The Observer from London, Greater London, England • 3

THE OBSERVER, SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1945 Profile-King Ibn Saud Hunted Down ACROSS THE NORTJHE Canadian North. By The Rt. Hon. Malcolm MacDonald. (Oxford University Press.

10s. 6d.i Mystic Thomas Traherne. By Gladys Wade. Oxford University Press. 20s By V.

SACKVILLE-WEST DICKSON TOMORROW HO RLE It for excitement! His NewTlger Standlsh Story THE LADY WITH THE LIMP 86 net A.F.TSCHHFELY Author of "Tschiffely 's Ride' THIS WAY SOUTHWARD The story of his adventurous journey through Patagonia to Tlerra del Fuego. An entirely New Edition Illustrated 106 net HODDER STOUGHTON LTD. Older Houses As Sites For New By E. F. Schumacher 3JORE than four million houses were built in the United Kingdom during the 20 years between the wars, and Sir Ernest Simon, one of the greatest authorities on housing questions in the country, recommends that another seven million should be built in the next 20 years.

His new book. Rebuilding Britain A Twenty Year Plan (Victor Gollancz, demonstrates that the physical resources for such a programme can be made available, and all modem economic thought demonstrates that what is physically possible is also financially possible. Sir Ernest Is confident that we can in 20 years rebuild Britain, so as to enable every inhabitant, child, or adult, to live in a healthy home, in a neighbourhood so planned as to allow easy access for all members of the family to their places of work and recreation." There is every reason to believe that the average labour reauired By IX) VAT HE Canadian North of which-) Mr. MacDonald writes is that vast area stretching from Edmonton north-westwards to the Yukon, then eastward to' Aklavik and the Arctic Sea; the greater part of it lying north of parallel 60. It is a rugged, lonely mass of land, sheltering on the Arctic tundra the Esquimaux, and in the forests and along the waterways below, a few tribes of Indians and small communities of white people, gathered round fur-trading posts, mission stations, or mining camps.

Alaska, which lies at the northwest corner of this land mass, is of great military importance in the Anglo-American plans for settling with the Japanese, for its western tip almost touches the Siberian outposts of Russia, and from its south-western tip the Aleutian Islands stretch like stepping-stones across the Pacific to Japan. When America entered the war, plans were agreed with the Canadian Government, and have by now been completed, for the establishment of an airway across north-western Canada to Alaska, with landing-fields every two hundred miles; a motor road, the Alaskan highway, with a gravelled surface thirty-six feet wide; and a huge pipeline to carry oil overland, through winter and summer, from the south to the military bases in the north. Through these means, and in three short years, the wilderness which had remained im- Denetrable for several hundred years to all but hardy trap pers, fur-traders, and zealous missionaries, became as accessible, even to the shores of the Arctic Sea, as the rest of the North American Continent. MacDonald, our High Commissioner Canada, flew over this territory in the summer of 1942, landing at nearly every settlement between Lake Athabasca and the Arctic. This flight, and a second flight made in the spring of 1943, are the substance of his book.

Masterpieces of description have come from pro consular pens beforethis, but the great ones of the past observed The Storv of Ratified Rabun. By Oliver Onions. (Michael Joseph. 8s. (id.) In Youth is Pleasure.

By Den ton Welch. (Routledge. 8s. 6d.) And We The Shadows. Bv Richard Gray.

(Casseli. Ss, 6d.) The Roval Game. Bv Stefan Zioeig. (Casseli. 7s.

6d.) New Short Stories: 1B44. Edited by John Singer. (Maclellah. is. By ALAN PRYCE-JONES AMONG the usual shelf-load of prosaic anecdote three novels this week beTone together' to a different order: that of the novel which demands also a poetic response.

Both for writer and reader it is the most difficult form of fiction. Character, excitement, fantasy, go for nothing if the climate of poetry is not warm enough and rich enough to add the right colour to a luminous distance and the right bloom to familiar objects near at hand. In very different ways both Mr. Onions, writing in full maturity, and Mr. Welch, still on the threshold of a' career, can evoke that response, and if Mr.

unions is- placed hrst it is only because The Stohy of Ragged Robyn will have a wider appeal than Mr. Welch's brilliant and dreadful little book. As a story it is slight. Somewhere about the end of the 17 th century Robyn in his teens becomes responsible for the shooting of two members of an outlaw gang on the Lincolnshire fens. He knows that the gang will catch him in the end, and to escape his destiny he runs away, becomes apprentice to a stone-carver from the Low Countries, wanders northward into Yorkshire, quarrels with his master but the facts the tale do not count beside the extraordinary skill with which Mr.

