just out of sight over the boundary of the...

By PETER FLEMING I THINK it was M. Mandel who, when France was falling in 1940, parodied the reassuring announcements made by Government spokesmen with the remark : "De...

(From a Correspondent) Brussels, August 1st K ING LEOPOLD'S second attempt at Kingship of the Belgians has ended as quickly as the first, and certainly with more drama. He...

By THEODORE TAYLOR * I HAVE always been of an enquiring turn of mind. Particularly when young I was continually trying to learn from people older than myself. So that I should...

By DEREK HUDSON t4A WEEK or two at Knollsea will see us right," says the heroine of one of Thomas Hardy's worst novels The Hand of Ethelberta, and the characters and action of...

By Lieut.-Col. V. PENIAKOFF E Francais est un monsieur decore qui redemanae du pain et ignore la geographie." That was all I cared about decorations when, I was told, as a...

Hellenopoula By JAMES M. MATTHEWS (Brasenose College, Oxford) A HELLENOPOULOS is a little HeIlene. British children are simply children ; they are not Britonlets or Anglets....

By HAROLD NICOLSON I HAVE been reading this week a sffinulating volume in which Mr. G. M. Young has collected what he describes as his Last Essays. I have a respect for Mr....

CINEMA " Trio." (Leicester Square.) Trio is a further instalment of Mr. Somerset Maugham's short stories transferred to the screen, and, like its predecessor Quartet. it is as...

NOT all of the records mentioned below can, I fear, be strictly called recent, and these notes represent a belated effort to _clear off outstanding debts in order to start the...

THE supposedly detached documentation of the American "tough" school of. literature is in most cases sentimental at heart. Much the same compound of romanticism and rapportage...

summer in watching red roses bloom high up in hollies, Lombardy poplars and even apple trees that I cannot but wonder why more climbers are not given such congenial support....

Seated by the bank of the Ouse—a most desirable "pitch "—two pic nickers saw two stoats cross the river dry-shod by jumping from the branch of one overhanging tree to another on...

IT WAS said to a farmer, as the two looked at a field of wheat flattened by the heavy rains : "You'll need a scythe to deal with that." He answered: "Not a hit, I shall need a...

Of all criticisms, the most foolish is that which laments that " such a thing is not natural." Quite a number of farmers at first refused to use the milking machine because it...

WORDSWORTH'S PRELUDE Tins posthumous poem was begun in 1799 and finished about 1805. It was intended as a species of introduction to another partially finished work, called The...

TRAINING each year a new set of the young, She travelled by small shifts of latitude Where skies were ever Spring's and blossom-hung, And shines in death more radiantly...

Report by R. Kennard Davis A prize was offered for an essay on The Fascination of Man- Watching, by a Bird. It is clear from the number and variety of the entries submitted...

Set by Monk Gibbon A prize of £5, which may be divided, is offered for the hest fable in the manner of /Esop on the disadvantages or advantages to all concerned of having a...

the former Headmaster of Mill Hill. The boys at this school who have been prevented by the age-limit from taking the School Certificate this year are, without exception, the...

• The Examination Age-Limit Sta.—The opposition to the examination age-limit is more authoritative than Mr. Jacks suggests. The age-limit is condemned by a great majority o f...

&IL—I notice that Mr. Longland has not replied through your oor- respondence columns. to the questions which I put in my last letter._ Since then I have Welted the fact that,...

SIR,—Mr. Wilson Harris, in his review of the third volume of Winston Churchill's war memoirs, quotes, as evidence of General Franco's sym- pathies with the Allies, Hitler's...

Sut,—I live in an invisible export, as you see from my address. This city is filled at the moment with visitors from every part of Europe and the United States, and I believe...

The connection between chronological age and mental age is that both are ages: both, therefore, belong to the category of time, and whichever is adopted determines (in this...

