SIR,—The letters in The Spectator this week under the heading
'The Despised' are, with one exception, surely horrifying. The question is not whether the Egyptians have 'contributed anything of value to the world,' but whether British troops stationed in Egypt behaved as the troops of a civilised nation should behave when living in a foreign country. The evidence is that many of them did not. To me, it is astonishing that our troops stationed abroad arc allowed to use such expressions as 'Wog,"Dago,' 'Nigger,' etc., in reference to the inhabitants of the country in which they are guests or occupiers. or to use contemptuous language of a reigning monarch, whatever his morals. Such offences should be sum- marily punished as contrary to the discipline of the Army. Your correspondents seem to assume that bad manners, when practised by the British abroad, are praiseworthy, or at any rate that nothing better can be expected by the ever-despicable foreigner, especially if he happens to be brown or black. But surely the continuation into our generation of the 'Kiplingite' attitude to everyone whose skin does riot happen to be the same colour as our own is a major moral and social disaster for which we are now paying to the uttermost farthing and shall con- tinue to pay. And does your correspondent at Amberley ever consider what might be the behaviour of 'gangs of English irregulars' if, say, Southampton had been forcibly occupied by Egyptian troops and upwards of a thousand of its civilian inhabitants killed? Mr. Pickard mentions the Romans: their behaviour to Bo'adicea cost them pretty dear. Does he expect us to carry on—even in a mild form—the Roman tradition and not provoke something like a Boadicean reaction?—Yours faithfully,
MARY MOORMAN
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