RELIGION AND THE NAVY SIR,-I cannot let your remarks in " A Spectator's Notebook " about religion in the Royal Navy go by without comment, as I think what I have to say can be...

JOWETT AT BALLIOL SIR,-As to Jowett's reputation outside Oxford may I recall a vivid memory? In i892 r was one of four undergraduates nominated to represent the Oxford...

RUSSIA'S LOSSES SrR,-The losses of the British Empire in the first three years of the war are in no doubt as they have been officially stated. They are as follows: Service...

COUNTRY LIFE ALL manner of vague censuses of various insects, including, of cours, wasps, have reached me-from Scotland, Devon, the Isle of Man ind elsewhere-several of them...

MARGINAL COMMENT By HAROLD NICOLSON WENT this week to the film of the Battle of Britain which has been put together by the American Office of War Information for the...

"OBLITERATION " BOMBING SIR,-I cannot but think that the question of " obliteration bombing," if that be what it really is, raises more difficulties than Mr. Johnstone...

STRIKERS AND OVERSTRAIN SIR,-Your comments on Mrs. Cole's letter seem rather to ignoze her main pont. In Mrs. Cole's view, the basic cause of many of the present strikes is not...

",REJUVENATING MISS YONGE " SIR,-I am astonished that the writer of the review thus named should have gained only by means of Mrs. Battiscombe's Life of Charlotte Yonge her...

SIR,-The causes which beget strikes are often exceedingly 'omplex as any trade union official or industrial welfare worker knows only too well. The factor of overstrain which...

Flying Crusader: The Story of General William Mitchell. The Rowdy Pa'adin BA I Isaac Don Levine. (Peter Davies. I5s.) GENERAL WILLIAM MITCHELL was one of the most prescient...

Redbrick University. The Fortunate Islands By Bruce Truscott. (Faber. ios. 6d.) MR. TRuscorT's study of the newer universities of England raises and answers many interesting...

FINANCE AND INVESTMENT By CUSTOS NEWS of further repatriations of overseas debt has come along just in time to give markets a much-needed stimulus. Not that prices were in any...

Front Page Europe. Shorter Notices By Denis Weaver. (Cresset Press. 9S. 6d.) IN this book Mr. Weaver, who was special correspondent for the News Chronicle, describes the...

Le Pillage de la France. By M. Simon. (Editions de !a France Libre. 6d.) I IN this pamphlet of 20 pp., M. Simon analyses the system introduced by the Germans for the looting...

Mass Removal of Populations Mass movements of populations in Europe during the war have reached astonishing proportions. In a study made by the International Labour Office it...

Enlightenment from Goebbels A good deal can be learnt by implication from the domestic propaganda of Goebbels, as voiced in his Berlin speech last Sunday, and by the army of...

Principles of Demobilisation A good deal of concern was caused by Sir William Jowitt's statement some time ago that priorities for demobilisation after the war were to be...

Muddle at Cos The successful action taken by the Allies in Sardinia and Corsica contrasts sharply with the action taken in Cos and other Aegean islands. The two first of these,...

THE CINEMA Revivals DURING the past two weeks so few new films have reached the West End that in some quarters alarm has been expressed at the prospect of the British public...

Vaughan Williams's Symphony in D MUSIC A NEW series of Sunday concerts was begun this week at the Adelphi Theatre, which proved an excellent concert-hall acoustically as well...

-The Tragedy of Nan." THE THEATRE At the Mercury.-Russian Ballet. At the Whitehall. MASEFIELD'S Gloucestershire "tragedy " was first produced in i908 by Granville-Barker....

SI EEP NO MORE Do they bear pity in their planes? Or any doubt of the deed? Must the machine-bewildered mind Beat on in ruthless speed? Are cries too faint and far below For...

FROM ONE GENERATION ... By KATE O'BRIEN HE church in our village is a beauty-mainly Gothic, but with a Norman doorway and a lovely little Renaissance chapel ; its inner walls...

SIR,-Mr. Quintin Hogg's articles on a National Policy are excellent, full of common sense and imagination, and give one much food for thought. Now that we have a vast...

SCHOOL FEES AND INDEPENDENCE SIR,-I should imagine that Dr. Terry Thomas and other questioners received no reply because the abolition of fees in all secondary schools is now...

SIR,-There is already a danger of the points raised in Mr. Norman Sheldon's letter in your issue of September 24th being misunderstood and issues are being raised which are...

GEOGRAPHY IN SITU SI!R,-Your correspondent appears to consider that the primary object of geography teaching, especially in schools, is merely to lay on local colour and to...

A NATIONAL POLICY LETTERS TO THE EDITOR SIR,-Captain Quintin Hogg has usefully cleared away some cobwebs. But I beg leave to challenge his statement that "Constitutional law...

SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION SIR,-Mr. Van Praagh, deploring the ignorance of science among nonscientists, writes that " there must be a change in the attitude of public schools " and...

A FTER the capture of Termoli, on the Adriatic coast, by a A surprise landing behind the German front the progress of both NEWS OF THE WEEK A-. rL ru the Eighth and the Fifth...

Italy's Status Though the Badoglio Government has entered the war against Germany on the side of the Allies, Italy is neither more nor less than a defeated enemy country,...

The Home Fleet Strikes The successful operation against enemy shipping off the Norwegian coast, in the Bodo area, shows determination to turn to advantage the closing of Sweden...

PEACE BY CO-OPERATION? N his speech at Dundee on Sunday Mr. Herbert Morrison spoke, as he has spoken before, on the necessity for retaining existing controls after the war....

PAN-ARAB MOVES By SYED EDRIES ALI SHAH T is not only the world of Islam that is throbbing with the cry of Arab unity. For, from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf a x '- - l1 -...

Forty Years in China. Records of a Sentimzntilist By Sir Meyrick Hewlett. (Macmillan. I2s. 6d.) THESE valuable records, which cover the period i898-1935, are full of...

Primer for Combat. Fiction By Kay Boyle. (Faber. 8s. 6d.) Clark Gifford's Bodya. By Kenneth Fearing. (The Bodey RHead. 7s. 6d.) The Stars are Dark. By Peter Cheyney....

NAPLES MEMORIES By JULIAN HUXLEY PALL of smoke could be seen hanging over Naples . . ." Reading these words in a report from one of our war cor- respondents, a flock of...

To Stalingrad and Alamein. The War in 1942 1I By CC Strategicus." (Faber and Faber. I|; ios. 6d.) THIS the fifth volume of the story of the war by " Strategicus," based on...

Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time. BOOKS OF THE DAY The Eleventh Hour By Harold J. Laski. (Allen and Unwin. 125. 6d.) THIS book has many merits and those merits have...

STUDY OF A STRIKE By SIMON HARCOURT-SMIT H ARROW-IN-FURNESS is as isolated an industrial community as can be found in the. whole of the United Kingdom. The great sweep of...

A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK N a letter in Wednesday's Times, Sir Francis Lindley, at one time British Ambassador to Tokyo, and-what is more to the point- High Commissioner at...

RESPITE IN RUSSIA N By STRATEGICUS HREE months after the launching of the attempt to cut off the Kursk salient the Russian counter-offensive appears to have reached a sort of...