SIR,—Although I have been a Spectator competitor ever since your
competitions were first started (admittedly spasmodic but on occasions successful), I have never before found it necessary to protest about the judging. Naturally, one always thinks that one's own entry is incomparably better than the win- ners, but if the setter's critical faculties are so deplorable as not to recognise true genius—well, there it is, and there's nothing to be done but' tot again.
However, I really cannot allow Aardvark's efforts in judging Competition No. 355 to pass without a strong protest. I make no complaint that he should have chosen three completely banal efforts such as any schoolboy might have perpetrated in the college magazine (the third of, which did not even scan). What I do complain about is' that in setting the com- petition he implied quite clearly That all eight lines were to have eight words, and only one of the 'six entries printed fulfils this condition. (It was, inciden- tally, far and away the best.) Is it, moreover, quite• playing the game for Aardvark to introduce, in judging the competition, another condition of which he has previously said nothing, namely that the greeting sliould refer to .the birth of Christ? We were asked only for a verse for a Christmas card, and some of us did at least try to produce something both meaningful and topical, with eight lines of eight words each. It was card nark, but that wouldn't have mattered if only the judge had played fair !—Yours faithfully,
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