Onions has caught the atmosphere of pursuit in a dream. Like the dreamer pursued down turning corridors by a' nameless malignancy, Robyn twists this way and that to escape. But he is caught in the end as we know he will be. Stevenson would have loved this book. It renews one's regret that Mr.

Onions writes so seldom. In Youth is Pleasure is Mr. Welch's second book. It covers the summer, holiday in a luxurious Thames-side hotel and at Hastings of Orvil Pym, aged fifteen. This is another novel of pursuit, but whereas Robyn was pursued by a gang of smugglers, Orvil, more alarmingly, is hunted by Orvil, is caught and tied in a criss-cross of his own raw nerves and finally sent back to school at the end of the holidays in the throes of a breakdown.

Not a cheerful book, it may he thought, but Mr. Welch writes so exceedingly well, with such witty and sensuous perception, that he communicates enjoyment even in anguish. It will be interesting to watch the development of so considerable a talent when he has worked through the seam of autobiography which confines him at present. Mr. Richard Gray extends to poetry a more conventional hand.

His hero buys an old and ghostly manor-house. A beautiful dumb housekeeper regains her speech in time to marry him at the end, and a number ot really shocking visitors behave strictly in character between bouts of facetious conversation. Three long short stories by Stefan Zweig. one of them now first printed, have been assembled in The Royal Game. The title story is by far the best, although the luscious emotionalism of the other two (which include Zweig's most famous story, Amok may appeal to those who have a weakness for Viennese Schwarmerei.

Similarly, about a thfrd of Mr. Singer's collection of stories by young writers sets a standard for the rest. Without unearthing a masterpiece he has collected some good work, especially by Frances Bellerby, Elizabeth Ormsby. Reginald Moore, J. Dewi Davies, and John Atkins.

TPHOMAS TRAHERNE How trj-nt XWUW name even-to-day? A number of poetry-lovers, perhaps; yet he is represented in the Oxford Book of English Verse by a single, solitary poem (not even his best). A number of prose-lovers, perhaps, who roll round in their minds that luscious and now almost famous passage which begins, The corn was orient and immortal wheat." Apart from those, how many know- anything of Thomas Traherne? It is interesting to remember that so recently as 1903 nobody had ever heard of Thomas Traherne at all. The discovery of his two manuscript books bought for a few pence off a second-hand book-barrow in Farringdon-road, and the eventual tracing down of their author, is one of the best literary detective stories ever written. I shall not repeat it here, but will refer the curious reader to Miss Wade's biography; or, should the curious reader feel inclined to go even further back, to the story originally related in Mr. Bertram Dobell's introduction to the Poetical Works of that hitherto unknown seventeenth century poet," around whom, in Mr.

Dobell's words, the centuries had drawn their curtains. Nobody could imagine who this unknown poet could be, and the contents of the two manuscript books narrowly escaped being published as an addition to the already well-known works of Henry Vaughan. To tickle the apDetite of those who hope some day to find a treasure on a barrow or in a second-hand bookshop, I may add that at least two more manuscript volumes are known to have once existed and have not yet come to light. Traherne was born in Hereford, the son of a shoemaker, at some date between 1637 and He died in 1674, a young man still in his thirties, and his life had been taken up principally by an enormous spiritual adventure. Outwardly, its events had been few; he had been at Brasenose College.

Oxford; he had been rector of Credential, near Hereford; and he had been private chaplain to Sir Orlando Bridgman. Not much material for biography lies thai short and uneventful story, bul plenty in the inner development of this myslic, this poet, this intensely feeling man, who found such great excitement in life that he could write. We are so clamorous and greedy, as if there were no pleasure but in receiving all we are in danger of bursting fire does not burn with a more certain violence." It has always seemed to me very strange that a man endowed with so rich and passionate a temperament, with so luxuriant an appreciation of beauty whether in the works of man. or the works ot God. should ever have regarded himself as a Puritan Miss Wade does not explicitly make this observation, though she does reler sienificantly to the High Church principles of h.s later ears.

Her critical estimate of Traherne as a writer is balanced, tranquil, and acute Even her natural enthusiasm for her subject will nut allow her to shirk the recognition that although Traherne wrote the prose of a poet, he too often wrote the poetry of a prose-writer. A certain didacti-cimii, not out 'of place in prose, tomes all too frequently to check the Right of hi.s verse This, of course, has been pointed out be-lore. notably by Dr Bell, but it is greatly to Miss Wade's credit that her integrity should compel her to concur. He failed." she savs. honestly, "to be a great poet" out lei tnis not neter readers from turning with pleasure to the poems as well as to that unique collection known as the Centuries of Meditation There are many delights embedded in the poems which have never yet found their wav into anthologies.

