DOWN WITH HIGHBROWS"
Sim,—May I be allowed to correct one misstatement in Miss Rose Macaulay's review of my book Notebook in Wartime. Miss Macaulay, whose review is headed "Down with Highbrows," writes; "He calls people Highbrows '—a tiresome expression whether used by high, low or middlebrows." The word " highbrow " does not, in fact,
2 ppear anywhere in my book. It is indeed, "a tiresome expression," since, as the B.B.C. must be only too well aware, it is commonly used to dencite all those who prefer some form of unin- telligent art to a more intelligent variety—slapstick to comedy or, shall we say, the novels of Miss Dell to those of Miss Macaulay. My criticisms however, such as they were (and I am sorry that Miss Macaulay found them "mostly rather cross "; a review which I re- ceived by the same post, perhaps equally erroneously, referred to them as "good humoured ") were directed not agains, persons of intelli- gence, but against those "whose intelligence is insufficiently balanced by character and experience." For them I employed the label "the intellectuals." To this also, I know, there are objections, but this is unfortunately one of the respects in which the English language happens to be deficient.
Since I am writing, may I also answer one of Miss Macaulay's questions? She asks why it should be supposed that so large a per- centage of the potential leaders of my generation fell in the last war, since a comparatively small percentage of our fighting forces was killed. The answer is that the worst of the last war was fought without conscription, and that the best men of my generation volun- teered at once for the posts of dangei, and perished consequently out of all proportion to their numbers. Those wha were less unselfish, less courageous, or less fit, avoided the posts of danger, and survived, in a wholly abnormal proportion, to provide too much, I think, of the intellectual leadership of the post-war generation.—I am, Sir,
yours, &c., ELTON. Greenways, Old Headington, Oxford.
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