14 JUNE 1969, Page 24

Two tiers for universities

LETTERS

From Kingsley Amis, Maurice Cowling, the Rev Geoffrey Lawn, Patrick Nealon, Edmund Crispin, D. A. N. Jones, Dr E. J. Mishan, Eldon Griffiths MP, Aryeh H. Samuel, H. P. Croom-Johnson, Thelma Rowell, Roger Franklin, Peter Goldman, Alma J. M. Hawkes.

Sir: Mr Maurice Cowling's passing blow at me (30 May) passed over my shoulder. A historian who doesn't bother to check his sources should at least read the papers. Had Mr Cowling done so at all recently he might have noticed three or four earlier letters of mine complaining—more and more piteous- ly as time passed—that I wrote not 'more means worse' but 'more will mean worse'. The misquotation suggests some inflexible principle, in which I believe as little as Mr Cowling appears to. What I wrote (in 1961) was a prediction of the likely results of university expansion in this country at the speed proposed and with the resources available. I think it has been to some extent justified by events.

As for Mr Cowling's claim to see in 'the modern radical undergraduate' an incar- nation of my 'moral ideal', he is either Travellers' Club, Pall Mall, London SWI