As for the Centuries themselves (the contents of that second notebook discovered in the Farringdon-road) they are perhaps already more familiar, and on the whole must remain the richest monument to this strangely original personality whose literary dcrivat'ons were negligible, apart from the Psalms and the Bible. bul whose prophetic resemblance to Blake, Wordsworth, and even Berkeley are at moments so surprising. The student of Traherne could not wish for a better or more scholarlv guide than Miss W.ide Green Thoughts, Blue Seas The Poems of a Countryman. By Sir William Beac.h Thomas. (Michael Joseph.

6s.) Sea Poems. Chosen by Myfanwy Piper. Lithographs by Mona Moore. (Muller. 10s.

6d.) By J. C. TREWIN IGHT hundred miles by car -across the Arabian desert plus a voyage on the fore- of an American destroyer is record for any king. It is i unusual one for King Ibn Saud i 1 1 at 65 has only once before ins kingdom. Yet he under-.

it this month, and at short to talk over Middle affairs with' President. I -int-velt and Mr. Churchill. Inn Saud is the world's most iMble example of a self-made Starting empty-handed, he his lifetime conquered and uused the great Arabian king-c to which he has given his 1 name. i i i forbears of the House of id conquered Arabia in the century as the strong r.

-i of a puritan crusade preached religious reformer.1 Abdul Hence the nickname hhabite. which is sometimes (o the Saudi dynasty. In century thev lost all gains 'at the first, of f. and then of the rival family of Rashid. Ibn i who was born in 18B0, there-f spent his youth as a landless r- at the Court of Koweit, on 1 Persian Gulf.

in Iflfll he brought off the stroke ci jjemus that was the start of his pi -Til career. Thanks to good isetu-e, swift riding, and sur-)r he was able in a night to irate and win back from the the town of Riadh, capital Ni'jd and of the ancebtral lands family. So began (he dual and steady gain of terri-1 which he has never since lost 1 ke every Arabian empire-t '(li-r from Mahomet down, lie rii-, M-s his generating force from t- religious enthusiasm He com-! us with it great practical quah-; i With a vision remarkable, in ho had never been outside nnmad Arabia, he saw that the surest future lay in settling the Bed in on the land, and curing their customs of movement and feud Probably, the most fundamental of his many reforms was thf inauguration in 1910 of the par! religious, part military, and pari agricultural brotherhoods wruch he has settled in colonies aH over the country, and to which he gives religious and agricultural teaching in return for certain mili-larv services. By June, 1914, he had conquered territory up to the Persian Gulf, that perspicacious traveller. Miss Gertrude Bell, was reporting that Ibn Saud is now the chief figure in Central Arabia." But the War Cabinet of 1915 did not plump for her advice.

When it began to plan the famous Arab revolt against the Turks, it tied two strings to its bow. The India Office, working westward from the Persian Gulf, sent Captain Shake-spear to Ibn Saud of Nejd. The Foreign Office, working eastward from the Red Sea, sent E. Lawrence to King Hussein of the Hedjaz, Sharif of Mecca. The accidental bullet which killed Captain Shakespear in a tribal skirmish helped to decide London in favour of Lawrence's man.

The large sum of 200,000 monthly, paid in gold, was handed to King Hussein, whereas Ibn Saud's neutrality was purchased at the smaller fee of 5,000 a month The Arab re'olt was successful, but the long run was to prove that the Foreign Office had backed its weaker champion. By 1925 Ibn Saud had attacked and conquered the neighbouring Hedjaz. Hussein had fled and the Saudis were rulers of Mecca. Inland, Nejd had presented him with internal problems only. The Hedjaz and Mecca, to which the faithful from all over Islam make annual pilgrimage, brought him international complications.

Many Moslems were averse to Wahhabism and regarded his seizure of Mecca as impious. It took all his diplomacy and capacity living mings aown to convince hi- co-religionists that he was a satisfactory trustee for their Holy Places Though the two territories of Hedjaz and Nejd are to-day one kingdom, the difference between them is still marked by differing expectant 0 These are your priority foods As an expectant mother you are entitled to certain priority foods, essential for your own and your child's health. As soon as you have a certificate from your doctor, hcallh visitor or certified midwife, take it with your own ration book, io your Food Office. You smII then be given a green ration boot fR 2) modified to meet your special needs. You start to use this, in addition to your own, directly you have rcpislered with your shops The green book entitles you to H1 pint, a skk ai price oT -ni under ihc National Milk Sthenic, After your ih-H is born, and the birth Ei-icred.

