10 JULY 1941, Page 11

" YOUNG ENGLAND " Sig,—There is something quaintly pathetic in the

little advertisement of the group of nostalgic undergraduates of Cambridge which Mr. T. E. Utley writes under the title of "Young England." At a time like this when the whole wide world is in revolutionary ferment and our country is actually at war for the sake of democratic principles of government, it is surely pathetic to reflect that any group of students can be so blind to these things that are happening about them as to think that any party has a ghost of a chance of success—except by the use of force—with a platform whose main plank is the maintenance of a hereditary social class system a /a Lord John Manners 1841 and thereabouts.

It is curious that they should not have amongst them—or is it! —at Cambridge, one historian who could point out to them that it is impossible to formulate a successful policy with a pattern of society in mind which is one hundred years past. Was it not this, Lord John Manners whom Mr. Utley's group regards as its great precursor who wrote some such doggerel as

"Let wealth and wisdom, laws and learning die But still preserve our old nobilitie "?

—Yours faithfully, A. R. 2 Lilac Grove, Beeston, Nottingham.