Stn,—That was a very unimaginative comment on the falling demand for herrings. The real reason for the limited popularity of this nutritious fish is that, for a few slivers- of...

irony at his peril, I could not help feeling a little disappointed when Lillian Browse (reviewing my book Modern English Bailer iii the Spectator of July 21st) cited as examples...

ORDINARY EDITION bypost to any part of the World AIR EXPRESS By Air to nearest Airport and then by ordinary mail. Canada and United States ... South Africa—ist class mail...

SIR,—It is important to keep a sense of proportion when discussing the aimed strength of Russia and comparing it with our own. The details given by Mr. Shinwell, and generally...

SIR,—In " Books and Wi - iters" Mr. R. D. Charques asks what it is that robs Ibsen, at anyrate in the English theatre, of grace and intimacy, and he suggests one reason may be...

S1R.—Durin g July I visited the new site of the University of Caen, the buildings of which were completely destroyed during the fighting of six years ago. The Rector. M. Daure,...

Brodribb is perfectly correct in pointing out my error about the date of Poundbury Camp. But it will perhaps soften the edges of that error when I say that towas uneasy about it...

W made a solemn-face guy of something we called Victorianism and danced the carmagnole round the preposterous image. There was no need to keep step. It was a free and easy, and...

Manchester Made Them. By Katharine Chorley. (Faber. 125. 6d.) MANY a Manchester man, as he reads this fragrant, wise and civilised book, will hardly know where he is and what...

Prologue to Archaeology British Antiquity. By T. D. Kendrick. (Methuen. 21s.) MR. T. D. KENDRICK, recently appointed to the Directorship of the British Museum, is a wise man...

"THE Heartland of the World "—that is what the British geographer Mackinder called the vast source of land-power and man-power stretching from the Baltic to Mongolia, where...

Mountains and Moorlands. By W. H. Pearsall. (Collins' New Naturalist '' series. 2 Is.) THE uplands of Britain, which form about a third of the land, are the areas least touched...

MAJOR LEGGE-BOURKE takes his title rather neatly from a passage ifs Gibbon, which, referring to the year 324 A.D. (Constantine being then Emperor), states that "the principal...

SCHOOLBOYS and undergraduates have long been familiar with wars in which nothing seems to happen between the causes and the results, both conveniently tabulated for use in...

betak "the result of a lifetime of study and research and of many 'years of university teaching." The last words suggest that it is also, like some of Aristotle's works, the...

The Genius of Europe..By Havelock Ellis. (Williams and Norgate. 125. 6c1.) THIS is not perhaps the most fortunate moment to have chosen for the publication of Havelock Ellis's...

IT all began, years ago, with an apparently unusable idea noted on the flap of one of Mr. Greene's envelopes; "I had paid my last farewell to Harry a week ago, when his coffin...

The House by the Medlar Tree. By Giovanni Verga. Translated from the Italian by Eric Mosbacher. (Weidenteld and Nicolson, los. 6c1.) Quorum. By Phyllis Bentley. (Gollancz. tos....

Lady Louisa Conolly. By Brian FitzGerald. (Staples Press. i cs.) THIS eighteenth-century biography will be much enjoyed by the large public that despises novels because they are...

in. os.) MR. WHITEHOUSE is President of the Ruskin Society, and is under- standably anxious that Ruskin should in no way be traduced. He feels that Admiral James in The Order...

from the pre-Socratierto the neo-Platonists. The second volume covers the mediaeval philosophers down to the end of the thirteenth century. It is somewhat longer than the first...

for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct , ohaton to be opened after noon on Tuesday week, August 150z.] • • • II • • • • '° 11111•••••• ••••••••...

LI I eirrimemn. K E 13 Fl 13 11 1E 'k ng MEM ri i i El CI P1 1E 121 FAMIREI ill111114111171i01[117aVIIII Eil In 17 MI V:311V11122112117rlitIrlig union El In rn 14111110g1...

By CUSTOS To suggest that stock markets are settling down after the violent shock of the Korean news would perhaps be an exaggeration, but they are certainly steadier than a...