take or send both i -ion book and the green 'i1 the Food Office. ickl 'o dllow the foilow- 1 he ins cr undrr 12 montbn 1nJI mail pricej nlk ofi hr ercTii rut 2d a pint, nmnilw a 1 mn in our Thw err rxiion txMk. ai rhr iln nt Irr. according tri I tail our iwiiinu to jf on crk NOTES the To help out trith jmttit k'sHIRF VI nilN( is ii good hll-up o.j need 4 Hour I I I i 1 it'd egg rR hdH a tcLtsp s.dr milk knoh of Kit Kin rio- i iihI jlt dd Mjffuieril liLuJd tui in rl hjUer, be.il till noi add Tt the of the to all let he he He oil to of he by I I I I I i' their subject at leisure. Mr.

Mac- Donald droDDed like a rjluir.met from the sky, took a quick look at the scene, then rose to fly on, noting a few historical, a few statistical, a few anecdotal facts. A good, swift-paced narrative emerges; but not, one feels, study of any real depth. It sparkles with humour; it is as lively and polished as a varnished surface. It compels the eye, but leaves the imagination hungering for something more. Little that was quickly apparent missed Mr.

MacDonald's observant eye or escaped, if if were a story of the past, his attentive ear. The great trek of the reindeer from Alaska to the eastern bank of the Mackenzie river, a journey of 2,500 miles took five years, loses nothing of its epic grandeur in his summary. He records and admires the efforts of enterprising citizens in Canada, like the doctor in the north who was rearing a herd of dairy cows', to found a comfortable society beyond the Arctic Circle. From igloo to log cabin, from der-serted dance-halls in Dawson City to flourishing mining camps 'on Slave Lake, he draws the material for a character sketch of the north. From his aeroplane he views the vast landscapes, jewelled with lakes, cut by wide rivers, covered by forests, and 'hemmed in to the east and west by massive mountain ranges; and thousands of feet below him he sees mankind with motor road and airfields and pipelines, toiling to subdue this mighty territory to its own use.

The fascination of the north land can grip even the swiftest traveller, but the pace is so fast, there is so much to tell, and there is no time to brood on this tremendous scene. Mr. MacDonald's modest preface, the likeable character revealed in his pages, and his obvious affection for the Dominion, almost disarm criticism. Yet it must be said that he offers only a bird's-eye view of a country which, in its immensities and its details, defeats anything but prolonged and inti mate acquaintance, combined with more than a touch of inspiration. The book shows, too, that B.

T. can phrase the lapidary epigram. In some of the last quatrains mark those upon A Snob, on Bloomsbury, and upon Urban Youth he permits himself an unaccustomed asperity. The multitudinous seas break only once into these country verses. They are everywhere in Myfanwy Piper's anthology, which sails from Chapman's Homer to Flecker (not the dragon-green, the luminous," but that vision of the Welsh sea whose epithets the poet so wisely reconsidered).

Not everyone will agree with the selector eleven pages of a small book is too' generous for Annus Mirabilis but there are excellences, both rich and strange: two of Darley's syren four choices from Hardy we could not have spared the opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sen," in the old man's memory on Beeny Cliff Hawker's wild fancy of the doomed Cornish wrecker Featherstone, and de Tabley's The Ocean The Shakespearean extract is a lovely passage from the third act of Pericles." Humming how miraculously exact that is!) Miss Moore's lithographs have a genuine sea-sense. For a second edition of the anthology I would suggest terrifying Dolor Oogo urownea men oy tiuan shore Dolor Oogo, Dolor Oogo." (It is time, surely, for much of poetry to be re-discovered?) In Brief The Future of India. By Penderel Moon. (Pilot Press. 5s.) TPHIS is a brief but admirable summary of India's problems, economic, political and psychological.

Of these the political problems are touched most lightly, the author, a former Indian Civil Service officer in the Punjab, being concerned with the land's great poverty and ways of relieving this. But he makes it plain that while the political deadlock continues, cooperation and confidence will be lacking, and he goes into the questions of the Princes -and Pakistan. The book's effectiveness is strengthened by an appendix of illuminating photographs. E. T.

The Outlook for International Law. By J. L. Brierly. (Oxford University Press.

6s.) rPHE Chichele Professor of International Law and Diplomacy at Oxford has written an illuminating study, thoroughly suitable for the layman, which is valuable particularly in bringing out the inescapable differences between international and domestic law. Some of the hopes loosely set on the power of international law to prevent war are dissolved by this analysis: but Professor Brierly has various constructive suggestions also to make. A cool, hard-headed and most stimulating small book. Management and Men, By S. Walnole iCmnp 7s flrf The late Mr.

