AN AUGUST ANNIVERSARY
SIR,—In his " Marginal Comment," Mr. Harold Nicolson writes with fine feeling of August 4th's association with the outbreak of the First German War in 1914. May I refer to another association of August 4th which also has its significance for our times? On August 4th, 1792., Percy Bysshe Shelley was born at Field Place, Sussex. The 15oth anni- versary of the poet's birth was last week worthily commemorated in his native county by the Sussex Poetry Society.
Feeling that this anniversary deserves more than merely local com- memoration, I write in the hope that it may lead your readers—as it has led many of us here in Sussex—to seek encouragement in these troubled days of war from the poems of Shelley. It would be difficult to find in English literature a more topical message for our own generation than his inspiring vision of mankind's successful struggle to achieve a nobler world.—Yours faithfully, HUGH HARRIS. The Grammar School, Steyning, Sussex.
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