7 JANUARY 1949

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INDEX FROM JANUARY 7th TO JUNE 24th, 1949, INCLUSIVE.

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NEWS OF THE WEEK A DOPTION .......243 4-1 . Albania .. 498 Analgesia .. — 3,11 Argentina : Fall of Miguel Miranda, 138 ; prices of meat, 382 ; agree- ment on meat .. 742...

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HITCHES IN GERMANY

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IT is plain that the situation in Germany needs careful handling and close attention. In many ways things are going well. The currency reform in the Western Zones has been a...

America's Marching Orders

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The importance of President Truman's address to Congress on Wednesday lay less in the immensity of the legislative programme he outlined than in the virtual certainty that the...

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Cease-Fire in Kashmir

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Exactly a year after the Kashmir dispute first came before the United Nations the Governments of India and Pakistan have been able to announce that they have arranged between...

Middle East Alliances

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Britain is the military ally of Egypt, Iraq and Transjordan. It is true that public opinion in the first two countries would like to see the alliances brought to an end, but in...

Victory Over Tsetse ?

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Whether or not the victory over the tsetse fly claimed by the Under-Secretary for the Colonies in announcing the discovery of the new drug antricyde by a group of I.C.I....

The South African Natives

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Consistency is the only virtue that can be claimed for the South African Government's decision to abolish the Natives' Representative Council, which met this week in Pretoria...

Dutch and Indonesians

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The scanty news regarding the situation in Indonesia suggests that everything, or nearly everything, has gone as the Dutch planned. General Spoor has reported that operations in...

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Mr. Tomlinson's Defence

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When the Minister of Education appeared before the Incor- porated Association of Headmasters last week to defend his proposed new Secondary School Examination, he said, as was...

Swollen Shoot

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The Gold Coast produces about half of the world's cocoa, but this vast industry could be entirely destroyed if the insidious disease known as swollen shoot was allowed to spread...

Production—Good and Bad

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On Tuesday it was announced that industrial production, as shown in the index of the Central Statistical Office, had reached a record high level in October, 1947, the latest...

Bus Drivers and Public

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The decision of the London busmen's delegates not to strike again this week but to send their dispute to arbitration—a decision still to be confirmed by the several garages—puts...

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EUROPE FACES THE FUTURE

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T HE first impression given by the two reports on European recovery published this week is that the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation is facing the future and not...

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* *

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Anything, it is said, can attract a London crowd. Even so I find the drawing-power of the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square a little mystifying. It is a fine tree ; the...

A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK T HE statement that Mr. Ivor Thomas, after

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holding two minor Ministerial offices in the Labour Government, has now com- pleted his pilgrimage from Labour, through independence, to Con- servatism, but does not propose to...

Some student of manners should write a short (or for

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that matter a long) monograph on fish and chips. The subject could be treated from many angles. There is, for example, a high aesthetic satisfac- tion to be derived from...

Janus is my name and mildness is my nature. It

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is therefore with grief for human depravity rather than anger at it that I touch again on a subject I have mentioned here before. General Eisenhower's book was published on this...

Someone, presumably Mr. Colin Coote, since he is responsible for

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the arrangement and the introduction, has had the good idea of collecting observations and comments from Mr. Winston Churchill's numerous books and presenting them in series...

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SUPREME COMMANDER

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By GORONWY REES O N June 5th, 1944, I had the privilege of spending the night with the totst U.S. Airborne Division (Major-General Maxwell D. Taylor) which was due to drop the...

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AMERICA, 1 948-49

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By EDWARD MONTGOMERY New York, New Year's Eve. L OOKING back over the old year and forward into the new, I think that most Americans would agree that America faces the future...

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THE ENDANGERED FAMILY

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By HONOR CROOME W HEN the Archbishop of York, Dr. Garbett, drew attention last week to the decline of home-life and its effects on public morality, he voiced an anxiety which...

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AN UNDERGRADUATE PAGE

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The Spectator, anxious both to encourage and to benefit by the considerable literary talent which many undergraduates of British universities possess, has decided to set apart a...

TRUMAN AND THE KREMLIN

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By RICHARD CHANCELLOR I N 1933 a Russian, who was something of a specialist in such matters, expressed withering contempt of the clumsiness of the Nazi politicians in their...

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BRITONS IN PAKISTAN

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M OST Englishmen are happy in Pakistan. To judge from the North-West Frontier, a small and delightful province, in particular, there can be no doubt at all about this ; but...

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TRANSCURTAINIAN TRAVELS

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By NORMAN KIRBY T HERE was still a distinct smell of fish clinging to my clothes as I clambered out of the R.A.F. plane that had brought me from >Berlin to Warsaw. The journey...

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I AM Only one thing—

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And a thousand ways I seek to conceal This precious right. Only one light— And yet these eyes Must look upon The clouds that hide The distant moon. Strange simplicity That...

HAMSTRUNG HOTELS

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By A LONDON HOTEL MANAGER J before Christmas the British Hotels and Restaurants Association, which represents the catering industry, sent a questionnaire to its members asking...

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MARGINAL COMMENT

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By HAROLD NICOLSON I T has often been remarked that one of the minor pleasures in life is to be slightly ill. This statement requires qualification. It is no fun at all, when...

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GRAMOPHONE NOTES

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THE most original and adventurous new recordings both come from Columbia—Szymanowski's first violin concerto, played by Eugenia Uminska and the Philharmonia Orchestra, and the...

CONTEMPORARY ARTS

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THE CINEMA " Tap Roots." (Gaumont.)---" Sealed Verdict." (Plaza.)—"Warn- Mg to Wantons." (New Gallery and Tivoli.) IF anybody has a hankering after a good bloody battle, with...

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The Turkey's Cousin To take up another critic of Christmas

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practices, the turkey has been condemned as dull and un-English. It is, perhaps, a successor to the bustard which was once a quite common English bird, and, as the biggest of...

Homely Migrants One small fact in bird migration seems to

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have been brought out by recent enquiries ; the hosts of birds coming into this island from the north shove in front of them rather more of our own birds than was once thought....

More Fruit A contribution to the popular subject of more

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food has been issued in Germany by the " Vegetarians' Union" of Wiirttemberg, and it is quoted in Trees, the lively little journal of the Men of the Trees. Some of the ideas...

In the Garden We have and have had much fresh

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evidence this winter of how much less vulnerable are certain delicate flowers than leaves. What flower is more apparently tender than iris Stylosa ? The first of mine appeared...

COUNTRY LIFE

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HAs this generation, or a good part of it, forgotten how to walk? Certainly our idea of distance has dwindled, in some cases, to vanishing point! This query and lamentation are...

EPIPHANY

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So dark I So deeply dark I I almost see the camels on the hill And feel their bird-like, swaying tread Thread through the willows by the water edge, Pass by the garden,...

ON HEARING A SCOTTISH CHOIR

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Unbidden, to the bone of love This gale of voices chills, As sears the seawind, chastening The islandman's wry hills. Bell-tongues, in oceanic throng, Rouse a remembered peace,...

Postage on this issue : Inland, lid.; Ofizrseas, Id.

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The

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SPECTATOR SUBSCRIPTION RATES Ordinary edition m any address in the World. 52 weeks 41 10s. Od. 26 weeks 15a Air Mail to any Country in Europe 52 weeks £2 7s. 6d. 26 weeks Cl...

Page 20

Sla,—Mr. Anthony Grant's apologia calls for comment. The September rising

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was indeed instigated by Moscow-trained Communists ; further- more, it was crushed—by the Republican Government. Dr. Hatta refused the Dutch offer of help because he quite...

INDONESIA

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Sirt,—I regret that in your just and reasoned leader on The Indonesian Tangle you did not censure Col. Hodgson's outrageous statement that the Dutch action in Indonesia was...

PAINTING AS A PASTIME

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Sm,—The note of natural asperity which I detect in Mr. Alston's pertinent question warns me too late that it would have been safer to say " appear to have been painted on the...

ADOPTION AND THE FAMILY

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Sts,—I read with much interest the letter from Miss Horn on this subject. I tried twenty years ago to adopt a child, and applied to the National Adoption Society and the Church...

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

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SELLING IN AMERICA SIR,—May I add a few notes to Mr. Alec Spearman's excellent article. I, too, have just returned from a two months' trip in Canada and the States, where I was...

ARMS FOR THE ARABS

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SIR, —Your note on the fighting between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine ends with the suggestion that, since the former have succeeded in arming themselves from various sources,...

UNIVERSITY AWARDS

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SIR,—I wish "A Cambridge Tutor " and Mr. Rust could be seized of the truth in this matter. I hoped to send my daughter to Oxford in two years, but owing to the £2,000 " ceiling"...

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FROM SCHOOL TO ARMY

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SIR, —Mr. Whitworth's article will be welcomed as throwing light upon a very human aspect of the National Service Acts in these days when the individual assumes a position of...

