W HATEVER the reasons that underlie M. Litvinov's resignation of the post of Commissar for Foreign Affairs, the event is not reassuring. When in the midst of delicate and...

country and Germany having been sharply clarified by Herr Hitler's denunciation of the Polish-German Pact concluded in January, 1934, for a period of ten years, are expressing...

the keys of the European situation. If there is to be an effective defensive front in Eastern Europe Rumania and Poland must hold the fore- most places in it, with Russia in...

Minister in the House of Commons on Wednesday of any idea of the " encirclement " of Germany may be of some service in so far as it is brought to the notice of the German people...

The Archbishop's Opportunity An impressive letter by the Dean of St. Paul's in The Times last week, urging that " before the killing begins " the Christian churches throughout...

the Croat leader, Dr. Matchek, reached a " final agreement " in their discussions at Zagreb on the Serb-Croat problem. The agree- ment was believed to provide for autonomy for...

attitude it has adopted to the problem of applying conscription to Ulster. It might have been better to omit Ulster altogether from the scope of the Bill, for the number of men...

a useful and honourable part in the conference last week-end at Cairo, attended by representatives of the Palestinian Arabs, the Arab States and the Indian Moslems, and presided...

upon, argument will now turn solely upon its details. The mildness of the measure and the very limited scope of its application has surprised a good many people, and there is...

Commons, Mr. A. P. Herbert made it plain that he did not propose to consider himself as an ordinary Member. The majority of the House were shocked when he challenged Mr. Baldwin...

Budget resolutions plod their placid and uneventful way. The life was taken out of the Budget debates by the conscription announcement, and, although a number of worthy speeches...

of Trade told an approving House of Commons that he proposed to take powers immediately to ensure that any ships which British owners wished to sell abroad should first be...

quite untenable situation in its opposition to conscription. Firstly, it lays itself open to the old criticism of willing the end in foreign policy without willing the means at...

on Budget day itself, by Mr. Chamberlain's announcement of conscription, and the Budget debate was thinly attended. Even on the Labour side it is admitted that, given the...

speech to the Reichstag, Herr Hitler made yet another of his frequent offers of peace. Germany, he said, " is prepared to conclude a 25-year non-aggression treaty with Poland, a...

T WENTY-SIX years ago Prince Albert, King George the Fifth's second son, serving as cadet on H.M.S. Cumberland,' landed for the first time on the shores of Canada. This week, as...

the growing dis- regard of international obligations is to be depored, over the abrogation of the Anglo-German Naval Treaty by Herr Hitler. No new building programme on which...

odd. Germany, he said, was prepared to conclude a twenty- five-year non-aggression pact with Poland—" a treaty, there- fore, which would extend far beyond the duration of my own...

issue Government statements when called on so to do, is on occasion recusant. Not long ago it was rung up in the middle of the evening by a certain Government Depart- ment and...

are a thing apart, and I should never think of applying to them ordinary standards of interpretation. But there must after all be some standards of interpretation, or some...

with its circulation of, I think, three millions, is publishing a curious series of articles by General Krivitsky, who was chief of the Soviet Military Intelligence in Western...

IF I said—as I do say—that a man had died in the past week but for whom the Allies might have lost the Great War, many readers, I fancy, would be hard put to it to decide whom I...

By ERWIN D. CANHAM Washington. B EHIND the excellent reception which American public opinion gave President Roosevelt's now historic mes- sage to the Dictators are several...

By GERARD BOUTELLEAU ti rig OT till you've done your military service," our French provincials say when a too enterprising youth wants to rush suddenly into a career. Their...

W ITHOUT wincing or any apparent inclination to suppose that there is an easy way round, France has now accepted the challenge of what someone has called " the peace of...

By MAGNUS WECHSLER A MONG a multitude of largely inter-related educational questions the current problems of reorganisation and those which will arise on the raising of the...

By AGNES SMEDLEY T ODAY I saw a peasant soldier of China die. In him was embodied the death of a million men of China who had given their lives that their country may not be...

By OUR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT F OR exponents of the objective, physical, scientific factor in Medicine there are few better or more clear-cut examples than that afforded by the...

"THE SPECTATOR," MAY 4TH, 5839. A fanatical Irishman, residing in the !ower part of Lincoln, having conceived an antipathy towards the Cathecral, has vowed to demolish it; and...

IN this quiet room, at this quiet time In anxious Europe, things come casually To our sensation. The innocent light hangs Over the roadway, still the hedge fulfils Its civil...

By H. R. JUKES A CTUALLY, I suppose, Clarence might even have been Long John Silver's parrot—Cap'n Flint under a more respectable name. They live to a great age, I believe, and...

the entry into my compartment of two elderly mer- chants of the City of London. They also read their evening newspapers with attention. At the very moment when the train arrived...