Warcole. director an engineering hrm and a pio neer of works councils, was sure that industry must adapt itself to a new era of which the characteristic will be that Labour has a status co-equal with Capital, and will unquestionably iemand recognition of that fact." His later chapters, after discussing detail the functioning of ioint I consultation at, the factory level. advocate the formation of a National Industrial Council, emphasising that it would have to be strictly subordinate to Parliament To an unusual degree his book unites progressive thinking with first-hand industrial experience C. Among the new Penguins and Pelicans, all at mnepence, are a election of Osbert Lancaster oms OITTING ON THE ENCE: and the late Dr. T.

R. Hover's evocation of the Flnry and 'hi sr.indeur of Tfik Ancifjnt Wohjjj onitilutions In Nejd, the patriarchal power of the Sauds is absolute It is administered' by king's eldest son. the Emir Saud. The Hedjaz is by contrast. governed through a local Council Slate.

The son who administers it, the Emir Feisul, is also King's Foreign Minister. Others of the score of sons born him by his four wives fulfil lesser oflices. What are the binding forces whereby Ibn Saud has in four decades united tribes once so quarrelsome and parochial? One is his devout way of life and religious leadership Another is the religious, toleration without which no Aiab Empire has ever survived the hrst fine flush of establishment. third is his ph sical stamina and capacity for hard work. He is six feel four inches tall Though, today, he walks slightly stiffly as the result of old wounds, he is still regarded as a lusty fighter.

His working day would tire anyone of less powerful physique. Another asset is his simplicity His throne room is an office where any tribesman, however humble, mav call and address him bv his first name Abdul Aziz, Servant of the' Mighty One. But perhjps the most "potent of his qualities is the breadth of mind which gives him patience to take their time, and which endows him with a capacity for compromise that is unusual in his race. These gifts make aim a good diplomat They have also enabled him to bring in western innovations without offending the puritanism of his Wahhabi followers. He rejects only such inventions as are contrary to his religion; anything else fs ready to' introduce as fast as can accustom his people to it was a great man long before the American and British oil prospectors of the 1930s revealed that his kingdom is one of the richest bearing areas in the world He is an old friend of Britain.

His treaties with her have been cemented by many mutual friendships with Englishmen. His admiration for them and their country never flinched during the dark days of the loss of Somali-land, the -Iraqi revolt, and Rommel's advance to Alamein. The British Empire never had a more shrewd or more staunch Arab friend. Fuilher. he is a wise counsellor the Arab A'oi Id.

Behind the security of his forbidding frOD-liers. he has developed a longer vision and a more balanced view nationalism than some of the other Arab States. As an older" man than most of his fellow nileis. is-in a position to give advice. History suggests that if the Arab unity movement is to become strong, it must develop A religious background.

If so. it may in the end owe no more to the modern gadgets Press, radio transmitters, and air lines owned and operated Egypt or Iraq than to Ibn Saud's austerity. deliberative ways, and moral strength. One parting snapshot' "What vitality, Charles, in one getting on for 70. said Mr.

Churchill to Lord Moran, as he rose from the King's ride. King Ibn Saud will relish that remark. Applause from experts appfause indeed mothers or free, according income This in addition to the ordimiry allowance of milk on jour own raton book EGGS: Two shell esa at each atkKatmn: one on the green book and one on yinjr own DRIED EGCS Stx packets every' four week, four on the green botk an.il two on your. MEAT' A half ration of meat on he green book intdditioo to your own full ration CONCENTRATED ORANGE JUICE You can get this at welfare centres, clime and food office A m-ounce bottle costi d. You abould ukc a ui bit-spoonful In water every day.

COD LIVER OIL OR VITAMINS A TABLETS You get ihwc lo at welfjro centres, etc A bottle of cod liver oil coma lOd. and Lasts weeks- Tablets are lUd lor 45 Take a teaspoonful of cod hver oil or one tablet every dav 1 ou gel rce milk uu will also ncl td livei otl lor tablets! and jranc jukc free baby is born own ration booU and one om I he child's erea book. All babies from months to eighteen months ran have fge at tie rale of tbrr a wrek. Take yrmr babi ration book to ih Food Office and you will Ria authority to eel I hem ov ar ot course aJlowed two packet of dried pee nrr four week and children are allowed fwr packets of dried ecP every four fk a 'n tne? iod the jcreen book MKT The child a half ration of meat on the ereen book. COD LIVKR OIL AND OR ANf; .11 1 1 ctur bahv should have tbew eer da HOl'SEWIFE i.uriipY RUgtir iXin Sii.iriK -vour trcKcr CASSELL THE FIRST WAR CORRESPONDENT William Howard Russell of Times" by Rupert Furneaux Demy Svo.