JUVENILE CRIME TECHNIQUE

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Snt.—I had eaten my lunch in a dairy and left a tip. Looking back from the pay-desk, I saw two very small boys in caps and blazers, one of whom had placed his elbow on the...

FELLOW TRAVELLER

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Sta,—As a regular reader of The Spectator and one who has especially enjoyed the articles of D. W. Brogan, I was much interested in his contribution, Douleurs de Voyage, in your...

WHOM

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siR,—If Miss Rose Macaulay had been educated at Rugby in the nineties of last century, she would have learned that a grammatical anomaly, when perpetrated by you or me, is a "...

WAR CRIMINALS

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SIR, —The waging of aggressive warfare is now, very properly, regarded as a crime. It would be interesting to conduct a retrospective historical survey or trial of those who (in...

THE KAISER IN ENGLAND

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Six,—Mr. F. W. Hinde, in The Spectator of December 31st, " ventures to state" that Mr. Harold Nicolson's comment that " pale and solemn, the German Emperor William II had walked...

THE PRINCE

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Sut,—The Times uses the neuter pronoun in good company. See St. Luke II, 17: " And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this...

THE IMPLICATIONS OF FIGURES

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SIR, —As an admirer of A Spectator's Notebook I regret that Janus should quote a misleading sentence from The Recovery of the West. This sentence is a striking example of the...

RECOGNISING FRANCO

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Snt,—In his excellent letter in The Spectator of December 24th, Mr. Shackleton Bailey writes that had Franco decided to declare war on ns, " Gibraltar would again have been...

TO ENSURE REGULAR RECEIPT OF THE SPECTATOR

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readers are 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...

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BOOKS OF THE DAY

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The Criminal Law r . History of English. Criminal Law and Its Administration from 1750. By Leon Radzinowicz. With a Foreword by the Rt. Hon. ' I Lord Macmillan. (Stevens. £3...

The Human Spirit

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THIS is a thrilling book. Captain Chapman, as he then was, stayed behind in Central Malaya when our forces were driven back from the Slim River early in January, 1942, and...

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Heraldry

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Intelligible Heraldry. By Sir Christopher Lynch-Robinson and Adrian Lynch-Robinson, with a Foreword by the Chief Herald of Ireland, Edward MacLysaght. (Macdonald. 18s.) IT is...

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Seventeenth-Century Socialist

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John Lilburne, the Leveller. By M. A. Gibb. (Lindsay Drummond. 18s.) SINCE Sir Charles Firth discovered the Clarke papers and Eduard Bernstein and Dr. Gooch published their...

Kneller ,

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Sir Godfrey Smeller and His Times, 1646-1723. By Lord Killanin. (Batsford. 42s.) THE reputation of Kneller has for some time been at a low ebb. Those who noticed with pleasure...

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A Boy's Life

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Memory of Michael. By Philip Wayne. (Nicholson and Watson. 6s.) IN this short and moving book one father speaks for many fathers bereft of many sons. Michael Wayne (thousands...

Past Tense

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IN a period when a novel that is only competent earns exaggerated praise because it is a -rarity, the appearance of a volume called The Art of Fiction strikes a note both ironic...

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Fiction

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The Rose and the Yew Tree. By Mary Westmacott. (Heinemann. 8s. 60.) . _ ENoitmouS fainily• sagas stand about the literary landscape today as thickly as brontosauri and other...

Peacock Today

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The Novels of Thomas Love Peacock. Edited and introduced by David Garnett. (Rupert Hart-Davies. 18s.) PEACOCIC," says Mr. Garnett in his biographical introduction to this new...

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FINANCE AND INVESTMENT

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By CUSTOS FIRST off the mark in the hew issue market this year, Australia has sprung a surprise on the City. In dealing with just under £18 Nihon of loans called for...

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" THE SPECTATOR " CROSSWORD No. 511

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ACROSS I. Ship-building materials from the stove ? (8.) 5. The Sappers in Goliath's habitation. (6.) 10. One might get a pelt with this money. (5.) 11. One of these takes a...

SOLUTION TO CROSSWORD No. 509

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LI 1! - E3 E T 11 . DN A # iv iv4 8. ,I m u • ;4 u di ,- it o 4P; L'u!m. P P II 1- tc o oll A 2 A:C:Tl.ME R.ml t im. - r A IN E IBC Irk E E Klib I :0 O'F:A.14:5 1 Z Eni Tr; L...