AT WESTMINSTER M R. ATTLEE hit to a hair's breadth the right key for an Opposition Leader's speech opening the debate on the Address. It was ligzht and bantering, making the...

The Mother or the Child? It is not surprising that the reaffirmation of the Pope of the Roman Catholic doctrine on the duty of a doctor or midwife, confronted with the choice...

The University Seats The Prime Minister, as he said on Tuesday, would be fully justified in introducing legislation for the restoration of the university seats forthwith. The...

The fate of the Clarendon Hotel at Oxford is of much mord than local importance, and I am very glad to see that the City Council has refused its sanction to plans for the...

The Universities, if Cambridge is any criterion (I have not seent the figures for any other university), are not succeeding in keeping their numbers down. That mav seem a...

Sir Norman Angell, who will be 77 next month, and whose . . . . . . . .~t autobiography appears this week, is about to come ashore. He is, that' is to say, forsaking the island...

Mr. Attlee may be able to put O.M. after his name; but whaf does he look like beside Professor A. Freeman, LL.D., LITr.D., C.G.S., A.M., O.S.B., M.K.C.M., P.TH., C.H.,...

There are no party-barriers to the satisfaction which the con- terment ot the Order ot Merit on the Leader ot the Opposition by the King has given. Charged before any...

The various new Ministers have been receiving the usual congratulations trom their triends. One exchange of lettersbetween a high public official (non-political) and a...

A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK I T is suggested by The Sunday Times that " man for man, and party policy aside," Mr. Churchill and his Ministers are " infinitely better fitted for the...

Cairo and Paris A note delivered in Cairo, and the King's Speech, have made Jt quite clear that there is at present no disposition on the part of the Conservative Government to...

Agenda in Korea The latest attempt to break the stalemate in the Korean truce negotiations, which started last July and have got nowhere, is a proposal by the United Nations...

Coal Winter The Prime Minister's statement on Tuesday that in economic matters the new Government started from scratch was hardly true of coal. In the race against cold and...

The Colonies and Party Mr. Oliver Lyttelton's statement to the Press on Wednesday established, or perhaps confirmed, the sound doctrine that colonial policy should, as foreign...

Mr. Churchill's Team The Government is now completed. Mr. Churchill has shaped it in his own way, which was not in the main the way of the prophets, and possibly not a way...

"' South Pacific." (Drury Lane.) I WEPT, and there is nothing in criticism harder than to convey one's gratitude for that; I had better begin with a few calming facts about...

CINEMA " Where No Vultures Fly." (Odeon.)-"' Meet Danny Wilson." (Gaumnont and Marble Arch Pavilion.) Where No Vultures Fly is based on the recent efforts of Mr. Mervyn Cowie...

CONTEMPORARY ARTS THEATRE " Othello." By William Shakespeare. (Old Vic.) I CRITICISED Mr. Orson Welles' Othello for being insufficiently volcanic, but it is not in terms of...

FINANCE AND INVESTMENT By CUSTOS WELL, Mr. Butler has done it. He has grasped the nettle firmly and, for the first time for many a long day, there is a whiff of real deflation...

War Memorial, 1951 THIS is a memorial, not only To men who died, giving Life. It is a monument To the unburied living; To Man, who has hated, And will hate, his brother; To...

Beware of the Thing By BRIAN INGLIS Dublin IN case you missed the tale, let me repeat it, briefly. At Ballynanty Beg, County Limerick, stands a prehistoric burial-mound, of...

The Liberal International SIR,-TFhe conclusions-of Mr. Wilson Harris's article are inescapableup to a point. The Liberal Party, as an electoral force, has reached the end of...

Realistic SIR,-Many puzzled Liberals will be grateful for your realistic article. There are, of course, things Liberals oppose in both the Socialist and Tory Parties. What...

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR The Plight of the Liberals Swi,-l read with surprise one sentence in your article entitled The Flight of the Liberal.s. Labour's policy of Socialism and...

University Representation. By T. Lloyd Humberstone. (Flutchinson. ios. 6d.) BY a happy coincidence Mr. Humberstone's book appears at a moment when the controversy over...

Shakespeare's Tragedies. By G. B. Harrison (Routledge and Kegan Paul. 2 IS.) "ALL great works of art . . . mean something different to each generation, so that no criticism can...

Shorter Notices The Destiny of Isabelle Eberhardt. By Cecily Mackworth. (Routledge and Kegan Paul. iSs.) ON October 21st, 1904, a sudden flood in a dry Algerian wadi drowned...

Argyll in the Forty-Five. By Sir James Ferausson. (Faber. 21 S.) THIS is an original, scholarly and exciting account of the Jacobite rebellion in .1745-6 written by the...

