13 MAY 1943, Page 13

Stay—May one venture to express admiration of the article "Marginal.

Comment" in the issue of May 7th ? There is a conspectus of the famous conflicts that made that region for ever memorahle, illuminated by the identification of places, now familiar to this generation, with the same once so notable in ancient and classical history and legend— all this given without any tinge of pedantry and so little didactic in presentation that perusal is a delight.

Mr. Nicolson's imagery, e.g., " those frail filaments which spread like some weeds beneath the soil of history" tempts quotation from an old Elizabethan: "If out of so base a thing as ink there may be extracted a spirit, he wrote with nought but the spirit ink and his style was the spirituality of arts and nothing else."

When the history of the Tunisian campaign comes to be written, that page " Marginal Comment " may well be the preface.—I am, &c.,