10 JULY 1941, Page 4

As a special indulgence Lord Cecil was provided with a

fork and spoon at the Chinese Campaign Committee's dinner to Dr. Wellington Koo on Monday. But this rather repre- hensible discrimination stopped there. Everyone else had to manage with chopsticks, and some of them made rather heavy weather of it. M. Maisky got an ovation when he arrived, and when Lord Cecil spoke of Russia as one pillar of the quadrilateral of liberty we resolutely forgot everything about Ogpus and treason-trials. Dr. Koo, hardly oriented after four days in London, stuck closely to manuscript. He is in fact fully capable of extempore eloquence, as I hope he will in due course demonstrate in London. But whether the state- ment be written or spoken it is satisfactory to learn from so good an authority as Dr. Koo that China is in a better position as she enters her fifth year of war than she was when she entered her fourth, and that Japan in the intervening twelve months has lost more than she has gained.