The Spectator

From ‘The Military Situation’, The Spectator, 1 May 1915: EXCEPT for the terrible death-roll, there is nothing to disquiet us in the second battle of Ypres, the embers of which are glowing as we write. The Germans have once more made a determined attempt to break our line and to reach Dunkirk and Calais, and they have failed as they failed at the end of last October, and as they will fail try as many times and as long as they will. They may plot with all the chemists of Germany to invent new asphyxiating gases; they may borrow the stink-pots of China; they may devise new methods of frightfulness at once devilish and childish; but they will not break the British line, or the Belgian line, or the French line, except temporarily.

Britain's airport wars are still ongoing. After the election, the Davies Commission is expected to announce how to expand capacity. The main options are new runway at Heathrow, at Gatwick, or 'Heathrow Hub' (extending Heathrow's runway). Each of them is keen to get their case across to Spectator readers - so much so that they have each asked The Spectator to examine their proposals.  Heathrow Hub has invited Isabel Hardman, the Spectator's assistant editor, to make a short film on its case, and its challengers. Here it is.

From ‘News of the Week,’ The Spectator, 1 May 1915: The Government plans for dealing with the liquor problem have ended, as we feared, in "a moist relentment" of small beer and large taxation. Mr. Lloyd George, whom we must entirely exempt from our condemnation of the Government's cowardly opportunism, evidently failed to induce his colleagues to deal adequately with the obstacles which drink is putting in the way of our national efficiency for war purposes. They would not seize an opportunity which will never occur again for giving the nation a free hand in dealing with the liquor problem, and in delivering us from a monopoly which experience has shown may prove a great danger in a national crisis.

From 'News of the Week', The Spectator, 1 May 1915: SINCE our last issue the western extremity of the western theatre of the war has been the scene of furious fighting in which the French, Belgians, and British have been engaged. The special feature of this second battle of Ypres, one of the greatest of the war, was the use by the Germans of asphyxiating gases contrary to the most solemn pledges made by them at the Hague Conferences. These deadly gases were not a by-product of the high explosives used in shells, such, for example, stele the gas generated by our Lyddite, but were employed with the deliberate object of poisoning. They were for the greater part manufactured in huge retorts in the German trenches and were then blown by the wind on to the lines of the Allies.

Dick West, a foreign correspondent and longtime contributor to The Spectator, has died. Here's a profile we ran about him in 1989.  One side of Richard West's character is his contrariness. At a time when others fear salmonella he refuses to have his breakfast eggs kept in the refrigerator. At the height of the Band Aid fundraising success, Bob Geldof was added to his list of pet hates. More recently he has criticised the blandness of the Independent ('for Guardian readers with money') and praised the Sun ('a fine newspaper'). His resistance to received opinions lends originality to his writing. He is by no means a simple apologist for the Right. Poland grants him entry visas, but not South Africa.

Today is the 100th anniversary of the first landings of the Gallipoli campaign by Anzac troops. The battle to take control of the Dardanelles and Bosphorous to open a supply route to Russia and force the Ottoman Empire out of the war would, in its eight months, leave 130,000 dead. The Spectator was to report the first news of the landings in its 1 May 1915 issue. Here, from 'News of the Week' in the 24 April 1915 issue, The Spectator speculates about the course of action in the Dardanelles: The other important event of the week has been the landing of a British force at Enos, the most westerly point of Turkish territory in Europe, the point just beyond which the new Bulgarian frontier begins.