The Helen of Euripides. A Translation by Rex Warner. (The Bodlev Head. 7S. 6d.) RECENT scholars have rejected with some impatience the theory that Euripides was a complete...

Behind the Age-Limit SIR,-Mr. Holland would surely not maintain that the age-limit makes any effective contribution to the attainment of that balance which he considers to be...

A Ten-Year Trial ? SIR,-Mr. Holland's article is timely. It would be highly regrettable to the age-limit became a matter of party politics, another control to b: swept aside in...

A *tatter of Date SIR,-Few will quarrel with much that the headmaster of Reigate Grammar School has written. None of us wants to defend the principle of early specialisation....

The Pope and Married Life SIR,-Married life is noble and sacred precisely because its intimani receive their dignity from the moral law. Christianity upholds the mn'l law, as...

Woods of Westermain In late autumn these diminutive uplands are so transfigured as to become i beautiful as a wreck of Paradise." Beech-tops go tawny. copper, bronze and...

MUSIC THE Italians are not a nation that we are accustomed to credit with any great breadth of musical sympathies. The series of concerts given in London recently by the...

COUNTRY LIFE CERTAINLY there is nothing so becomes the year as the dying of it. To warm tne neart at tnese glowing emoers i went up to tne Uxiorusnire Chilterns, a country...

The Wild Geese Return But you need to go to Severn Vale between the Cotswold scarp and straggling Slimbridge to see the apotheosis of the autumnal elm. Its lofty beacons flame...

In the Garden I have had a letter from a big Scottish fruit-grower who saw my note here about the condition of my apples after nearly 20. years of composting and no spraying....

- The East-West Problem By PAUL S. CADBURY IN July I visited the U.S.S.R. with six other Quakers. In October I travelled in the U.S.A. and Canada, and addressed public and...

MARGINAL COMMENT By HAROLD NICOLSON N OW that the dust of the General Election has begun to settle quietly upon our towns and villages, now that the cries of excitement have...

THE FIGHT FOR PEACE NE more round in the long fight for peace has opened. It is never helpful to arouse expectations which the event fails to justify, and M. Schuman was...

The Foundations of Security This Way Home. By Vicars Bell. (Faber. I 2s. 6d.) MR. VICARS BELL, in his sub-title, calls his new book (not verd happily) "The story of a voyage...

Classic Partnership I The World of Gilbert and Sullivan: A Key to the Savoy Operas. I By W. A. Darlington. (Peter Nevill. X 3S.) " THE keen penetration of Paddington Pollaky...

BOOKS OF THE WEEK Four Cheers for Mr. Forster Two Cheers for Democracy. By E. M. Forster. (Arnold. 2 1S.) I WANTED to begin this review by saying, quite firmly, that Mr....

The Writers of Spain The Literature of the Spanish People from Roman Times to the Present Day. By Scrali Brtinan. (Callibhridc illiversitv Press. 40s.) CLOSE upon thirty...

UNDERGRADUATE PAGE Meat-Boat By NIGEL LINDSEY-RENTON (Lincoln College, Oxford) YE, we call 'em the bad old days, but you had a different A type of seaman before the war. He...

Fiction Children of the Archbishop. By Norman Collins. (Collins. I s.) Stelia. By Jan de Hartog. (Hamish Hamilton. gs. 6d.) The Thin Line. By Edward Atiyah. (Peter Davies....

A New Planfo- DIndia aBy HORACE ALEXANDER T HE problem of food-production is almost unquestionably basic to India's economy. It is perhaps basic today to the economy of the...

Gaucho Elections By GEORGE BRINSMEAD - JUDGED by British standards, the Argentine elections on Sunday will be little more than a farce. The opposition parties have been...

Anglican Doctrine SIR,-In your leading article in the Spectator of November 2nd you state that "the Church of England" regards "the use of contraceptives " (for the proper and...

Infallibility SIR.-The delicate and precise comments in the paragraph under the above heading in your last issue might well be regarded as sufficient but for the tremendous...

Church and Chapel SIR,-Most Methodists will endorse Mr. J. R. Glorney Bolton's desire for closer co-operation between "Church" and "Chapel" and rejoice at every sign of the...

Charles Dickens SIR,-In "correcting" my review of his book Mr. Symons claims that recently a revolution has taken place in Dickens criticism, and further that " the most...

How to Enjoy Bad Health English Spas. By William Addison. (Batsford. 1 6s.) BEHIND the elegancies of life at eighteenth-century Bath, the fops rapping their-snuff-boxes at...

The Good Teacher The Art of Teaching. By Gilbert Highet. (Methuen. 12s. 6d.) THIS iS a book calculated to make the happy teacher happier, and -to give new vision to those who...

THE FIRST SLASH T SHE many grave problems which the new Government found on taking office are not of the kind that can be solved in a fortnight. That is particularly obvious in...