The Spectator

Home Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, told Parliament that Britain reserved the right to supply arms to Ukraine, as ‘We could not allow the Ukrainian armed forces to collapse.’ The Prince of Wales, embarking on a six-day tour of the Middle East, said on Radio 2 that he ‘particularly wanted to show solidarity really, deep concern for what so many of the Eastern Christian churches are going through in the Middle East’. John Longworth, the head of British Chambers of Commerce, called for a referendum on membership of the European Union to be held in 2016, a year earlier than David Cameron, the Prime Minister, has promised, in order to end uncertainty. Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, said the same.

From ‘Compulsory Inoculation’, The Spectator, 13 February 1915: IT is a little difficult to keep one's patience with the Government's attitude towards compulsory inoculation. It is a capital example of “Letting ‘I dare not’ wait up ‘I would,’ like the poor cat i' the adage.” “The cat would eat fish, and would not wet her feet.” The Government would like to knock enteric out altogether from the list of serious Army diseases. They know that they can do so and ought to do so, but they have not done so as yet because they do not want to wet their feet politically—i.e., antagonize the faddists of their party.

From The Spectator, 13 February 1915:.

From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 13 February 1915: FROM the eastern theatre of war there have been received daring the week details of the gigantic dimensions of Field-Marshal von Hindenburg's grand attack upon the Russian centre—i.e., upon the force on the Bzura which bars the German advance on Warsaw. On a very narrow front, not more, it is said, than seven miles, the Germans concentrated some hundred and fifty thousand of their best troops and burled them in close formation, five deep, upon the Russian trenches. This mighty mass of battalions, brigades, and divisions was supported by the fire of no fewer than a hundred batteries, or six hundred guns. The gun and rifle fire of the Russians swept away the beads of the formations as they advanced.