Illus. uj6 net STEFAN ZWEIG The Royal Game with Letter from an Unknown Woman nd Amok Three Short Novels yj6 net URSULA BLOOM The Faithless Dove 86 net 'RICHARD GRAY And We the Shadows 816 net 8 ROM LANDAU The -Brother Vane 'There ii hardly page in the book which is without its touch of genuine feeling, ita shrewdly observed pro-trait, or its happy ihraae. First Fiction Choice Sunday Times. The seven short stories are all intensely English in The telling, and will hold any Sunday Independent. Zj6 some other books by Rom Landau GOD IS MY ADVENTURE THE FOOL'S PROGRESS LOVE FOR A COUNTRY LETTER TO ANDREW OF NO IMPORTANCE WE HAVE SEEN EVIL HITLER'S PARADISE SEVEN Faber Fahet MARTIAL INDIA F.

Yeats-Brown "Here is ihe story, gathered from the World's battlefields, of British and Indian comradeship in arms a masterpiece of Truth. A book worth the serious attention of those who wish To gain light on the Indian scene and its prospects." Belfast Telegraph. 8s. 6d. net HAPPIER YEARS H.

Frank Wallace Modest, frank and fascinating. It has en atmosphere of good port, good sport and good breeding." John Betjeman The real pleasure of this book ia jts accounts of stalking deer and dk and chamois. It has the tare quality of charming an ignorant reader." Alan Hodge. 18s. net EYRE A SPOTTISWOODE Dismembered Masterpieces Thomas bodkin In this fascinating book Professor Bodkin describes the-fate which has befallen some outstanding masterpieces of painting i2S.

6d. The Constant Star George Blake A tale of the ousting of sail by steam, and of blockade-running in American waters, in the early days of the last century ios. 6d. COLLINS for the production or a nouse may be crnsiderably reduced below pre-war. We may not have to earmark more labour resources for the production of seveD million houses during the next twenty years than we did in fact earmark for the production of four million houses during the inter-war period.

What we could afford before we could afford again. Redundant House! And yet, the matter is not assimple as all that. -There is one outstanding difference between the two periods which must never be overlooked: from 1919- to 1939 there occurred an exceptional and non-recurrent increase in the number of families in this country; from 1945 to 1965 the total number of families seeking a separate dwelling will be practically stationary andnay even decline During the mter-war period most new houses were a net addition to the stock of houses in the country, an increasing stock being demanded by an increasing number of families; during the post-war period most of the new houses 'cannot be allowed to become a net addition to the stock of houses, since a -stationary number of families does not require an increasing number of dwellings. If seven million new houses are to be built, five-and-a-half to six million old houses must be scrapped. The country needs roughly a million additional houses almost at once.

When a million have been provided, there will be a dwelling for every family (with some to spare), and the provision of additional dwellings can proceed only if coupled 'with the demolition of redundant dwellings. There is nothing in experience to suggest that this demolition will proceed automatically. If it does nottake place, there will be a general fall in rents, an ever-increasing need for- rising subsidies if new building Is to continue, and an ever-growing absorption of valuable agricultural land by new buildings. Disappearing Acres Sir Ernest suggests that new houses should be built at the rate of some 400,000 a year; such a rate of building without a commensurate rate of scrapping would absorb undeveloped land at the rate of about 70,000 acres a year to no purpose at all. The built-up area would steadily expand, not on account of each family occupying more space, but on account of more land being occupied by empty old houses.

What this would mean for the life of town and country needs no emphasis. Sir Ernest's arguments for rebuilding Britain under a twenty-year plan are exceedingly strong. But rebuilding Britain means more than putting up additional houses or even putting individual new houses on the sites of demolished old houses: it means redesigning whole districts, even whole towns. Building houses to accommodate a rising number of families is a relatively simple proposition: but rebuilding whole towns is a different business requiring town and country planning on a truly magnmcent scale and an almost revolutionary land policy. Is such a policy worth while? Sir Ernest thinks it is, but he would not deny that this is a debatable question.

I think it can be shown that it is em'nently worth-while, provided that the magnitude of the necessary planning effort is fully realised and freely accepted. or to exploit differences of view in regard to the new Education Act. "As members of the Headmasters' Association we welcome the cool and enlightened discussion of our problems. But as the wording of the article might well convey to many friendly readers of The Observer the impression that our proceedings were being reported (as in the citation from Professor Flexner), we should be grateful if you would publish this disclaimer." Needless to say, at no point did the article profess to report the pro! ceedings of this private meeting. It endeavoured only to represent the views held by many secondary school teachers and headmasters in the London area.