By HAROLD NICOLSON I T was a strange experience, last Friday, to watch the stages by which Herr Hitler's Reichstag speech per- colated into London. The House of Commons found...

terity, was padding and smoothing with the aid of a quite ordinary clothes-brush the first bulletins upon the green baize, studded as a bagatelle-board with sharp pins. In his...

the Bolsheviks, nor yet the Social Democrats, nor even the Traitors of Versailles, who are the central enemy; it is Presi- sident Roosevelt who is Enemy No. One. By thus concen-...

is even more morose. The atmosphere of a theatre after a matinee (with all those coffee-cups around) is sadder even than the picture of charwomen enclosing stalls in dust-...

echoing the same toothless optimism. For them it was a " hopeful sign " that Herr Hitler's vituperations were concentrated upon President Roosevelt and that his refer- ences to...

SELF-CONFIDENT POLAND By FRANK CLEMENTS I SUPPOSE that I was one of the first Englishmen to benefit from the understanding with Poland. On the evening when I left Kaunas for...

THE THEATRE " Carrie and Cleopatra." By H. E. Bates. At the Torch Theatre. " Herbert Farjeon's Little Revue." At the Little Theatre. CARRIE and Cleopatra are sisters, divided...

Wuthering Heights." At the Gaumont-" La Bête Humaine." At the Paris. How much better they would have made Wuthering Heights in France. They know there how to shoot sexual...

Academic Painting IT would be true, as usual, to say of this year's exhibition of the Royal Academy that it contains too many pictures, too few of which have any claims to be...

Covent Garden and Sadler's Wells SMETANA'S comic opera, Prodana Nev'esta, alias The Bartered Bride, alias Die Verkaufte Braut, under which title it opened the season at Covent...

[D'un correspondant parisien] LES Francais ont appris avec soulagement ]'adoption par l'Angleterre du principe de la conscription. Pour ]'instant, sans doute, la valeur du gene...

Impressions at Wembley THAT Portsmouth, on the day's play, deserved to win no one can doubt. But who could have foretold it? Their record in the League had been most...

On the subject of wrens, a strange tale is told me of the long duel between a pair of tits and wrens for the possession of a new nesting-box. The tits, especially the cock bird,...

In the west country a very expert grower of fruit grafted a number of his trees (which had borne a less valuable variety of fruit) with that best of commercial apples, Lord...

May ! The date suggests two pleasurable duties. One is to visit the fruit orchard country, Worcestershire perhaps above other districts ; the other to visit the Lincolnshire...

this page for a closer close season for many birds. A beginning was registered recently by the passing of the Bill for the protection of geese and duck ; and the Home Secretary...

How persistent are some nesting pairs, and how shy are others! The other day I found a blackbird's nest that had been built on what had been the top rail of a fence, tilted to...

of transplanting was done for various reasons, and some of the results were striking. Cox's were removed from a sloping orchard to lower ground, and flourished exceedingly. They...

In one cherry orchard (which has been in unusually full blossom this season) a great quantity of daffodils were planted about twenty years ago. The grass is rather rough, and it...

In the same orchards a patent cure for canker, that most prevalent of apple diseases, has been tried recently. I in- spected closely a number of cankers both broad and deep that...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] Sta,—In his interesting letter on the Negeb Mr. George Eden Kirk writes : " One of the most unpleasing features of the recent colonisation of...

[Correspondents are requested to keep their letters as brief as is reasonably possible. Signed letters are given a preference over those bearing a pseudonym, and the latter must...

on " Land for the Jews," Professor G. R. Driver observes that " the offer of the Negeb to the Jews would be welcomed by very many of them as the best possible settlement of the...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—Lord Tavistock's indictment of British policy towards Germany is both unreasonable and unjust. We have tried to disarm and we are the...

whether the seizure of Czecho- Slovakia was as unpremeditated as suggested in " A Specta- tor's Notebook." Father Reichenberger, the leader of the Sudeten Christian Democrats,...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—While it is probably true, as the writer of " A Specta- tor's Notebook" says, that Field-Marshal Goering did not know in advance of the...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—The article on " Germany and the Fourteen Points " interests me, since I have just spent some days of research on the same point. There is...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—I was not thinking specifically of the former German colonies when I suggested that Germany was indignant " at the virtual domination by...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] write on the day conscription has been introduced in England to challenge your advocacy of most liberal, if not unquestioning admission of...

correspondent who finds fault with Mr. Chamberlain's leading has an extraordinary notion of what constitutes criticism. An author recently complained that when he published a...

THE SPECTATOR] Sul,—At this moment when our minds are filled with the question of national defence, it is interesting, and in an odd way inspiring, to turn to how our...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—The writer of " Budget and Crisis (April 28th) is to be congratulated on a well-reasoned exposition of the present fiscal position. It is...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] Six,—Mr. Rowse mentions the description in The Great Chronicle of London of the dinner at which Dunbar's " Lon- don, thou art the flower of...

