SIR,—Please allow me to express my thanks for the new
literary leading article, and for the autumn number of the 5'peciator. The anonymous contributor of ' In the Movement' has given us the lineaments and antecedents of the New Hero but I seem to have met him in the flesh during the first decade of this century in the genuine Teddy Boy intellec- tuals who were among the admirers of A. R.
Orage and Ludovici. At all events, it is a relief to know that the New Hero is not much interested in suffering. We shall at the least see the end of sanctimonious displays of righteous indignation over ' Nazi atrocities '; Mussolini being dead, yet speaketh. Who knows, also, whether our New Hero may arrive by devious ways at a better under- standing of the New Testament ? Yet for all this, ' In the Movement' resembles nothing so much as the attempt of the young son of a nineteenth-century war profiteer, who had just built his Regency villa in Cheltenham, to ex- pound to an elderly country gentleman his newly-discovered interest in hunting. I fear we have met the New Hero too many times before—in history and in real life—to be taken in by his credentials. He may well turn out to be only a Latitudinarian, who will in due course find his place in the vast emporium of the New Imperialism, as a dutiful servant. Did not Nietzsche teach us in our youth that ' convictions are prisons' ?—Yours faithfully,
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