15 AUGUST 1947, Page 16

INEXACT OPPOSITES

Snt,—In the Spectator's Notebook last week I wrote: " When I hear people grizzling because they are afraid they will never get abroad again I cannot help remembering that a few years ago an exactly opposite fear was widely prevalent among my friends and contemporaries." Some people read this as implying that in my belief a lot of people were reluctant to go overseas during the war. I was as far as it is possible to be from meaning this. What I was trying—ineptly, I now see—to contrast was the triviality of peacetime complaints about never getting abroad again with the non- triviality of the war-time worry about never getting home again.

I am very sorry to have been obscure.—Yours, &c., &rapt.