12 MAY 1928, Page 14

THE N.F.U.

• [To the Editor. of the SPECTATOR.]

your issue of April 21st I ventured to suggest that the reply of the National Farmers' Union Secretary (Spectator, April 14th) to Sir William Beach Thomas would impose on no one who had read the fair and documented article in the Countryman from which Sir William quoted.

Neither will the Secretary of the N.F.I.T.'s second reply (Spectator, April 28th), in which he quotes the Editor of the Countryman's recagnition—in his Story of the Women's _Insti-

tute Movement—of merits in the impose on anyone who happens to have that book by him ! For, on, turning up the Secretary's quotation from it, what do I find ? That he omits a pertinent sentence which immediately precedes the first sentence of his quotation.

This sentence is : " There was no nonsense of public, spirit about the N.F.U." That is precisely what the Countryman and other critics of the N.F.U. have pointed out.—I am, Sir, &c.,

A MEMBER OF THE ROYAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY.