10 JUNE 1960, Page 14

SIR,—Mr. Karapiet writing about South Africa rather reminds me of

Mr. Eisenhower talking about peace. The technique is to stick to the most emotionally arresting issue (an issue by the way on which I do not and cannot disagree with him), and trust to luck that people will not notice that 0151', not precisely what the argument was about in the, first place. Thus one appears oneself as elegant an lucid, one's opponent as pettifogging and muddled' One can reinforce this impression by the use of suet' phrases as 'Picking one's way carefully through l'd!: X's letter. . . .' rather as Matthew Arnold (I think) n, reported to have said 'I see what poor Kant wools be at. . . If I may return to my original contention (which Mr. Karapiet actually has raised again, as a kind 0' side-issue): I imagine it is at least partially true that the white man in Africa hates the black man because he fears him (and with what good reason, wrong 0; right). However, 'trying to discover why this is' is Ins' what Mr. Mosley was not doing: he wrote a series of smartly commonplace descriptions of symptons of evasion and withdrawal, and did no service l° intelligent people anywhere; and I thought this was unworthy of the Spectator. May I, raising a probably valedictory hand above the flood of new correspondence released by the latest turn of events, thank you for allowing me 5°, much space in which to attempt to put a point 0' view.—Yours faithfully,