COMPANY MEETING WEYBURN ENGINEERING POSTWAR PROSPECTS The ninth ordinary general meeting of The Weyburn Engineering was held yesterday at Elstead. Surrey. Mr. Hamilton Gordon chairman and managing director) presiding. The Chairman, in the course of his speech.

said Rather than make specific allocations at the present moment we have again placed the whole of our available surplus to the credit of general reserve, so that when the war comes to an end we shall be free to use this in a manner most advantageous to the company. The groflt we are allowed to retain in the usiness-for any year is restricted bv excess profits tax. For the past vear this allows this company a profit ol approximately 32.000. to which we have been able to ad the sum of 2,125 reserved in excess for E.P tn previous years. The year under review has been a difficult one owing to certain of our contracts finishing and being replaced by others that have necessitated a considerable amount of changing ovei in the works, with the inevitable temporary dislocation of production, but in spite of this our turnover is onl down by 5i per cent, on the previous year.

Some of t.ie new contracts we have accepted appear to have good post-war prospects, hich. in conjunction with other new ideas your directors have been developing, should be very helpful towards keeping the works fully employed after the cessation of hostilities. The considerable increase in turnover we have reached during the war has been assisted by the use of an additional factory erected with Government aid, and as it may be neees-sary to acquire this new factory for our post-war production the question of an increase in our share canital ma arise in the near future, for which Treasury sanction will of course, be necessary Trie reoort was adopted Av rv uaaluf boolcofon hint, and eompLi Urr ol a Plana. Sed Potato ot. receipt of poll C-rd co JfDci Sdcal pTrVi I I rood "ruc Bushed ind Ekotc frea THE NATION'S SCHOOLS By ALAN FAIRCLOUGH A LX who turn, Sunday by Sunday, to the Open Air column of The Observer recognise Sir William Beach Thomas's tingling pleasure in poetry, not the hot ice and wondrous strange snow of that now-tottering New Order on Parnassus, but the great matter the fadeless amaranth of our English rhyme.

One of the delights of any Open Air article must ever be the gleam of quotation, whether from Chaucer or Shakespeare. Herrick or Wordsworth, Tennyson or Lord de Tabley. T. himself writes the prose that is poetry's neighbour without being that dubious hybrid, poetic prose. Many readers of The Observer know that he is himself a singer From time to time his poems have been printed in these columns, and now here they are, set with others in small book that is to much of the modish poetasting of (can we say?) the immediate past as a dawn chorus is to the tractor's roar-and-rattle Sir William holds with reason that some good may be done by any attempt to save natural poetry from the intellectuals His own verse is bird-song in the thickets of Arden, or, as in one of his longest poems, with a Marvel! cadence, a rhythm of green thoughts gently contemplative: Here what Ihe morld calls happiness Concerns our being less and less; Harsh talk of uirlue or of sin Come not our garden pale within.

The countryman states his creed, renews his faith. The seasons pass in glitter and burnish and sheen. And among the high tides in Sir William's calendar we rejoice to find again the' serenity of Easter at War Let me tt-lai forget. A liitli' irhilc. The erii leaguer set About our isle To watch I lie huridirf? may.

The emeus hloom, Tht great sioue rolled From winter's tomb. John Moore, R.N.V.R. stations. Stand by to fly off aircraft and, with Commander (Flying) waiting for the aircraft to return, he knows, how much easier it to do a dangerous job I lhan to send others to do it." i the pnd lt mav oniv have been whae often "mistaken for 1 a Tji)oal Df which lt is reported that Admiral Sir James Somerville vJrote to the Admiralty: "It I llj.lnj that nrncepd Reference Shelf VOLUME Seven of The War of lu'jtj rir. o.

ki -i panv, 25s.) new addition to the expert survey edited bv Mr GenrTrey Dennis Articles on the war in the air ibv Air-Commodore L. E. O. Charlton and at bea iby Rear-Admirat Thursnefdi. and upon diplomatic developments iby Mr Hnrsfall Carter) crnver the period Irom December.

