The New Republic

Jaw-jaw is better than war-war," remarked Winston Churchill. But the two are not mutually exclusive. The "jaw-jaw" of the Peace Talks has de-escalated to one low-key session a week, while the "war-war" has escalated to a new peak of intensity and human loss. Are the Paris talks a cruel mockery? Is anything happening here; can anything happen here? One is tempted to dismiss it all as unreal. Outside the halls and lobbies France has quivered in crisis. READ MORE >>

BRANDON: Russia’s launching of two satellites was a great shock to the Western world. Do you think American scientists or the government were to blame for Russia’s being ahead of the United States in this field?  READ MORE >>

Even months ago, the leaders-of the Grand Alliance met at Bermuda. Little was accomplished, perhaps because US spokesmen grandly assumed that "the initiative" in the Cold War had in fact been "seized" by the Alliance, or certainly by the US. Whatever the cause, Bermuda was hardly a meeting between equals, rather between the leader and his subordinates. The arrival in Washington of Sir Winston Churchill and his Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden in a sense continues the Bermuda conference, but with a difference. READ MORE >>

At midnight last August 5, Wilbert Lee O’Daniel stood in his pajamas on the station platform at Beaumont, Texas. He made his last speech as Governor of Texas and climbed back into his berth on the train carrying him to Washington. READ MORE >>

The World Crisis, 1916-1918 By Winston Churchill (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Two vols. 625 pages. $10) READ MORE >>

The whole truth about the recent general strike in Great Britain has not yet been told; and perhaps it never will be told until the memoirs of the chief actors in the struggle are published. But we know enough of it already to be sure that when it comes it will be a strange story, smacking more of the fencing school than of the duelling ground, of comic opera than of tragedy. The second of these metaphors is the more pertinent, for certainly this “great struggle” belonged rather to the stage than to the world of reality. READ MORE >>

The miners had an unusually good case. They were being asked to accept, at the point of the sword wages which would have reduced tends of thousands of them down to, or even in some cases below, the level of bare subsistence. And this reduction, as well as an increase of hours, was being demanded by a group of men who are notoriously the most stupid, stubborn and inefficient set of employers in Great Britain. The miners therefore had the sympathy of the greater part of the public and also of the press. READ MORE >>

A Far Country, by Winston Churchill. New York: The Macmillan Company. $1.50 net.  READ MORE >>