Sit,—Hundreds of men, women and children, refugees from Czecho-Slovakia, are arriving in this country destitute and with nothing but the clothes in which they stand. May I...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR, —Miss Margaret Knight supplies in Mr. R. M. Moore's table of comparative death-rate of 13 age-groups a striking illustration of the "...

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] Sut,—On the occasion of an article in your paper dated April 7th, 1939, by Monica Redlich, we beg to inform you that it must be due to a...

Margaret Sanger (Mary Agnes Hamilton) .. ... 769 Crimea (H. R. Colman) • • • • ... ... ... 770 Louisa May Alcoa (Rosamond Lehmann) ... 772 judgment on German Africa (J. L....

Crimea. By C. E. Vulliamy. (Jonathan Cape. 15s.) THE history of the Crimean War is a useful cautionary tale for statesmen and peoples. It was the product of blunder- ing...

THE name of Louisa May Alcott is for me one of those names which operate as symbols, and flood whole tracts of almost buried and forgotten, yet still fertile, territory with...

THE nearer problems of Europe have pushed Germany's claim for colonies to the background, but they have an awkward way of popping up in temporary lulls in the Euro- pean storm....

Selected Writings of Thomas de Quincey. By Philip Van Doren Stem. (Nonesuch Press. Jos. 6d.) THIS large and well-selected anthology has come (none too early) to supply a felt...

M. MARTIN DU GARD'S famous novel, which has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, will win many new admirers in this excellent translation. The Thibaults tells the story...

Life of an Irish Soldier. Reminiscences of General Sir Alexander Godley, G.C.B., K.C.M.G. (Murray. 12$. 6d.) IN his Preface Lord Baden-Powell tells us that in this book Sir...

Foreign Affairs. By the Rt. Hon. Anthony Eden. (Faber and Faber. 12s. 6d.) Tins book is much more than a collection of Mr. Eden's speeches on foreign affairs. It is, as he...

notify THE SPECTATOR office BEFORE MIDDAY on MONDAY OF EACH WEEK. The name, the previous address to which the paper has been sent and receipt reference number should be quoted.

By FORREST REID Grand Master. By Stephen Hockaby. (Michael Joseph. 7s. 6d.) I HAVE, I must confess, no great love for topical fiction ; I am, in fact, all against it, and Mr....

THE Nineteenth Century gives prominence to a warning article on " The European Situation," by Mr. M. Wolf, who holds that Berlin and Rome still fail to realise the strength of...

THE City has taken the Simon and the Hitler hurdles in good style, but having done so is looking round again as anxious and puzzled as before. For it is already clear that last...

The Government's conscription plan is obviously a " bull point " for the makers of boots and uniforms and for the builders of barracks, but is less pleasant news for the...

Year by year Imperial Chemical Industries fOrtifies its position among the select group of undertakings which, except in abnormally depressed conditions, may be relied on to...

Obviously from the Chancellor of the Exchequer's cryptic replies to questions in the House of Commons, White- hall has no intention just yet of clarifying its neatly expressed "...

Flour-milling in Great Britain is very largely in the hands of three companies : Ranks, Spillers and the Co-operative Whole- sale Society. The Co-operative Wholesale Society is...

shareholders of the Rio Tinto Company that there had as yet been relief from the disabilities under which the com- pany is operating in Spain. On the contrary, he showed that...

Sir Frederick Hamilton had one disappointment to record at last week's meeting of H.E. Proprietary. West Spaarwater, in which H.E. Proprietary is largely interested, has found...

the world, comprises one of the largest industrial undertakings in existence has not failed to feel the effect of international tension and its concomitant exchange restrictions...

THE LONDON ASIATIC RUBBER AND PRODUCE COMPANY, LIMITED AT the annual general meeting of the above company on May 1st, the Chairman, Mr. H. J. Welch, said: In 1938 the rubber...

The chain store groups competing in the lower-priced section of the retail trade are less immediately affected by changes in the economic outlook than some of those shops which...

A DIFFICULT YEAR HE sixty-sixth ordinary general meeting of the Rio Tinto Com- pany, Limited, was held on April 28th, in London. The Rt. Hon. Sir Auckland Geddes, G.C.M.G....

PATALING RUBBER ESTATES STANDARD PRODUCTION INCREASED THE 19th ordinary general meeting of the Pataling Rubber Estates, Limited, was held on May 3rd in London. Mr. H. Eric...

Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay was held en May 2nd in London. Mr. Patrick Ashley Cooper (the Governor) said that American business...

the Harrisons and Crosfield group of companies, last year used its financial strength to suspend sales while the market was unduly depressed. Mr. H. Eric Miller, the chairman,...

Presiding at the 270th meeting of the " Governor and Com- pany of Adventurers of England Trading into Hudson's Bay " on Tuesday, Mr. Patrick Ashley-Cooper announced that nearly...

Another rubber company which has come through the difficult conditions of 1938 is the London Asiatic Rubber and Produce Company, which comes from the same stable as Pataling. At...