1941 la the end of M.ij. 1942 Jule Menken'- studv tne war on land deal- witn cam I p.inn- in the Far Et to the end of 1SW2) and North Africa no the clo-e ot operation-; in Tunis! Mr Philip Grave-'- wel -e-teemed i ecord ol the wjr ha- now reached I nt Ek.hih-xlh Ql AHini illutchin--nn Et-. ltd i Another re-lorente bonk i- Major Thi ARNh April 1942, to June 1143 iHu'chin-un 21- i a new Mlh 540' illti-tr itonns in "Britain War" -ene- In The Atlantic Gap Escort Carrier Hutchinson 5.s 1 By Lieut NYONE who wight's lu know i what life is like in an aircraft-' carrier without the inconvenience of serving in her cannot do belter than read Lieut -Commdr Moore Escort Carhirr Even without many excellent photographs il i- rnie of Ihe must vivid and re- sealing war-books thjl one ran HMS one of the mer- cliantmcn which have been ron- verted lo for the 1 lnt(J lhese northern waters for diKj ot tunvojms breeding purposes lt is hoped the gap of the Atlantic lhat tne onset of roider weather iieyond reach of land-based air- wlH cool tne ardour of theSe craft. Her conversion took place in amorolIS leviathans and so miti-i an American port, where the Bn- gate the nuisance to His Maiesty's crew had the time of tneir lives snips and earned the name of the Lend- -I Lease Lovers" from the numerous I THE Ministry of Education is to issue within the next few weeks a pamphlet The Nation's Schools for the guidance of Local Education Authorities who, after, April 1, must submit to the Ministry their plans for the reorganisation of education in their areas. This pamphlet will consider the aims and the purposes of the various kinds of full-time education, and will thus cover the question of multilateral schools.

When the Oxfordshire County Council submitted an interim report in favour of multilateral schools, the Ministry made it clear that, pending the publication of this latest guidance, which will supplement earlier pamphlets, it was, not yet prepared to deal with such reports. At least one education authority, Sheffield, has already considered the multilateral plan and decided against it. Much interest was aroused by an article in last Sunday's Observer on the multilateral schools envisaged by the L.C.C. There-it was stated that many secondary school teachers feel such schools would bring about a general levelling-down of educational standards, and that the advantages claimed in the L.C.C.s Report the intermingling of the social classes, and the easier transference of children from one kind of education to another are at best problematical. Many letters have come in.

A London educationalist writes All schools do something to develop character, but the condemnation of having separate types is that the development which each can effect is limited by what -it has to offer. Only in a multilateral school, where training of every kind is available, can there be opportunities for discovering and nurturing the potentialities of each child; and only in a multilateral school run by an official education authority can each child's individuality be given full scope, for the unlimited resources of the State are behind the child for that purpose." An U.T. official comments that the Union passed fn April, 1943. a resolution that the Conference would welcome the provision in a reconstructed educational system of facilities for substantial experiments with respect to multilateral schools and the place they might occupy future post-primary education." Mr. R.

McArthur. chairman, and Mr. J. McGill Clouston. Hon.

secretary of the London Division of the Headmasters' Association, write to make clear that the article in last Sunday's Observer to teachers and L.C.C. reforms is not a report of the substance of our meeting held on Friday. February 16. Our meetings are private, and, while some of your contributor's views would nn doubt find support imong London headmasters, ii is certainly nnf the intention of our co'-leaaues to UaVfe up a pol.licul attilude engagements and marriages contracted The reader can look into department of the hip and the activities of her crew, from the captam his castle to the mechanics crawling about the tightly pa. ked hangar he share the fearfnine-s of landing on the -hio from the air in a hi eh sea.

he endures the boredom of long waiting Cor the enemv to appear, he 'hi 'IK when ihe order a', las; omc- fiver the -hips loudspeakers. Hand- to flyinfi February Days Bv ROBERT HUNTER A I'AHE ..1 the -in And see pir. n1 pc in.ki like bin nt i 1 en and bt.K at nn the dr.uiLlhl i-i chimnev -tack th- i I-, i n. lew- 1 'inu'nl i ''i I nnif'ii i 'd i' r-js Ingenious detective thriller ANDREW SPILLER WHOM NOBODY OWNS A full-length novel that reads delightfully, carries couvictiqn with it all the way, that brings within the compass of a detective story a width of outlook and wealth of interest that is as refreshingly unusual as it is completely acceptable Now Ready 9 DENIS ARCHER 47 Princes Gate, SW7 r.Hipiiv i- a work re- I ARTOONS, peopled' superbly by the mwn It- h-st volume '''ofay an the moustached: a bou-ixi Decembe- .11 19')S add- an 1uet flowers from Nathaniel Gub- rip hM.mt new l- the ed in "I P- Tin Harris OxTord ill" ai nri flnl l'. rert'rn nod F--1-." itu m-, l.l IS WEEK 31 THE LAST WEEK Of RATIO PERIOD Ho 8 Ifb.LV, 4 rh -o Mar 3rd! 5 iMt OF lONljN vI 1.