From The Spectator, 22 August 1914: IT is gratifying to find that the public is rapidly waking up to the fact that other prospects than those of universal unemployment arise out of the present war. The daily papers of this week, instead of talking of the necessity for relief funds, have begun to talk of
From The Spectator, 22 August 1914: SIR,—The article on this subject in your last issue has prompted me to write down some of the things said to me about the war by the women in my district. Our rector wished me to ask at each house whether any one from it was serving with the
The Prime Minister has returned from his holidays, and yesterday wrote an intriguing piece in the Sunday Telegraph about the ongoing struggles in Iraq and Syria. ‘True security will only be achieved if we use all our resources – aid, diplomacy, our military prowess – to help bring about a more stable world’ he wrote, and
The Spectator, 22 August 1914: Recruiting for Lord Kitchener’s first hundred thousand men appears to have brought in seventy thousand. That is good, though, we confess, not so rapid as we should like to see it. This comparative slowness is, no doubt, very largely ‘due to the fact that even now there are not enough
‘War and the village wives’, from The Spectator, 15 August 1914: The men and women of the village are talking unceasingly about the war. The whole aspect of the place is changed. The English silence is broken. Even on Sunday no one lolls and smokes in speechless reflection. All the men read the newspapers; none
From ‘The German military mind’, The Spectator, 15 August 1914: All Englishmen are now agreed that Germany made the war, and that the moving force within the German nation was and is German militarism. The astonishing thing is in looking back is that any one here should have doubted what would happen if we either
From the Barometer in this week’s Spectator. Home Office minister Mark Simmonds resigned this week, complaining he couldn’t afford to live in London on his junior minister’s salary of £89,435. His resignation echoes that of Lord Gowrie, who resigned as minister for the arts in September 1985 complaining he couldn’t live in London on £33,000
‘War and the press’, from The Spectator, 15 August 1914: When Mr Churchill paid a high compliment in the House of Commons to the British newspapers he said no more than was deserved. The newspapers are now under control by law, and we need not specially praise them for a reticence and a public spirit
‘I only have to watch this programme and I put weight on!’
‘Please, relax — I’m a very qualified surgeon and Mr and Mrs Piggy have yet to make a mistake.’
‘Isn’t it great not having anything to wear?’
‘He’s a prolific media commentator.’
‘A hundred lines, Miss? But I’ll be out of my tree!’
‘They’re in some kind of feeding frenzy.’
‘I take it this is your first literary festival.’
Hamas’s human shields Sir: Unlike the rockets fired at Basra air base by Iraqi fighters (Tom Drife, Letters, 9 August), rockets from Gaza aim to kill Israeli civilians. A more accurate analogy would be if English cities were under attack by thousands of rockets from Scotland. Any country under such attack would try to destroy
